Publishing Project #4

I will publish my fourth project below:

August 12, 2015

Dear Professor Bottai and Peers:

Five weeks have gone by and unfortunately the course is drawing near its conclusion.  Viewing various types of texts and determining their overall effectiveness has opened my mind to the world of writing. While in high school, I matured as a writer every year that went by and as time progressed, so did the strength of the skills I acquired.  This course, in particular, helped incorporate those skills to be able to write in a different perspective.  After the first week I was already able to carefully analyze scientific texts.  The extent of this knowledge was imperative to aiding my growth not only as a student, but as a person.  Using the university’s library database was the most critical tool at my disposal.  It enhanced my ability to learn about ways to research different controversial topics.  Constantly revising projects helped improve my writing style and effectiveness of appealing to an audience.  I grasped the concept of producing work without explicitly expressing my own personal beliefs.  The challenges presented in this course is the foundation for the future ahead of me.  The fast approaching deadlines required projects to be published within a specific time constraint and consequently, this has pushed me harder than ever before.  

In my first blog post, I was asked to state my writing process and how my perspective has changed throughout the course.  To help express my process from the first few days of class, here is a quote from my blog post titled, “Revisiting My Writing Process”, in which I wrote, “As this course comes to an end, I would consider my writing process to equally be a sequential composer and a heavy reviser” (My Blog Post #52).  Surprisingly, my writing process has not changed from the start of class. Procrastination is and will not be a part of my work regimen.  One process that I want to shift my focus, is spending more time planning out my work prior to writing it. Transitioning from high school to college has been an eye-opening process.  Work completed this summer has given me the opportunity to learn in an online setting more than ever before.    

In high school I never deeply analyzed sources that I would use in my writing.  This course has given the unique opportunity to view numerous journals, articles, and websites.  As a result, I gained a much needed improvement to my ability to interpret what authors use in their work and incorporate those skills into my own work.  As an example, the research done in my first project’s annotated bibliography included ten sources which helped me produce the work I needed to successfully analyze a controversy. Annotated bibliographies were never a requirement for my previous English courses and it is a shame they were not.  They may not seem necessary for some individuals, but for me they simplified the process of completing my project by not having to struggle to search for information in each source.  

Two of the four objectives of this course in which I believe I did not execute as well as I planned were rhetorical awareness and conventions.  Although I progressed in my ability to include rhetorical awareness in my work, improvements still need to be made of the way I adapt to a specific convention in a particular genre and appeal to readers who have experience viewing the genres.  With more practice in writing, I will have an easier time understanding strategies that are used in various texts. One crucial strategy is identifying a purpose that appeals to an audience.  One of the objectives in which I encountered less issues was utilizing the essential skills learned from previous courses to critically think about a topic I am researched.  This type of thinking made the process of composing my own writing much easier.  Reflections of my own work presented invaluable experiences that can be used in the years of work ahead of me.

My approach to writing either blogs or major projects included similar situations.  I briefly planned out what I would write and then move on to sequentially composing individual parts of the work.  Revision was a key process to success in this course.  Without careful revision, I do not believe I would have gotten the results that I did.  The peer review process was the cornerstone of the revision process.  My job as an editor and more importantly, your job as the peer reviewer significantly helped me when the time came to publish the final versions of my projects.  Rather than be insulted at your comments,  I viewed them as favors.  Consequently, your reviews paved the way for the completion of work, and I thank you for that.

The first few days of this course truly opened up my eyes in terms of what a heavy workload is.  While in high school school, none of the college courses I took were English courses.  As a result, I never had an idea of how much work needs to put in to successfully power through a course such as this one.  There have always been times where I have faced difficulties in my English courses.  Not until last year, and this class in particular, did I begin to realize that there is no point in complaining about the type of work I am given and how much work I need to complete in order to get the highest possible grade.  Instead, I took it upon myself to frame the thought into my mind that by working to the best of my abilities, good results will ensue.  

What this course has done for me is something I have never seen in school before.  To be able to say that I have completed an honors English college course over the summer and take one with such bright-minded individuals, is a thought that I never envisioned.  The knowledge gained from this course will not only help me complete my college coursework, but will be the reason why I will have success in my writing in the future.  I want to personally say that this journey has been a tough one for me, but it only marks the beginning of a long and tedious experience.  Regardless of what you brilliant individuals go on to do in your lives, just remember one thing, BEAR DOWN!

Yours Sincerely,

Brandon Goldenberg    

       

Victory Lap

Congratulations to all of my peers who will complete this course by Wednesday!

Ritt, Stefan. "Canada's fireworks at the 2013 Celebration of Light in Vancouver, BC". 1 August 2013 via Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

Reflection on Open Letter Draft

For this blog post I will on my peers' feedback on my open letter draft.  I will hyperlink the two drafts I read from my peers. For the remainder of my blog post I will answer six questions from the Student's Guide on page 69.  This will help tell me what I will revise in my open letter draft.

Dtcdthingy~commonswiki. "Reflecting pool". 4 April 2005 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported  

The letters I have reviewed from my peers were from Jason Wittler and Mark Mellott.

Who specifically, is going to be reading this essay?  Or who am I trying to reach with my argument?  (My instructor, my classmates, members of my academic community, members of the local community, etc.)
The readers of my letter is my instructor and my peers.  They are the individuals that have stuck throughout the entirety of this course.  We all worked hard through the good times and difficult times.

What biases might my readers have?  Am I respecting their opinions while also achieving my own purpose?
The only bias which I believe my peers and I share is that we all worked hard throughout this course and we will all have specific opinions on this thought when we read the letters of our peers.  My purpose was to show I have improved as a reader and writer and how I have gained invaluable knowledge.  The good part of what I wrote in my letter is that I respect the ideas of my peers and as a result I will not need revise what I wrote.

What are their values and expectations?  Am I adequately meeting those expectations?
The readers of my letter expect to read about specific information in which we have improved as students.  I can't speak about what other students wrote in their letters but I can say that mine includes my own work to show how I became a better student.  We all have different examples that we use in our letters, but we share a similarity of including our own personal examples of the ways we evolved as readers and writers.  My letter meets the exceptions of these individuals by showing how we all collectively had to work on the same projects.

How much information do I need to give my audiences?  How much background information or context should I provide for them without insulting their expertise?
In my first draft of my letter I included a brief amount of information of how I connected my personal information with the content of work in this course.  I plan on providing more information while at the same time not stating background information that insults the expertise these individuals with the topic of English.

What kind of language is suitable for this audience?
I will use language that is relevant to this specific course and the work involved with it.  The audience already knows what kind of work has been completed, so I need to refrain from using information that is not relevant to this course.

What tone should I use with my audience?  Do I use this tone consistently throughout my draft?
My tone should be one which is happy and cheerful, while at the same time being reflective of the work that was put into this course.  I should also keep my background information relative to the content of my letter.  In my first draft, I believe that I did a good job of using a tone that satisfies all of the conditions just mentioned.

Overall, I just want to revise the way I structure my sections and have them relate to the main idea stated in my introduction paragraph.

Draft of Open Letter

For this blog post I will write a short paragraph addressed to my peer reviewers for my open letter draft.  I will tell them what they should know about my draft and what they will be reading over.  At the end of this post I will provide a working link to my letter in Google Docs.

O'Leary, Marianne. "NFL Draft 2010 stage at Radio City Music Hall". 25 April 2010 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

For the draft of my open letter I want you as my peer reviewers to focus on a few things in my writing.  I will address the points of my experiences, either good or bad, of my writing experiences while in high school.  I will write about the same experiences I have had with other college coursework.  Similarly, I will address the writing situations I expect to face in the future, either for this fall semester or the remaining years at the U of A.  I will use the answers I composed in my blog post #53 to help me write the open letter.  I will quote directly from my blog posts to help compose my open letter.  I will also use drafts and final versions of my major projects, comments made either from my peers or myself for the major projects, and texts and materials I have used either from the books we used in the course or websites I encountered while working on my major projects, to help compose the remainder of my letter.

Here is a link to my working Google Docs for my open letter draft:

Reflecting on My Writing Experiences

For this blog post I will answer 14 bulleted items on pages 251 and 252 in the Student's Guide.

Chensiyuan. "Lincoln memorial reflecting pool". 4 April 2007 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic, and 1.0 Generic 

Here are the aspects to reflect on my writing:

1. Your assumptions and ideas about writing before taking your first-year composition courses                                                                                                                                             Prior to beginning this course I thought I had a good understanding of what it takes to conquer an English course.  I will have to admit, the first three days of this course kicked my butt.  Instead of pouting on my bed, I matured into a hard-working individual and took it upon myself to acknowledge that I am taking an honors course in the summer.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, but with this title, comes more responsibility.  I took a good look in the mirror and told myself that I will get through this class by doing my best and not quitting.  So far, the speech I told myself has worked.  Doing my best and not quitting are two important qualities people should have.                                                                                                                                                            
2. The most important lessons you have learned as both a reader and a writer as a result of taking your first-year composition courses                                                                                 As a reader, I have learned from this course that in order to fully grasp the information in a text, you must not only carefully read it, but read it a few times.  Doing this will only help you understand the purpose of the text and have an easier explaining it if necessary.  As a writer, I have learned that practice, some planning, revision, and constant work will result in a better grade than procrastinating.  Although I do not personally procrastinate, many people in this world suffer from it and as a result do not succeed in a way that they envision.                                                                                                                                                                                          
3. The ways you brainstormed, narrowed down topic, and worked on thesis statements          By writing an original thesis statement and then usually sticking to my second draft of it, is the plan that I used when writing my projects.  Planning prior to writing them was an important step for me to even think of ways to approach what I will say.  As far as narrowing down the topic, I did this by already having a thesis statement in mind and then making sure that it was relative to an audience and how they would be represented in my projects.                                                                                                                                                                         
4. The peer-review process, including what you offered and what you received                         I thought the peer-review process was a beneficial process to completing each project.  Corrections from my peers was a necessary aspect to improving my projects.  Without this, I do not feel that I would change as much in my projects because I would be too kind to myself.  Seeing what I wrote in a different set of eyes helped me not only improve my revision, but my overall outlook to completing projects.                                                                                                                                                                
5. Individual or small-group conferences with your instructor                                                      The rubrics provided after each project was completed helped me realize what my mistakes were and how I can improve my writing in the future.  Also, videos in the beginning of the course helped me get a clearer idea of what was expected throughout this course.  Overall, some form of communication helped me in this course.                                                                                                                                                                
6. The discussions you had about your paper with people who were not in your class               By asking a parent to look over my completed projects, I was able to get another person to review my projects without having my advice by their side.  They could quietly fix any errors that were in my projects.  Having more than three reviewers helped me in a big way to improve my projects from my first drafts to my last.                                                                                                                                                                       
7. How you approached the revision process for each essay                                                         Reviewing the comments from my peers helped me formulate better methods on fixing the specific details that needed to be addressed in my projects.  Revising individual sections of my projects was the best way, I thought, on how to fix my projects in their entirety.                                                                                                                                                             
8. Your understanding of reading and writing in different genres                                               Reading and writing in different genres helped convince me that messages of a topic can still get across in any format that its written in.  Viewing different authors' texts in different settings helped me find the true essence of creating a useful and persuasive thesis statement.                                                                                                                                                                      
9. What you would do differently if you were to take your first-year composition courses again                                                                                                                                               The only knock that I have on myself is spending a bit more time planning out my projects to ensure that I do not have to over-do the revising.  Revision is important, but over-doing it can affect how you perceive your overall paper.  Thinking too much about one sentence can affect the overall flow of the project.  That's why more planning prior to writing can help reduce some of these issues.                                                                                                                                                                   
10. How college writing fits into your life now and how it will fit into your major and future career                                                                                                                                                College writing has helped me have a better understanding of how analyze sources and interpret them in a way that I can get the most amount of information out of them.  This can help me in the future as I will have to analyze different scientific texts and use them to help me write my thesis for my bachelor's degree.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The following questions might help develop a thesis statement for my reflective essay:                      
11. What did you learn (from a specific writing assignment, from a specific experience, or from the semester as a whole)?                                                                                                     More than any other English course I have ever taken, this one has taught me how to formulate a thesis statement and keep in mind how I will successfully address the purpose of what I will write about and how an audience will be addressed.  Doing this is one of the most important parts to writing a text, as it sets up the rest of the text.  Without a clear thesis statement and how an audience is perceived, the text might not flow as well, let alone even make sense.                                                                                                                                                             
12. Did the choices you made, or writing experiences you had, reinforce something you already knew about yourself or about writing?                                                                         Researching a lot prior to starting my projects helped me a lot.  Surfing through many texts and choosing the best one can be a hard task to complete.  The only way to do it is to be patient and be able to make an effort to set your mind to it and complete it.  Without informative sources, the project itself will not be a thorough and may leave an audience feeling lost an uninformed throughout the project.                                                                                                                                                                 
13. If you did not gain as much from a particular project as you had hoped, what are the possible reasons for that and what might you do differently the next time?                           The good part about this question is that, in my opinion, I believe I have learned as much I needed to write a good enough project.  I put about the same amount of time into researching the topic I will write about for all of my projects.  As a result, I feel that I wrote longer, but more informative texts in this course.                                                                                                                                                                  
14. Think about the course objectives listed on your syllabus as you consider your success in the class.  What course objectives did you meet?  What objectives are you still working on?                                                                                                                                                   As far as the four objectives for this course go, I feel that I have addressed all of them in some way.  In terms of needing more practice for them, I believe that in the future I need to have more rhetorical awareness and a little more practice on conventions.  These are not major issues that I suffer from, but more practice with them will only help me improving as a reader and a writer.  The two objectives I believe I have met are critical thinking and composing and reflection and revision.                                                                                                                                                                     

Revisiting My Writing Process

For this blog post I will revisit my first blog post regarding my writing process and review the different types of writers from the beginning week of this course.  I will reflect on what I wrote for my writing process blog post and explain my perspective has changed from the beginning of the course until now.  I will explain the type of writer I am now and which type I will be moving forward.

G Dmitry. "Dmitry G is repairing tanning bed". 15 June 2013 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported 

Reflect on what you wrote in your first blog post and explain how your perspective has or has not shifted during your experience working in this course:

In my first blog post I wrote that I would consider myself a sequential composer.  As this course comes to an end, I would consider my writing process to equally be a sequential composer and a heavy reviser.  I mentioned that I was more of a reviser than a planner in my first blog post, but I did not specifically favor this style over the first type.  After completing my first three projects, I would have to consider myself a writer of two types not just one.  I feel more comfortable writing individual parts to my projects and revising them individually rather than heavily planning them out and writing them in one sitting.  For me consistent revision makes me more comfortable as a writer.

Explain how you would explain your process now and how you see it moving forward:

Moving forward, I do not see myself using more than these two types of processes.  I would definitely not be a procrastinator, since I just do not have a lazy personality.  I always want to complete assignments earlier rather than later.  As far as being a heavy planner, I do not believe that this will serve an important purpose in my future.  Don't get me wrong, planning is one of the most important steps in writing.  I just believe that I will not need to over-do planning and instead would rather over-do revising my papers.

What kind of writer does your experience in this course tell you you're going to be in the next 2 or 3 years of college coursework, looking for employment as you plan graduation, and/or working in your field after graduation?

Since I followed the two types of writing styles that I mentioned in the two previous questions, this will serve me a good purpose in my future coursework in college.  I do not procrastinate when it comes to working.  This is a problem that many individuals deal with everyday.  I like to plan ahead of time, but do not particularly favor overthinking anything that I do.  As I plan for the rest of my years in college and moving on forward toward graduate school, I want to make sure that I improve my writing skills as much as possible.  Even though I will not be taking specific English courses, many of my courses will require some form of writing.  Any practice of this kind will improve not only my knowledge of the subject, but my ability to write more scientific texts.             

Reflection on Project 3

For this blog post I will reflect on my third project by answering nine items on page 520 in Writing Public Lives.

Manske, Magnus. "Reflection on Lake McDonald (7198413770)". 14 November 2013 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic 

What was specifically revised from one draft to another?
The common similarity that was shared throughout all drafts was that I did not need to globally change/revise my papers.  To remind readers of what this means; Global revision is completely changing content from one draft to the next.  The main revisions that took place was fixing grammatical errors, changing sentence structures, and punctuation errors.  Along with these, I had to reword the thesis statements in each of my projects.  I had to connect my main points in my body sections so that readers could see a clearer connection of them to the overall message of the project.  I had to make sure that I correctly cited my resources, which included: visuals and tables (graphs and statistical data).

Point to global changes: how did you reconsider your thesis or organization?
Luckily for me, I never had to make global changes to my projects.  I only had to rewrite my thesis statements in my projects so that I could make them more relative to addressing the components for the entire project.  As far organization goes, I had planned out ways to format my projects prior to writing them.  In the end, I planned out my body sections in topic format.  Essentially, I use one major topic per body paragraph and use evidence and analysis of it to complete each section.  

What led you to these changes?  A reconsideration of audience?  A shift in purpose?
After completing my projects I felt that I did not address the audience as well as I should have.  With the same purposes in mind for each project, I wanted to have better connections between the thesis statements and showing an audience is affected by them.  Major changes were not necessary for my projects.  By adding a sentence to my thesis statements I improved my purpose for projects and gave readers an easier time to grasp the main information of what my projects would be.

How do these changes affect your credibility as an author?
Changing information in my projects for the better made my credibility as an author better.  Adding a sentence alone helped create a bigger picture in the minds of my projects' readers.  I did not change my thesis statements by including more statements that showed my own personal bias towards my topics.  Writing without much use or no use of having bias in one's projects will strengthen their credibility and would give readers more appeal to carefully analyze the work.

How will these changes better address the audience or venue?
Specifically mentioning ways that the audience will be addressed in the thesis statements improves the content of the introduction section to the projects.  By not explicitly mentioning specific individuals in the audience, but carefully using words that mention how the audience will be affected in the thesis statements will address the audience in a better way.

Point to local changes: how did you reconsider sentence structure and style?
The only minor local changes was just fixing some punctuation rules (more specifically in project 2).  My first project did not have too many mistakes when it came to sentence structure and the overall format of the paper.  I should have added more visuals to it to make it more appealing to read.  Information was spot on it, but providing variety (in terms of pictures) would have had readers be more interested in it.  My second project followed the style of the genre better than the first project.  Not too many sentence structure changes were needed in it.  My third project perhaps had the most desirable appeal to the audience in terms of formatting the genre.  Since I did a presentation, I included a good amount visuals which attracted the audiences' eyes right away to them.

How will these changes assist your audience in understanding your purpose?
The best example to answer to this question would have to be my third project.  Just after I had provided my thesis statement, I added to slides that briefly described how vaccinations worked.  This is an important addition to my project since it gives unbiased and informative commentary to the overall public argument.  Giving factual information can help assist the audience into reading more of the work and then in the end decide their own opinions.

Did you have to reconsider the conventions of the particular genre in which you are writing?
The only issue that I had with conventions was with the first project.  I did not write my project in true quick reference guide convention.  Although I separated out specific topic headers in my project, I did not make it more appealing to the reader by providing visuals and images to make it easier on the eye.  Since my other projects followed the conventions of their genres pretty well, I did not have reconsider rewriting them.

Finally, how does the process of reflection help you reconsider your identity as a writer?
Reviewing my own writing tells a lot about how I plan and prepare my own projects.  Since I did procrastinate until the last hour to write my projects, I still used the same type of writer style from the beginning of this course.  Reflecting on my writing gives me a better sense of how I write similar projects in a better way, addressing the key components of my prompts.  Practice makes perfect is a saying that I believe is important when it comes to writing.  The more you write the better writer you will become.  Revising is an important process when it comes to growing as a writer.

Publishing Project #3

For this blog post I will publish my third project regarding a public argument.

Here is Third Project Link:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IBytVJhjzK0e1jIbweeVYKyWHUxmwg5vJyxtjJApR8M/edit?usp=sharing

Punctuation, Part 2

For this blog post I will identify four more topics from the "Punctuation" section in Rules for Writers.  I will read to find out which information I thought was and helpful for when I complete my third project.  I will also provide example sentences from my drafts showing which topics I will talk about.

Prota, Gennaro. "Colon (punctuation)". 8 March 2006 via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain 

Topic 1:
The first topic I have chosen to read about in this section is "Unnecessary commas".  Sometimes in my writing I feel that use too many commas.  However, in my third project I do not believe that I overused commas, but placed them in their necessary positions.  I learned interesting points in this section, some of which include not including commas between compound elements that are not independent clauses.  An example of where I incorrectly write a sentence in my draft where I include this topic is, "Ultimately, individuals are injected with vaccines that usually have some form of the disease, and their immune system recognizes the foreign molecules by having antibodies attach with antigens."  What I should have done is keep the sentence and just remove the comma before "and their immune systems recognizes..."  It is not often that I make these types of mistakes, but when I do, they do not drastically change the outlook of the entire project.  It just looks better to use correct grammatical rules.

Topic 2:
The next topic that I chose to read about was "The colon".  Since I did not use colons in my project except for my works cited page and when I cited images, I did not read about too much "new" information.  I already had an idea of where I needed to use a colon.  Places include: a list, an appositive, a quotation, and in bibliographical entries.  One example of where I used a colon is in my works cited, "'Anti-Vaccine Parents Cluster in Rich, White Areas: MedlinePlus.' U.S. National Library of Medicine.  U.S. National Library of Medicine, 3 June 2015. Web. 07 Aug. 2015."  I am merely using a colon in this instance according to a convention.  The convention happens to a bibliographical entry.  Since I did not misuse any colons, I did not have any issues with reading any common misuses of them from the section in the book.

Topic 3:
The third topic that I chose to read about was "The apostrophe".  I used quite a few apostrophes in my project and while doing so, I used them all correctly.  Although not being new information, knowing to use an apostrophe to indicate that an indefinite pronoun is possessive is one of the topics that I used in my own project.  The example includes, "When vaccines are administered into one's body, their immune systems are the main contributors to keeping them healthy."  Since the word "one" does not end in an -s, I had to add an -'s to it to indicate that the indefinite pronoun is possessive.  Another topics that I learned in this section that I believe is helpful to know is avoiding common misuses of an apostrophe.  Such errors include: using an apostrophe with nouns that are not possessive and using an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns such as his, hers, and theirs.

Topic 4:
The last topic that I read about was "Quotation marks".  Since I did not have any errors regarding quotation marks in my project, I want to take note of which sections within this section I believe are helpful to remember.  When working with quotation marks, one must use them to enclose direct quotations.  Also, one must use single quotation marks to enclose a quotation withing a quotation.  Another important use of quotation marks includes using punctuation with quotation marks according to convention.  An example of where I use the last rule for quotation marks that I described includes, "An article from the Advisory Board Company describes, "Mississippi had the highest vaccination rates for all three conditions, with 99.9% of children receiving the MMR, DTaP, and varicella vaccines."  The last advice that I read about in this section that I believe can help many writers is avoiding common misuses of quotation marks.  One misuse that I find important for writers to read about is not using quotation marks to draw attention to familiar slang (ie. "ballpark figure").  

Reflection on Project 3 Draft

For this blog post I will provide the hyperlinks to the two project 3 drafts that I read.  Along with that I will answer questions from Writing Public Lives on page 509 and explain what I have learned about my project from the peer review process.

Alvesgaspar. "Reflection in a soap bubble edit". 26 March 2008 via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported  

I reviewed Nicole Nelson's and Mark Mellott's drafts to project 3.

What was the purpose and audience of your original paper?  How successfully did it achieve that purpose and reach that audience?
I will not do a global revision to my project, as I do not believe it is necessary to re-do the entire project with a different purpose in mind.  The purpose I chose for the specific audience that I wrote to, I believe, should be kept the same.  I still addressed the purpose of my argument through many of my presentation slides without drastically affecting how the audience will perceive the overall message.  Just to restate, my purpose was to show how state laws regarding vaccination requirements, their strictness and the rate that children have them, is different between many states.  Certain states have higher vaccination rates than others.  This contributes to the fact that the states with lower rates have higher rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.  The audience was designed for experts (mainly doctors and lawmakers) who review information often in regard to vaccines and their effects.  Parents who constantly deal with the issues of their children needing to be vaccinated is the other group in the audience.

Why are you revising this paper?
Revisions that need to be made in my presentation will not affect the overall outlook of the project.  Instead, I will change grammatical errors and presentation errors.  The need for these items to be cleared up is essential to having a properly formatted project.  By fixing these errors, the audience will not only have an easier time reading the presentation, but they will see that there is a better flow to it.

Whom are you revising for?  Get solid answer to the Questions of Audience Awareness.
I am revising my project specifically for the two groups that I mentioned in the first question.  These individuals would want to read my presentation so that they can get a better and more informed understanding of the different vaccination requirements in the U.S.  Showing them the different statistics and data (including tables and maps) will be an important piece to providing more persuasive information.  Since my presentation has practically no examples of bias of my positions, but instead has more data to back up claims, my audience will find the project to be more trustworthy.    

How will the following aspects of your paper change?

      Length
It will be a bit longer, since I have to space out my bullet points by making them more uniform throughout the entire presentation.  The reason being is that, I still want to include my visuals, but having a uniform font size is a more professional approach of going about this project.
      
      Format
I will keep the same format because I believe the project transitions well between the different slides.

      Appearance
The only difference in appearance will be formatting the size of the words in the project, keeping them uniform.

      Use of evidence
I feel that I have provided enough necessary evidence in order for the audience to have a better understanding of the problems involved with the controversy.

      Introduction and conclusion
My introduction is quickly reviewing how vaccinations work and then addressing the points I will make in the body of my presentation.  My conclusion is the recapping of my entire project.  Since I do not believe these parts had no major issues, I will go ahead and stick with the same (minus fixing any errors) parts.

      Structure of your argument
I will keep the same structure since I addressed three key issues involved in my argument.

      Depth of your argument
I do not want to overfill information in my project.  I have provided enough evidence along with commentary to it, so that the audience can view the important aspects to the argument.

Punctuation, Part 1

For this blog post I will list four topics from the "Punctuation" section in Rules for Writers I will read about and see how I can learn about them and improve on them in my writing.

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  Topic 1:
The first topic that I read about in the "Punctuation" section was "The comma".  After reading this section, I learned more information about how to correctly use the comma.  Not that I had major difficulties during my project with this type of punctuation, but I found that the proper placement of them, makes the content of the paper transition in a smoother fashion.  In particular, I find that this sub-topic mentioned important features to using commas, such as placing them before a coordinating conjunction.  Prior to reading this section, I believed placing commas in certain sentences was necessary only to make a long sentence more readable and seem less "blocky".  Also, I found it interesting and important to take note of the use of comas to set off nonrestrictive elements, and not using them to separate restrictive ones.

Topic 2:
The second topic that I read about in this section was "The semicolon".  I have always had trouble when I should properly use semicolons in my papers.  After reading the sub topic, "Use a semicolon between independent clauses linked with transitional expression", I learned how to correctly place a semicolon when seeing a transitional expression (ie. in addition) appear between independent clauses.  The topic also included a section that described using a semicolon between items in a series containing internal publication, which I find helpful since I will read many publications for my future career in the field of science.  The section also provided helpful tips of avoiding the common misuses of the semicolon.  Some of the information here, I found is helpful in having myself learn the basics of when and when not to use semicolons.

Topic 3:
The third topic which I found that provided helpful new information to my writing knowledge was "Other punctuation marks: the dash, parentheses, brackets, the ellipsis mark, the slash".  The first sub-topic that I found that provided new knowledge to me is why a dash is used in writing.  They are used in order to either set off parenthetical material which is emphasized in the writing, set off appositives that contain commas, or introduce a list or any shift in the tone of the argument.  The use of parentheses in my papers in not a new idea for me.  What I did learn though from this section, is that is perfectly normal to use parentheses in your papers.  I always that it did not seem professional to use them, but in fact can be important if you want to enclose minor details about a specific term. Overall, the tips I learned from this section in the book will be helpful in some form in my writing in the future.

Topic 4:
The final topic which I read about in the "Punctuation" section was "Quotation marks".  Since I did not have major issues with this specific topic, I thought by reading about it, I could learn new information about it.  I noticed an interesting point, how direct quotations of someone's words, either being spoken or written, must always be in quotation marks.  Another quick tip on quotations was how to write long quotations.  When I was a less experienced writer, I never used to use long quotations for lines that were more than four lengths long.  Reading this sub-topic made clear to me that for any future papers that I will write, any quotation that is more than four lines long, must be used correctly and written without quotations (along with an indent).

Reflection: 
After Nicole Nelson's and Mark Mellott's drafts of project 3 I found that both did a good job on using correct punctuation rules.  For example in Nicole's draft, one instance where I believe she included a great use of an ellipse is, "The two boys involved were being charged as minors - despite rape being an adult crime. It seemed useless - until Anonymous got involved."  She emphasizes two key points in these two sentences, "rape being an adult crime" and "until Anonymous got involved".  The ability of using ellipses is something that I find interesting for me.  After reading different projects and seeing the use of ellipses, I will try to incorporate them into my papers in the future.

As for Mark's draft, he too utilizes the correct of punctuation forms.  Although these grammatical forms may not seem to be important for many writers, it is important technique for any informed writer to maintain.  When someone uses information that may seem complex for another person to read, that is alright.  But if this person uses information like and makes many grammatical and punctuation errors, these type of errors are most costly to someone's overall use of their paper.  Correct grammar, in my opinion, is one of the basic fundamentals in writing every person should make sure to be the air-tight part of their paper.  A good example of where Mark utilizes correct punctuation is "The wrong absorbent (organic instead of inorganic) was used in the suspect barrel."  Using parentheses seem for many writers to be a non-existent tool.  Personally for me, I do not use parentheses to often in my writing.  Mark does a good job explaining the words in his bullet point by providing an elaborate meaning to it.  This helps make his statement seem more technical without making it seem out to be too technical.    

  

Draft of Public Argument

For this blog post I will provide a link to the draft of my third project along with a brief discussion of what my peer reviewers should look for when reading my project.

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For my draft of the third project, I wrote about the controversy from my first project.  Feel free to look back at my first project to help you read through my third, in order to get a better sense of what it is you will read about.  Feel free to comment on any mistakes or any errors that need to be fixed.  Also feel free to point out how the flow of my project is.

My Draft for Project #3

Paraphrasing a Source

For this blog post I will revisit a source from my earlier research on this topic.  I will choose a specific passage from a source and then paraphrase the passage.

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Original Source:

"Parents seeking exemptions are more likely to be White and of higher socioeconomic status and to be skeptical of the government and of the pharmaceutical medical industry. Parents who exempt are more likely to have concerns about vaccine safety and adverse effects, particularly if their health care provider shared these concerns. Exemption rates are also associated with state laws and school administrative policies: states in which it is easier to file an exemption have higher exemption rates than states in which it is harder to do so, and this, in turn, is associated with higher disease risk. Epidemiologically, higher exemption rates are associated with lower vaccination rates and therefore higher individual risk of contracting disease and higher community outbreak risk."

Reference:
Wang E, Clymer J, Davis-Haynes C, Buttenheim A. Nonmedical exemptions from school                         immunization requirements: a systemic review. Am J. Public Health. 2014; 104(11): 62-84

Link: http://ajph.aphapublications.org.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302190

My Paraphrase:

Parents that exempted their children from vaccinations, more than others, tended to be White and have a different wealth status.  These individuals also seem to be unconvinced of the government and medicinal therapeutic industry.  They are more likely to have uncertainty about the issuing of vaccine and their unfavorable effects, specifically if these individuals are informed about them from their health care provider.  In relation to state laws and the different school policies, states that have more lenient exemption laws tend to have higher exemption rates than states that have stricter laws.  The higher exemption rates are related to higher risks of children being sickened by diseases.  Speaking in terms of hygiene and health, these high rates of exemptions are linked to lower rates of vaccinations.  Consequently, this puts children at higher risk to acquire diseases, ultimately putting the community around them at higher risk to have an outbreak spread.     

Outlining My Public Argument

For this blog post I will outline the different parts to my argument for my next project.  I will outline the introduction, body, and conclusion parts to my project.  To help me outline these parts, I will use Writing Public Lives.

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Introduction:

I will choose "Define or Narrow the Problem" option as one of the four to introduce my argument for my next project.  The reason I am choosing this option over the other is because I will have an easier time pointing out to my readers "a realistic plan of action..." (415)  I will "Focus on an aspect of the larger problem that you feel that your audience can actually address" (415).  I will point to the legislation that has already taken place in certain states regarding the strictness of their vaccination requirement laws.  I will connect this statistic with data showing how this correlates with lower rates of vaccine-preventable diseases than states that have more lenient laws.  I want to restate the main points from my first project about this controversy to the audience, which they already have knowledge about.  The main objective in this section of my project is to only point out the different issues surrounded in this controversy, while pointing to a specific plan to improve the issue.  I do not want to include any bias or support for one position over another in this section.  This section will provide the general overview for the rest of the project.

Body:

(#1 List Down the Major Supporting Arguments)  To address this question in my body sections of my project, I will only focus on a few important arguments.  One is to include data showing how the use of stricter vaccination requirement laws in certain states are beneficial with the fact that these states have lower rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.  I will also point out the different states with either more strict or more lenient exemption laws and how they are connected with the different rates of disease.  In connection with this last argument, I will point out how people in certain socioeconomic groups are involved with the use of exemptions.  I will also point out how areas with high exemption rates are clustered together, which contributes to higher rates of disease outbreaks.

(#2 List Down the Major Criticisms)  The arguments mentioned in #1 are important in the controversy as they emphasize the key issues of why this controversy remains a controversy.  Their criticisms could include not having parents, that contribute to higher rates of disease outbreaks due to their children not being properly vaccinated, being faced with harsh penalties.

(#3 Select Your Key Support and Rebuttal Points)  The important key support for improving the situation of this controversy comes with stricter enforcement of laws requiring more children to be properly vaccinated.  Along with these laws, there also comes stricter enforcement for how parents use exemptions for children (specifically reducing the use of nonmedical exemptions).  Certain states have put into place laws that enforce stricter requirements for this issue.  Clearly, statistics have favored these states, in regard to seeing to lower disease rates along with exemption rates.  The success of these states should be used in a larger scale (perhaps nationally).  Some rebuttal points to these supporting points could include that parents having a bigger say in whether or not their own children should be legally obliged to be vaccinated.  Freedom of choice may play a large role in this controversy in regard to having children being properly vaccinated.

(#4 Write Out a Tentative Topic Sentence for Each Support and Rebuttal Point)  [Support] There has been progress made in the overall discussion of improving children's health, but there is more much needed support in order to have more states follow up with legislation requiring stricter laws for vaccinations.  [Rebuttal] There have not been harsh penalties set in place to punish those who contribute to higher disease in certain states.  With these in place, the rates of diseases can possibly become smaller than they are now.

(#5 Gather Evidence)  To support my main supporting arguments along with my rebuttal points, I will use analysis from the New England Journal of Medicine, the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, along with articles from the CDC and NIH.  These sources will point to the specific data involved with these key points and could potentially help readers gain a better understanding and possibly advocate for more beneficial legislation.

(#6 Develop a Map of Your Argument)  I will first introduce the controversy as a whole. Then, I will focus on the main key support and rebuttal points to it.  The thesis will will include these points along with reasoning to support them (to be done in the form of evidence from the sources).  Moving on, I will transition from the two main arguments and the rebuttals to them in the body section of the paper.  I will include evidence within these arguments while trying to tie together the main points.

Conclusion:

For this section of my project I will focus on my concluding strategies.  Of the five options, I will choose "Positive Consequences"to use in my project.  The reason being is that I want to include the benefits involved with individuals taking action or a step forward in this controversy.  This can hopefully provide a positive effect on society, possibly changing the scope of the controversy, for the better.  I will also restate the issue I mentioned in the other sections of my project.        
  
       

Considering Types

For this blog post I will explain the different types of argument from the reading on page 414 in Writing Public Lives.  I will view the different types, which include Position, Casual, Evaluative, Proposal, and Refutation.  I will see which types are the best fits for my project, along with seeing which ones would not work.

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Out of all of the types arguments from the list on page 414, I believe that the two that I will consider using the casual argument type.  To start off I feel that a casual argument will fit the style of my project because I would "argue for one cause or one set of causes for a particular problem" (414).  By pointing out the cause to the audience, this could help them understand some solutions to controversy.  I would point out the positive aspects of the controversy I have chosen to write about.  The position argument type would not be a great fit in my project, but would be better than the remaining types.  The position argument would only be beneficial for me because I would be able to point out the pro/con argument.  I would not defend a specific idea or policy, but I would point out the benefits of one side overall.  The evaluative argument would be the last remaining argument that I think that could potentially be a slight fit into the style of my project.  I could include analysis that "will often evaluate specific public policies and proposed solutions that have been developed or are being proposed" (414).  The remaining argument types do not fit the style of my project because I will not "map out the solutions step-by-step for their readers, introducing them to the proposal, explaining the logic of the proposal, discussing the steps for implementing the proposal, and pointing to the benefits of following the proposal" (414).  Rather than making a proposal, I will just present data to show the sides of the controversy.  A refutation argument will not fit the style of my project because I will not refute my argument and not "point to the possible harmful public effects of the argument..." (414) Along with that point, my project will not give readers a reason to not follow the argument.  Overall, I feel that incorporating at least one type and elaborating on its use, I can still provide an informative project.

My Rhetorical Action Plan

For this blog post I will answer answer questions in regard to developing a rhetorical action plan.  These questions come from Writing Public Lives pages 412 and 413.

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Audience: Who are you going to try to persuade with your public argument?  Describe the following aspects of your audience in a few sentences:

• Knowledge: What does the audience know about the topic, text, or idea?  How do they know the topic (where do they get their knowledge from)?  Do they have certain predispositions or opinions about the topic that you will need to address?

        Whether it is doctors, lawmakers, or parents, all of them know at least something about vaccines.  Some may support and some may not.  Parents for the most part, have a good sense of vaccines and their purpose because they need to have their children be immunized before they go attend school.  Doctors of course know about vaccines because their field of study requires them to know about them.  Lawmakers, specifically, the ones who deal with implementing vaccination requirement laws, know about vaccines because they work on improving the quality of lives of the people in their state.  All of the people in these groups get their knowledge about vaccines by either studying them in school or they read information about them on government health agencies (or any other health websites).  I believe for the most part, doctors and lawmakers are the major supporters of having children being vaccinated.  Although many parents have their children be vaccinated, a large group of the ones who do not, choose to do so mainly because of their beliefs (nonmedical exemptions).  I will need to express in my project how these types of parents are contributing to higher rates diseases spreading due to them not vaccinating their children.  I will provide data and information showing the difference (state level) between parents who vaccinate their children and show their health conditions compared to parents who do not vaccinate their children.

• Values: What do you know about how the values, ideals, principles, or norms (standards of conduct) that members of the audience might hold?

          Doctors, generally speaking, would value and support the use of vaccines on children and adults in that case.  Since many lawmakers do not share their views on vaccines, I cannot say that they overwhelmingly support them.  But the ones that implement laws requiring them would be in favor of their required use.  Parents hold different values towards vaccines.  There are some religious groups that do not use vaccines.  Some parents have their own philosophical beliefs towards the use of vaccines and therefore do not vaccinate their children.  

• Standards of Argument: What type of research or evidence do you think will be persuasive for your audience?  How might you have to translate this research for them?

          I believe providing data from government health agencies such as the CDC and NIH, along with providing data from scientific journals where scientists published papers regarding vaccines, will be the most persuasive forms of evidence for my audience.  I will use the data I can get from these sources to correctly use in a convincing fashion and to be able to show vaccines can be more beneficial than harmful.

• Visual Elements: What visual images or elements might your audience respond to?  Why?

           There may not be too many images that I can show to my audience that they can respond to, due to the nature of my controversy.  Perhaps pictures of diseases (microscopic images) to readers to show them how they could look inside someone if they do not get vaccinated.  This may not be helpful at all, but I will decide with further research.

• Purpose: Why is your audience reading or listening to your argument?  Are you trying to expand their understanding of an idea, encourage them to take action on an issue, challenge a long-held tradition or viewpoint, etc.?  How likely is your argument to motivate your audience?

          My audience is reading and listening to my argument so that they can review further analysis on how the vaccination requirement controversy has become so important.  The longer parents wait to realize that vaccines are in fact more beneficial than harmful, the bigger the chance there is for more children to acquire vaccine-preventable diseases.  My project's purpose is to expand individuals' knowledge about this controversy and having this knowledge be able to take action on the growing number of parents who do not vaccinate their children.         

Genre: What form of writing will you use?  After identifying your genre, list your answer for the following questions:

• What is the function of the genre?  What is it designed to do for your readers?  Or, why did you choose it?

          I will write my project in the form of a presentation.  I believe that in doing so, I can provide informative explanations along with using some useful images to be able to appeal to the audience.  I chose to do use a presentation for my project because I find that it is not in the style of a long and boring essay, but a shorter and still informative project.

• What is the setting of your genre?  Where could you see it being used?

           My project could be used in a school setting, possibly being used by other teachers.  Even elementary schools can use the information, where it could help convince more parents how vaccinations could be a beneficial process.

• How might you use the rhetorical appeals we have studied--ethos (character), pathos (values/emotion), and logos (logical argumentation) in this genre?

          I will incorporate these appeals into my project by using sources that include ethos and logos, by using either government health agencies or scientific journals as sources.  The pathos will be the end decision for each source that a parent makes either having them view the information and either supporting it or disagreeing with it.

• What type of visual elements, if any, will you use in this genre?

          I will include a few images along with the use of either maps, tables, or graphs showing the effects of vaccine requirements (or exemptions) across the country (at a statewide level).

• What type of style (formal, informal, conversational, academic, etc.) will you use in this genre?

          I will include a formal style that can be a more serious form to help convince readers the difference vaccines make for people.  Since I will be using scientific journals and government health agencies as sources, the project will also be a bit academic.

Responses/Actions: Explain the possible actions you would like your audience to take after they read or view your argument:

• On a blank sheet of paper, make two columns: Positive Support and Negative Rebuttals.  Then list out the potential positive and negative reactions to your argument.  

           For the positive side (left) side of the page I believe that would be a few reactions made by the audience.  Some points could include outreach from more parents to convince other parents to look more closely into the vaccination requirements.  By doing so, more children can perhaps be safer from acquiring certain diseases.  More parents can become more convinced by viewing the different data that is provided by the two government health agencies and the scientific journals.  For the

           For the negative rebuttals (right) side of the page I find that the only rebuttals would come from certain parents that still believe vaccines are more harmful than beneficial for their children.  

• Looking at this list, circle the negative rebuttals that you feel will be most important for you to address and briefly list your response to them.

          Since I believe the group of parents who would not favor vaccines even after reading my project would be the only group involved with a negative rebuttal.  My only response to them will be, since I cannot change your views on vaccines, do more research on whether vaccines are truly proven to cause serious harm to children.

• Finally, trace out the potential chains of action that your writing might create.  If for example, you wanted to "raise awareness" about an issue, draw a line from this point and list the potential actions that raising awareness might create.

          I would want to trace out the action of providing specific data involved with vaccine rates a state level and being able to point out which states have stricter or more lenient vaccination requirement laws.  By pointing to this idea, readers can get a better understanding of the difference that stricter laws make on vaccine-preventable disease rates.  If more readers find my information helpful, perhaps the parents who do not support vaccinations can possibly change their views.          

Analyzing Context

For this blog post I will answer questions from Writing Public Lives on page 340 that refer to reading the context of your public debate.

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What are the key perspectives or schools of thought on the debate that you are studying?
The correlation between higher rates of vaccine-preventable diseases and states that have more lenient vaccination requirement laws.  Seeing whether or not areas that have higher or lower rates of medical or religious exemptions have any connection to higher or lower rates of schoolchildren being vaccinated.

What are the major points of contention or major disagreements among these perspectives?
Parents not seeing any connection to doctor's or lawmaker's positions of needing to have more schoolchildren being vaccinated.  Higher rates of children not being vaccinated in connection to states with more lenient vaccination requirement laws.  This is compared to states with higher rates of children being vaccinated in connection to states with stricter vaccination requirement laws.  The question some people may ask is, why are the rates for each of the two so different one another?  Perhaps, more analysis in my project can help answer that question.

What are the possible points of agreement, or the possible common ground between these perspectives?
Parents who want to their children to be healthier and possibly avoid contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, agree with lawmakers and doctors on legislation that requires stricter enforcement of vaccination laws.  The fact that they agree with one another is seen by the rates of these diseases in these states.  Since these rates are lower than states with more lenient laws, more parents seem to agree with the strict laws whereas, parents from the more lenient states are still in disagreement with the doctor and lawmakers.  A possible result of the disagreement may contribute to higher rates of diseases.

What are the ideological differences, if any, between the perspectives?
Religion and medical exemptions play a smaller role than philosophical or nonmedical exemptions in the controversy.  Parents who use nonmedical exemptions believe that vaccinations will harm their children more than it will help them.  This belief could be one reason why a larger percentage of parents with these beliefs see their children acquiring vaccine-preventable diseases.

What specific actions do their perspectives or texts ask their audience to take?
Since lawmakers that enforce stricter vaccination requirement laws see the disease rates to be lower than states with more lenient laws, the specific action that took place was to require more parents to vaccinate their children.  Scientific journals along with government agencies (such as the CDC and NIH) provide data to the two groups involved in my project, which can ultimately help them gain a better perspective of the details in this controversy.

What perspectives are useful in supporting your own arguments about the issue?  Why did you choose these?
By looking more closely at the benefits of vaccinations and how data can support the enforcement of them shows to lower rates of children acquiring diseases, I can give my audience more informative analysis of the controversy.  Taking this side rather than side of individuals who feel that vaccines are more of a threat, I can provide better analysis of the controversy.

What perspectives do you think will be the greatest threat to your argument?  Why so?
By not addressing the side of individuals who believe vaccines are more harmful than beneficial, my project will not address all aspects/sides of the public argument/controversy.  Presenting all sides of the argument will seem less biased and more informative, which could in the end give more readers the ability to find ways to have this controversy move in a better direction.