Thlog # 8

Well here is my weekly thlog. This week was interesting because of the presentations. I honestly, learned a lot especially in terms of using hedged language. Before, I used to follow the notion that you should always assert what you are saying and go all in. This was supported by my high school teachers who said if I should any uncertainty it would kill the argument. Using hedged language reduces the the amount of weight a claim has in a sense without losing the force. In writing, especially if its going to be read by others, if you make a claim and assert it is the absolute truth and its proven wrong, it makes the whole piece laughable. People will believe the rest of the paper is just nonsense and stop reading. Using hedged language makes it where you have some leeway if your claim is disproved because you didn’t say it was the absolutely correct. One merely said it may be correct not it is correct.  This personally affects, me in my writing since a lot of the papers I have to write are argumentative and require the usage of outside sources to support our claims. One has to be careful in choosing outside support because if the support is proven wrong the ones claim and argument loses the weight behind it. It becomes weak and unbelievable. My group did a presentation on commas and semicolons which helped me a lot personally. I know somewhat of how semicolons were used but I didn’t know the proper way to use them. While looking up facts for my groups presentation I saw the uses of semicolons and how they can improve my personal writing for college papers and life in general.

Thlog # 7

Sorry for being late again… but heres my weekly thlog still. This week in class what caught my eyes from the readings was the reading we did in class of the chief’s paper. It gave me ideas on how to improve my WP1 and WP2 for the final portfolio. I’ve been struggling with having an argumentative thesis in my WP’s since I did to be too broad and I saw how she was able to talk about the the articles while also directly stating her point. I also found working on the presentation with my group to be easy but hard at the same time. Commas are a topic that almost everyone knows how to use so to be able to do a 12-15-minute presentation about them was difficult. Semicolons on the other hand are not as known since most people just use commas and periods. However, the semicolon isn’t as confusing as people make it out to be. It gives more separation between words or phrases than a comma does but less than a period. So it is essentially used when a comma won’t provide adequate separation. What I found interesting when I was trying to find stuff about semicolons is that many sites place commas and semicolons against each other. They made it seem that semicolons are very hard to use when they really aren’t. Semicolons are easy to use but one has to know where to place them properly in their writing. I’ll admit I need to use more semicolons in my writing but I do know how to use them.

Thlog # 6

Well guys here is my weekly thlog. Sorry for being a day late. What stood out to me in this week’s reading was McCloud’s article about writing with pictures. It made see that even in my own writing or presentations where I use pictures, it is essential that everything is framed together. It also helped me in writing the self-analysis essay. I pointed out that I chose my image and and chose my words to tie in together. I was able to use these moves in my translations because of this. I’m wrestling with the self-analysis paper since I have to pick and chose what moves I want to talk about. I can’t just go on and on I have to chose what I think are the most important. I learned from doing this WP that there is a lot of work that goes into writing different pieces that we read. My video game review article took me about 8 hours to do and I was able to read it in 5 minutes. Something that is quick to read surprisingly took very long to write. I learned that almost everything we read has a long process behind it. Writing for that long was also a struggle. Trying to stay focused on writing the same thing for hours on end just takes a toll. Especially, when there are so many things that can easily distract me. But I was able to pull through and I’m proud of the two article I produced even though my time was murdered

PB3A

So for my WP3 I’m planning to use video games my topic. The academic article I am planning to use as the basis for my two transformed genres is, Action video gaming and cognitive control: playing first person shooter games is associated with improvement in working memory but not action inhibition. For my genre transformation for the younger audience I plan on doing a video game article. This would be an article you would see in a magazine like Gameinformer or a website like IGN. For my older audience I intend to do a Reddit post of the pro and cons of video games.

            In my video game article, I intend for it to be like a descriptive review of the games content. For example, the graphics, gameplay mechanics, multiplayer and campaign mode. The tie-in with the the scholarly article I am intending to use are the video games mentioned in the article as well as the idea that playing FPS games helps working memory. For example, “Your parents may tell you that your killing your brain playing this but really your improving your memory because how else will you remember how to destroy noobs.” It won’t be extremely long because most video game articles are usually around four to six pages long. Sometimes they are longer but that will take a greater amount of time. I’ll also most likely include humor within it as well since most video game articles use humor as a way to keep readers interested. I also plan to include pictures throughout my piece. Since this is towards a younger audience they need things to keep their attention since it is easily lost. Me including pictures would keep their attention and also it would give them an actual picture of what I’m writing about.

            For the older audience, I am still deciding between either doing a Reddit post or a newspaper article. Both will allow me to write about the pros and cons of video games when it comes to children. I will make it how they affect children since it will act like a hook since most kids play video games these days and parents want to know how it affects them. It will probably three pros and 3 cons of the biggest effects. This keeps the piece short and sweet but also informative. The tie-in with the scholarly article I am planning to use is that one of the pro’s of FPS video games is that it improves working memory and doesn’t inhibit other actions. Working memory is an important process for reasoning, comprehension, learning, and memory updating. Once parents hear that playing FPS video games may help improve their child’s learning they’ll be surprised but possibly more lenient with their children. I will probably include a few graphics just so parent’s can have a visual representation of what I am saying as well as giving support to what I am saying. This also reduces the amount of reading a reader would have to do so they would be more likely to read the entire piece of just a small part of it.

            So that’s currently my plan for WP3. Hopefully it goes well because it is going to take some time. It would seem easy but most of the stuff we read in magazines and others sources are written by professional writers and they take a long time writing even if it is a small piece.