PB3A

Abortion is a very heavy topic than can affect many people’s lives.  Although it is a big topic of debate, it is very relevant in today’s society.  When studying the scholarly article, “ Are all Abortions equal? Should there be Exceptions to the Criminalization of abortion for Rape and Incest?” I noticed certain moves the author used in order to affect his audience, who is most likely well educated.  When analyzing the scholarly article to find out what makes it appealing to a highly educated audience, I contemplated how it could be changed to reach out to younger, and older audiences. 

            The scholarly article, “ Are all Abortions equal? Should there be Exceptions to the Criminalization of abortion for Rape and Incest?” uses very high-level language that can sometimes be hard to understand.  For example the author writes, “I will be unable to fully consider the tort analogy in this constrained space but instead offer a few points why I disagree: first, many of the reasons why tort law may want to limit emotional distress injuries strike me as less applicable here.” This statement has a big vocabulary and would probably not do too well if trying to reach a young audience.  There are several ways in which this article could be changed to meet a younger audience.  First of all, to reach an audience of young adults, the author should use information that is relevant to them.  Adding in some statistics such as, the number of teens getting abortions, or sexual assault rates in high schools might intrigue the reader because of the relevance to their own life.  Lowering the vocabulary to a level they understand would also help them be more interested.  One more way to make this article more appealing to a younger audience would be to make it shorter.  The article now is sixteen pages with two full columns on each page, not including the references.  Even if the article was easier to understand, I don’t believe a young teenager would be willing to continue reading that long of an article. 

            Considering how this scholarly article can be changed to fit a younger audience, we must now consider how it can reach an older audience.  Depending on whether the older audience is well educated or not would determine the high-vocabulary level.  One way I believe changing this article to reach an elderly audience would be to once again state how it is relevant to them.  They may believe this topic is no longer than large of an issue to them, but giving some statistics of how much rape/assault happens in each state, or several cities could be a wake up call to how much these things are happening every day.  With data like that, the older audience is certain to be more intrigued and willing to educate themselves in order to help stop it.  One more way this article could be changed in order to appeal to an older audience would be to list the risks of this problem in the future, if it doesn’t stop.  This information would most likely appeal to older people because they have more capability of taking action, or donating money more than a younger or teen audience.  

Painting Trees

All of the artists made the decision to teach their audiences how to paint certain things by ding it themselves.  However, they each used different tactics to do so.  In the first video the man threatened the audience.  In the second and third video both men were helpful and kind toward their audiences.  The artists described their moves very specifically by using descriptive words for exactly what they are doing with their paintbrush, and also exactly what type of motion to do in order to create the image they are portraying.  All of their styles I would call detailed and meticulous.  

1) I think I did a better job on writing paper two than writing paper one because I had a better idea of how to use evidence and how to outline my essay.  When I first started writing, it look me a long time to organize my ideas because the prompt was so open ended I didn’t know what specifically to write about, or make my argument about.  It took a little bit of time to figure it out, but I think I improved from WP1 because I learned how to organize my essay better by looking back at the highlighting activity. 

2) I liked yesterdays digital peer/reader review better than the hard copy one because I could more efficiently type my responses and be able to finish all my comments.  It was also easier to be able to click on a specific part of an essay and leave my comment.  Also, when correcting my final draft I could easily pull up the google doc of my essay and make corrections right where people wrote comments by, rather than trying to read of a piece of paper someones bad writing.

3) One helpful comment I received was just a few sentences pointed out that didn’t really make sense that I hadn’t realized before.  When I went back and read them out loud I realized they needed to be changed.  Its nice to be able to have a fresh set of eyes look at my paper to point out things I wouldn’t notice.  I also got a comment about making sure to explain the “so what” more which was very helpful to know tat I should explain that more.  

Writer’s “moves” are used differently for every writer, but all for the same purpose.  The purpose of a move is to use your own decisions of writing to persuade the audience.  In the article “So What? Who Cares?” Birkenstein and Graff explain the importance of arguments using their own moves.  Similarly, in the article “Finding Evidence,” Lunsford describes how to find and use evidence effectively in one’s essay and why it is important.  Both writers use their own moves to attempt to get their opinions across.  Examining both articles, I believe Lunsford does a more professional and better job at picking effective moves because of his persuasive and applicable examples, serious tone, and useful guidelines. . 

            Birkenstein and Graff begin “So What? Who Cares?” with a casual and friendly tone that seems to be inviting.  This tone and style is continuous throughout the essay as they go on into using certain moves.  One move I discovered they used was using one specific, big example to help them uncover their argument.  They referenced Denise Grady’s article in the New York Times.  They did a good job at explaining the moves and arguments Grady used, but the only problem is they only used Grady’s article.  I believe Birkenstein and Graff would have been more effective if they had used more than this one source.  Another move I recognized was the addition of several questions asked at the end of paragraphs.   This was used quite a few times, reason being to get the reader thinking about what they are reading and maybe apply it their lives for a moment.  This was an effective move in order to get the audience thinking, but was a little bit over used.  An interesting move used by the authors was a lot of italicized words to emphasize the importance of the word or sentence.  This was used quite a bit throughout the article. Something I thought was interesting was the thesis statement was in the second paragraph.  I thought the authors did a nice job catching the reader’s attention in the very short first paragraph, and then beginning the real argument in the second. Finally, the last move I noticed was provided templates for establishing claims and a few exercises.  I think this move connects the reader to the article and allows them to test their own abilities and help them put what they read into context.

            In the second article, “Finding Evidence,” by Lunsford, I believe is more effective and used better moves than  “So What? Who Cares?” because it has a more academic tone, and uses better moves and sources. Contrary to the first article’s playful tone, this articles tone and style comes across as more sophisticated and educational.  Its purpose is to help you be more persuasive with the right evidence and facts, and I believe it does a great job explaining how to do that.  In the beginning of the article, many questions are listed that you should ask yourself while writing.  I think this move is more effective than the first articles questions at the end of paragraphs because the reader can continually ask themselves these questions throughout reading the rest of the article.  Another move I noticed was the author used was the use of specific examples of where do get recent, up-to-date evidence to use in one’s paper.  This was a more effective move because it showed exactly what resources are available and how to get them.  A short bold topic sentence was used for the introduction of each topic.  This move was extremely effective because it didn’t ramble on or make anything too complicated.  It consisted of a few key words that made it very clear what the next paragraph was going to be about.  Different than the first article, cartoons and images were used to help the reader better understand and also make the article more interesting.  I thought this was an interesting idea because the article itself was more educational than the first, but also had several cartoons throughout it.  Lastly, at the end of the article was a list of guidelines to help the reader gather their own evidence by surveying.  Overall, I thing “Finding Evidence” used better moves and was more helpful and persuasive because of its applicable examples, educational tone, and useful guidelines. 

            Moves are everywhere.  People use moves everyday, even if they don’t know it.  Moves can be tendencies that writers develop in making their arguments.  When moves are used correctly, they can make a good argument a great one.  

            Many components go into creating a scholarly academic publication.  The same conventions are used in writing this genre to identify a paper as an academic publication.  When comparing  “The Influence of Strength Training on Overhead Throwing Velocity of Elite Water Polo Players,” to the SCIgen generator, I was surprised to see how much the two articles looked alike at first glance.  Although the articles follow the same format, and general layout and the actual descriptions in the papers are different.  One might easily mistake a SCIgen article for an academic article if they don’t logically read through the SCIgen article and question what its really stating. 

            Although the SCigen generator’s article is made up of a lot of nonsense, when you break it down, it does share a few similarities to “The Influence of Strength Training on Overhead Throwing Velocity of Elite Water Polo Players” scholarly article.  Both articles begin with the title and underneath are the authors.  They then both have an abstract showing what is to come in the article.  Continuing on in the articles, both include the conventions of an introduction, charts and images, the body of the article, conclusions, and references.  When flipping through both articles, the SCIgen article follows the conventions of a real scholarly article so well that it is impossible to tell the difference unless you read the SCIgen article, and even then one might still believe its information to be accurate.  The fact is that SCIgen uses the conventions of a scholarly article so closely that when someone is reading this article, even a well-educated person could be deceived. 

            The SCIgen generator is able to create articles looking extremely similar to “The Influence of Strength Training on Overhead Throwing Velocity of Elite Water Polo Players,” although still leaving some crucial differences.  When reading the SCIgen article, very large words are used to create the allusion of a very knowledgeable person writing the article.  When taking a step back, and seeing the article for what it is, it actually does not make very much sense.  All the sentences in SCIgen are coherent and make compete sense, just as they are in the real scholarly article. 

            The SCIgen generated article may appear to be legitimate, but the real article “The Influence of Strength Training on Overhead Throwing Velocity of Elite Water Polo Players,” has a few important aspects that make it more consistent and accredited.  One specific part of the article that allows it to be credible is the experiments explained, and charts laying out all the collected data.  In the SCIgen charts, there is no real explanation that is reasonable to what the chart is explained.  On the contrary, inn the real article, arm velocity was tested by studying body mass, arm girth, body fat, and other variables in order to express the scientific reasoning behind the study.  The article also had an important piece of information that was thouroghly explained which were the administration of the tests they ran and a picture of the testing environment.  This was key to their argument and backed up their facts by explaining the background of the experiment and helping to walk the reader through step by step.  This approach was important because the SCIgen article used large words to make the reader believe it all made sense, instead of making sure the reader does understand and giving evidence to become credible.