WP3

Joseline Ayala

Professor Zack de Piero

Writing 2

29 May 2016

Pets or no Pets?

The scholarly article I chose to transform—To Have or Not to Have a Pet for Better Health? by Leena Koivusilta and Ansa Ojanlatva—talks about about the associations of pet ownership with perceived health and disease indicators. This study takes into account socio-demographic background factors together with health risk factors such as exercise.

            My goal for the first genre transformation, the Science Daily health article, was to inform an older audience on the associations of having pets with better health. Given that adults are generally more prone to health-related issues, I wanted to focus on the negative effects that can arise from specific behaviors-such as lack of exercise-and how owning a pet can help(or not) reduce this problem. My goal for the second genre transformation, the Twitter page, was to persuade a younger audience-such as young adults who visit social media-to become better informed with the consequences that follow unhealthy lifestyle patterns and how pets can act as a means of support to prevent health-related issues.

            The intended audience for the Science Daily article are adults: i.e. parents, workers, teachers. A health article, I believe, is an effective way of presenting health issues that can potentially affect this specific group of audience because it offers relevant, detailed information that can be readily accessible online or in magazines. According to Losh and Alexander, a writer’s ability to tailor their ideas to a specific group of people is dependent upon multiple identities; in the same way that we conform or try to fit in with our society’s expectations and beliefs when we pick what clothes to wear and how to fashion our hair. It can be argued, then, that adapting to an audience’s needs is a writing technique or move that an author chooses to make because in doing so he or she can sound more persuasive to that particular audience. They can accomplish this level of persuasion by providing relevant evidence and an appropriate tone. In my first genre transformation, I am able to obtain credibility by using an educated tone and reliable sources of information that support my objective to better inform an older audience of the associations of having pets with better health. For example, I quote Leena Koivusilta and Ansa Ojanlatva: “Pet owners had a slightly higher BMI than the rest, which indicates that people having a pet (particularly a dog) could use some exercise.” This article provides a challenging viewpoint that was made in the study. As a result of this, an older audience might oppose to having pets whereas a younger audience might remain persistent in believing that pets are beneficial to their health.

            Why is it that a younger audience (including myself) tends to believe in positive associations between having pets and a better health? This was perhaps a result of the beliefs that have been imposed to them by their society. With this I introduce my second genre transformation: a Twitter page. Twitter is a social form of online communication that helps translate various issues to teenagers today through pictures, videos, GIFs, and conversations. Before talking about the moves in this piece, it is important that I describe the conventions of this social media (what makes Twitter, Twitter?). All Twitter profile pages have a profile picture, their “@username,” small biography, and a list of the people they follow as well as their followers. The people they follow can be seen as their own set of sources that they obtain their information from. There is a blue and white pattern seen throughout the entire page and when you like a person’s tweet, you can “favorite” or “retweet” this idea to share to your own set of followers.

When discussing moves, we can refer to McCloud’s discussion about framing, transition, visual literacy, and moment as well as their contribution to the clarity, persuasion, and intensity when writing with images. Twitter uses these methods and allows for the fast spread of information through various sources to those people who are technologically adapted. Young adults and teenagers who utilize this form of communication can be influenced to believe in particular things-this is the frame, or the things the writer allows you to see. For instance, in my genre transformation, the Twitter account “@Puppies4health” informs teens that “other kinds of experiences and aspects of life may be involved in pet ownership such as mental and emotional issues” (Leena Koivusilta and Ansa Ojanlatva). This Twitter account is only persistent with the belief that pets, such as puppies, can be helpful when dealing with emotional and other health-related issues. Unlike the health article, it does not offer various viewpoints. Instead, it sticks to convincing the viewers that pets have a positive impact to their lives: “Petting your cat or dog feels good. It can lower your blood pressure, helps your body relaxation hormone...” Thus, it is describing moment, what is shown or left out. Moreover, the images transition together with the discussion of pets and better perceived health because they seem to be loving, healthy, and overall happier. Visual literacy is what is written and how it looks. In this Twitter page we that the tweets are very straightforward and they often offer images of smiling puppies, which can appeal to a younger set of viewers.

It is evident, in conclusion, that the decisions writers make can be intended for a specific group for various reasons. These decisions, or moves, may convince the reader in believing certain things once the writer has established that credibility, whether it be through a tweet or a scientifically proven study. Learning to apply these writing techniques are essential to becoming a better writer. These genre transformations have allowed me to explore the different and similar conventions between two genres as well as understand what it takes to persuade completely different audiences.

 Genre transformation #1 (health article): file:///Users/joselineayala/Downloads/WP3%20HEALTH%20ARTICLE.pdf

 Images for Genre Transformation #2 (Twitter page):

Works Cited

 Koivusilta, Leena, and Ansa Ojanlatva. "To Have or Not to Have a Pet for Better Health?" N.p., Dec. 2006. Web. 29 May 2016.

Losh, Elizabeth M., Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

McCloud, Scott. Scott McCloud | Journal » Archive » Writing with Pictures. Scott McCloud Journal RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.

Thlog Ocho

This week in Writing I have been having so much trouble coming up with ideas for our last writing project and I still have not decided what topic I want to do. My PB3A was about puppies and their positive impact on people's health. For one of my genre transformations I want to recreate a health article about pets. Zack told me to be more specific on the type of article and I'm wondering whether this can be made up or has to be a replica of another one.

For my second genre transformation, I am thinking of making a snapchat article about puppies. This genre I believe is geared towards a younger audience because more typically we see young adults using applications such as snapchat on a regular basis. I am not sure if I'm keeping this genre however because I have no idea how to recreate it. I don't know if I can just make the article and take pictures of it the same way I took pictures of another Wall Street Journal I found on snapchat. I have also tried messing with PowerPoint slides but I feel like that's a different genre than the one I am planning on doing. As week 9 has rapidly approached, I am running out of time and need to pick up the pace. WP3 is definitely a lot more fun but requires far more creativity. I hope to get some insightful suggestions from my peers in class this week. I am looking forward to finally wrapping up our last WP3 and for this 3-day weekend coming up! Six Flags here I come!

PB3A

The scholarly article I chose to transform--To Have or Not to Have a Pet for Better Health? by Leena Koivusilta and Ansa Ojanlatva--talks about about the associations of pet ownership with perceived health and disease indicators. This study takes into account socio-demographic background factors together with health risk factors such as exercise.

I came up with two ways to transform this genre into new and different genres: a health magazine article that you typically find in a doctor’s waiting room and an online BuzzFeed article, specifically found on Snapchat’s “Discover” section. The magazine article is geared towards an older audience because it is more likely that adults pick up a health magazine  compared to a younger audience. For this article I will make sure to include the research within the scholarly article that describe how aging individuals’ health can be positively affected by pet companions. As far as the Snapchat article, I am not completely sure how I will recreate this genre since most of the articles in the “Discover” section have videos and moving images and words and I am not technologically confident to make one myself. For now I will focus on the content for this genre. Given I will be targeting a younger audience, I will try making it as entertaining as possible. To keep the readers engaged, I will relate things from the scholarly article that may affect them. For example, in the scholarly article, Koivusilta and Ojanlatva talks about 20-24 year olds and their associations between the amounts of exercise and diseases.

I noticed that health magazine articles have a catchy title, creative font styles, and colorful images. They also tend to include images of famous artists; typically women. They are usually longer than other entertainment articles and use a more scholarly tone, whereas popular media articles use a conversational tone. Health magazines, compared to the scholarly article, tend to summarize the main points mentioned in the scholarly article instead of going more in depth with the research process and the results obtained from that study. For the health magazine article I was thinking of using cute pictures of puppies and a catchy title like “10 Reasons Why Puppies Can be Good for Your Health.” Then I will break into the different reasons, discussed in the scholarly article, that show why pets such as puppies can be god for a person’s health. In a way, I will be trying to persuade readers of an older age group to consider getting a pet.

I want to try using social media as one of the textual genres because applications such as Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook have an important effect on the younger audience of today’s generation. Many college students today have a snapchat account and use it as a means of communication between friends. One of the features on snapchat that has recently been included is a “Discover” page that includes links to specialized articles such as Cosmopolitan, BuzzFeed, Now This, Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, of many. These articles help bring current and popular topics that typically intrigue a younger audience of discussion such as sports, food tips, etc. I will recreate my own article and talk about the effects on pets on a younger population using the data in the scholarly article.

I hope to have some fun making these textual genres even though I am not exactly sure how I will go about this assignment.


For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Snapchat, here is what I mean...

         

Thlog #7

    This week we finally finished up our final draft of our second Writing Project. Things were a little different on Wednesday since we had class online and not in our usual location. Like many students, I was extremely confused with our assignment. I did not understand why we were looking at the Bob Ross videos and I'm just hoping I met the assignment's expectations. My favorite video was probably the 4 Disney artists painting one tree. I found it interesting how each artist perceived different ideas, but at the same time they cooperated with one another. I realized that they put in lots of effort in creating these Disney films. The Family Guy video confused me a little because I wasn't sure what its point was. I believe it was trying to mock Bob Ross? Bob Ross' painting technique is also interesting and I especially like the video where he talks about creating "plains." This technique creates distance in the painting by simply emphasizing size and illusions. He created these illusions by blurring in the trees and making the outer trees larger than the ones in the center. He also makes a reflection of trees in the pond which I thought was pretty cool. What I got from this assignment and what I think we will be doing for our third writing project is looking closely at an authors moves and leading the reader through these moves by describing their writing process. Although I am not exactly sure how to do that, I hope this writing project is both enjoyable and interesting and enables me to accomplish this task. Given that we will only be meeting a couple more times this quarter, I will try my best to do well on my last paper.

Video Responses

• Bob Ross refers to the different "planes" of his painting and the effect it has on the viewer's distance. The Disney artists refer to the different ways that artists envision the creation of trees. It is very interesting to see how the trees turn out so different even though they were paining the same tree. They talk about the way each artist has their own personal response to what the tree represents. One may begin by looking at the trunk, another may focus on the background and environment, and another might begin to look at its leaves. Since they each have different ideas about the same tree, we see how artists do not paint trees or landscapes; they paint an idea.
• The artists direct our attention towards the way each individual artist performs their art. For example, one artist may look at the engineering and architectural patterns of a tree and the other may primarily focus on different aspects such as the arrangement of lines.
• A lot of these videos focus on the process of creating art and how that process shows a different artistic experience. They use different paint, a large/small canvas, or thin/thick paintbrushes.
• In Family Guy's video, they make fun of Bob Ross' artistic style and process while he paints his happy trees.

Journal Q&A

I am still finishing up my writing project. It seems I am never satisfied with my writing. I focused on sleep paralysis and strangely enough I experienced it last night.  That’s the third time this quarter and I after reading all three articles I think I should go see a sleep specialist. Or maybe I just need more sleep. Haha. Overall, I am happy I got to read and write about this topic even though it was hard to elaborate on my ideas when it came to writing my paper. On Monday, the comment about the structure of my paper was very helpful. I realized my sentences didn’t make sense sometimes or they went off on tangents. Also, my partner suggested to break up my sentences they way we did in class. This was helpful because I was able to weave out any unnecessary information and focus on what’s important for my argument. I kept in mind Zack’s comment to “go back” to my thesis at the end of each paragraph. This helps the reader keep the focus on the argument. I tried my best to make the last sentence of every paragraph tie back to my argument.

Thlog #6

Week six is kicking my butt and I am not excited to enter regular midterm cycles once again. Our next writing project encompasses the difference between academic research articles and non-academic research articles. I have made up my mind about my topic and I decided to talk about sleep paralysis. After having two episodes of this since the start of the quarter, I came to a conclusion that it would probably be best to study this phenomenon through writing about it. First off, it was very difficult for me to find different disciplines that talk about this topic because for the most part they all offer a scientific approach. So, I decided to get more specific with the type of studies associated with sleep paralysis. I found two articles: one focused on the psychopathology(the study of mental disorders) and how it is associated with specific medical specialties (e.g. orthopaedic: focuses on injuries and diseases of a person's bones) of an isolated sleep paralysis experience and the other examines the psychological reasoning behind this strange experience.  I found both articles to be very interesting because they offered different insights about the same topic. The psychology article was suggestive of a method that can be applied by people who experience sleep paralysis. This method that the author names focused-attention meditation combined with muscle relaxation (MR Therapy), explains that by focusing on a comforting thought during sleep paralysis, one can erase the horrifying hallucinations and ghost-like figures that have intruded the bedroom. These articles educated me and in a way relieved me of the crazy dreams and not-so-dreamy hallucinations that I have come across. Although my experiences do not come close to some of the ones I have been reading, it's good to learn about the potential causes and ways to aid this traumatizing experience.

Thlog #5

This week in writing we began to look at the different moves and the way that authors use them to make their writing more effective. We looked at some pretty cool sports videos in class to come up with the moves that athletes used in their games. For example, we looked at some basketball replays that showed how Michael Jordan used certain moves, such as the juke, to fool his opponents and make more point for his team. We then got into groups and discussed the moves used by Mike Bunn in his article How to Read Like a Writer. It was interesting to see the names that my classmates came up with to describe their moves. This idea of moves and the way in which they are either effective or ineffective have helped me improve as a writer. There was lots of moves that I did not even notice I was making, such as using conversational word choice, that have changed the way I use them in certain genres of writing. For example, it is most efficient to use a conversational tone whenever I want to appeal to a college audience because in doing so, I am more easily able to grab their attention. Doing the PB2B was a little tricky because I did not understand all the moves that were listed in the Template of Moves article. Making my own moves, on the other hand, was lots of fun because I was felt more free to describe whatever I wished. As I looked back on the readings from the class, I realized how important it is to annotate the texts because going back and reading an entire article is very time consuming and unnecessary. I will begin to take better notes and summarize main ideas of these articles to save myself some trouble in the future.

PB2B: Moves

Establishing why your claim matters. The conclusions made in Birkenstein and Graff’s ““So What? Who Cares?”-Saying Why it Matters” have a significant application in a student’s college expository writing because they emphasize the need for writers to demonstrate the “even broader relevance and urgency of the subject matter”(53). For example, Birkenstein and Graff say that by “suggesting the real-world applications of your claims, they demonstrate that others care about your claims but also tell your readers why they should care” (54). This concept of including real-world relevance is effective in any genre of writing because it gives the text a sense of purpose.   

Entertaining Objectives. In Peter Elbow’s Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing, he brings in an arguable statement:“You might say that speaking is a better way to enhance creative thinking-either through brainstorming or through the back and forth discussion of debate” (33). Here the author compares speaking to exploratory writing and puts this idea under discussion. He argues that people work more efficiently using the free exploratory writing method due to the availability, where you don’t need an audience to practice speaking.

Indicating who cares: This technique tells the reader who the author is writing for and who might benefit from reading. For example, the findings found in the article The Disciplines of Love, by Julia Nguyen, challenge the work of earlier researchers, who tended to assume that “love is portrayed as an experience that people crave or is something that happens spontaneously.” But recently, biologists suggest that the forces that drive us to want those feelings are related to the chemicals in our brains. This article hints that people in the biological field might find this information resourceful.

Naming your naysayers  In The Disciplines of Love, by Julia Nguyen, she talks about the effectiveness of certain conventions, such as tone, and the way they have a precise effect to a specific area of study. She mentions that in the field of biology, scholars would argue that an objective and straightforward is most efficient in comparison to the method used by communication scholars. This move is one that brings to question the actions of other writers and serves to describe a naysayer who thinks the beliefs of others are flawed.

Capturing authorial action. This move describes how authors use certain sources to strengthen their argument. For example, in How to Read Like a Writer by Mike Bunn, the author mentions the beliefs of famous authors such as David Jauss. Here, Jauss acknowledges that reading won’t help much unless one learns to read like a writer. This helps validate his point about reading while simultaneously trying to figure out how a text is constructed to become successful in ‘reading like a writer.’  

Introducing “Standard View.” Laura Bolin Carroll states in her article Backpacks and Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis: “Chances are you have grown up learning to interpret and analyze these type of rhetoric. They become so commonplace that we don’t realize how often and how quickly we are able to perform this kind of rhetorical analysis” (40). This generalization, or standard view of something recurring in today’s society, is exemplary of the way in which writers come to draw their own conclusions based off of personal experiences that can effectively relate to the experiences of readers to the idea of rhetorical analysis.

The “fun imagery” move is evident in Losh and Alexander’s “Writing Spaces.” Here the authors practice an interesting technique in which they guide the reader through a series of comic strips. This technique helps engage the reader because the images poke fun at the different writing spaces in many different genres of writing through humorous and alluring pictures. Losh and Alexander provide visually entertaining images such as a comparison of two college classrooms, where they describe one as structured and dutiful with a very strict professor and the other as creative and experimental with a easy-going professor.

The “Start with an ‘I’ introduction” move is seen in Peter Elbow’s “Teaching Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing” where he talks about the way he ‘celebrates’ freewriting and exploratory writing on the first drafts. This move is also apparent in Janet Boyd’s “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” where she states she is a college professor to appeal to a college audience. This method is effective in relating the audience to the writer because it starts the text as personal and conversational.

The “agree to disagree” move is one where the author expresses different ideas and shows how, although arguable, they work together to give the best results in writing. For example, in “Two Kinds of Thinking by Teaching Writing” by Peter Elbow, he expresses how first order thinking leads to more satisfying writing but adds that the “notion of opposite extremes gives a constructive and specific picture of what we’re looking for in good thinking and writing.”

The “I could have just saved time and read the last paragraph” move is seen in How to Read Like a Writer by Mike Bunn and Navigating Genres by Kerry Drik. This move shows how authors write the important take from a reading at the end of the writing. This works to reiterate the main idea as well as to leave the reader with a clear understanding of what had just been read.