2/28/18

Today in class we started working on our research papers. In the beginning of class, each student wrote a thesis on their topic and then towards the end f the paper, changed the thesis statement to be more complex. During class, we work on our research paper outline. The speech is supposed to be broken up into four claims. So, there are four different charts to fill out to prewrite the paper. Each example has a claim, two pieces of evidence that include two sentences of an analysis. Each claim is to be connected to the thesis. There needs to be one claim that can refute a counterclaim. The evidence is a quote from an outside source or the documentary that each student watched a few weeks ago. The analysis is to connect the different pieces of evidence back to the claim. The research paper is to be in a proper MLA format with the proper MLA work cited. The chart to follow for the outline is:

NOTES:

CLAIM #: (STRONG sentence with a STRONG verb, clear connection to thesis)
Evidence A: (quoted text or visual evidence from film WITH IN-TEXT CITATION)	Evidence B: (quoted text or visual evidence from film WITH IN-TEXT CITATION)
Analysis A: (1-2 sentences that EXPLICITLY connect evidence to claim)	Analysis B: (1-2 sentences that EXPLICITLY connect evidence to claim)

This helps students prewrite their research papers. Also, changing their different thesis statements can create a stringer, more complex thesis statement for their paper.

2/27/18

Today was the second day in class where we went over the Reverse SOAPSTone as a class. Each student had to pick a person or thing as the speaker and the pick another person or thing that they are speaking to, with their purpose. Each student had to use four different literary devices to include in these speeches. There are four different rows with literary devices included on Mr. Rivers' slideshow. Each student had to pick one literary device from each of the four columns, leaving them with four different literary devices.

I chose the left side of the brain critiquing the right side of the brain. My speech was : Oh right side of the brain, I am so much better than you are. I’m better than you in school which is all that really matters. It’s all about logic, learning, and literacy. You can only draw pretty pictures and that’s all. Very rarely will imagination and creativity get you somewhere in life. I help people get through school, to get to college, and to start a career. I help people live their life better than you can.  To succeed you need logic, to learn you need logic, and to get through the rest of your life you need logic. People rely on me more and I never fail them.
I included alliteration, anaphora, personification, and anadiplosis.

This can help writers include different devices in any kind of speech. Also, it creates new ideas of different writing styles. Lastly, this helps students find different literary devices that are in different types of writings.

Discussion on Uses of Rhetoric in Student Made Speeches

So Today in class we had a discussion about the speeches that we all made about whatever topic we decided. So I apologize in advance for the lack of factual evidence due to my scarce note taking. Like I said, today was all about discussion and talking with group mates. We read through a couple of the students speeches and broke into our groups to discuss what rhetoric could be found in each of the speeches. And to go off on a tangent, all of these speeches were quite interesting. We read Ian's British Speech, Arianna's speech about babies at nap time, and Finns speech about a schizophrenic trying to reassure himself. All were piled with rhetoric that we were able to discuss, and in the entire period we only go through three. That shows how much we actually picked apart their writing. And by taking the time to do this, Mr. Rivers and Ms. Carroll are actually helping us become better writers. By learning by example we can see where some succeeded and where somethings failed, but can learn how to fix those failures and mimic those successes.
This whole experience from writing the speech to reading the speech and analyzing the speech all help us so much in the long run. By practicing this it will help us become better overall arguers because if we can argue about the most random thing we could think of, we could argue almost anything. This also helps our presentation skills because we had to read our speech to the class. And as always, helps increase our knowledge in rhetoric. These things combined will help us in the real world immensely. From convincing bosses to disputes with friends, mastering rhetoric will put us ahead. And even getting a basic rundown of what ahead, by learning it now, it helps us later down the line when this is just expected to be known.

literary devices speech

In English class today we went over speeches that students had written. The speeches had to have a speaker, audience and purpose and it could be absolutely anything; and they had to include at least 4 literary devices that help improve the purpose of the speech. I personally chose to argue about the dress code. My speaker was myself, my audience was members of Sparta high school and the purpose of this speech was to convince that the dress code is very illogical. The literary devices I used was euphony, anaphora, and personification. Euphony is where words have a positive connotation and make something sound nicer. Anaphora is the repetition of a phrase in the beginning of a sentence and shows the importance of what is about to be said. Personification is when you compare a non-living thing with human characteristics and makes something seem more comfortable and familiar.
The first speech we read was Ian's speech which consisted of many different literary devices including Anaphora, metaphor, cacophony, and euphony which all evolved his argument and made it more credible. His speaker was World War 2 British soldier in truck, the audience was World War 2 British regulars in trucks, and his purpose was win the war by teatime. Another example of a speech that the class read and we went over it together was by Anna. The literary devices she used was anidiplosis, euphony, apostrophe, and simile. She was speaking as a 4 year old talking to other 4 year olds trying to convince them that nap time is bad and should be banned.
This teaches us how to persuade people towards our side of the argument. Literary devices make things sound really nice or really bad and it convinces someone to at least listen to the argument. We are being taught how to persuade people in speeches or just in our research paper how to argue with a topic and seem like a credible trustworthy source.

Feb. 22, 2018

In class today we analyzed the literary/rhetorical devices used in Landrieu's speech. We did this to understand why he used these devices and how they impacted the speech as a whole.

Anaphora

"After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration;
after public hearings and approvals from three separate community boards and commissions;
after two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by our duly-elected City Council; after review by 13
different federal and state judges: The full weight of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of
government has been brought to bear and that is why these monuments are coming down in accordance
with the law and will be removed." The constant use of the word 'after' at the beginning of consecutive sentences creates the feeling of restlessness and also demonstrates to the people that this has all been a long time coming.

Metaphor

Metaphor: "You see, New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of
many cultures."

This metaphor furthers his argument because it shows how diverse the city really is and it makes his
argument stronger to get rid of the monuments.

Cacophony

"New Orleans was one of America’s largest slave markets, a port where hundreds of thousands of souls
were bought, sold, and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor, of misery, of rape, and
of torture." This use of cacophony emphasizes the horrible injustice done to so many and invokes the
question; why would we commemorate this with a monument?

Personification

"The soul of our beloved city is rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years;
rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way through good and through
the bad."

- personification. the city cant actually have a soul. he uses this to show how New Orleans should be a
wonder, but the memories and constant reminder of these statues haunts the people of New Orleans of their
past.

Antithesis

"A piece of stone -- one stone. Both stories, history. One story told, one story forgotten -- or maybe even
purposefully ignored."

The way that antithesis adds to the speech is that it emphasizes how we are looking at this issue from the
white man's perspective but there isn't much being said for the colored man's perspective. This draws in
the topic of race and that then adds empathy to this speech.

How this connects to the world at large:

Today's lesson teaches us that word choice and how we choose to arrange those words truly do say a lot about the writer/speaker. It could either add credibility or discredit a person. For example, had Landrieu not added all these different literary/rhetorical devices to his speech, we probably would have zoned out or maybe even the message within would have been lost due to the lack of credibility behind it. Using these devices add a lot not just to school papers or speeches, but they add to the toolbox of things you could use to construct a valid argument and do it effectively.

rhetorical devices in the New Orleans speech

Today in class we went over more rhetorical devices that evolve the argument in the New Orleans statue speech. In the beginning of class Mr. Rivers pulled up all the literary devices we are using and asked us out of 7 different ones which one is more important in the speech, find a quote and explain why. My Group said Anaphora was a very important rhetorical device used in the speech, our example was, "After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration; after public hearings and approvals from three separate community boards and commissions; after two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by our duly-elected City Council; after review by 13 different federal and state judges" (Landrieu) . Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase. This quote and type of device helps support the argument and persuade people because it emphasizes the fact that "after" decades of all these negatively con notated things and through all this hard work the statues are finally coming down. Other groups continued to say which rhetorical device they thought was one most important and the ones that were said are, metaphor, personification, antithesis, and cacophony. An example for metaphor would be "You see, New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures" (Landrieu). This metaphor furthers the argument because it helps people see how much culture is in New Orleans and how it is accepting of everyone. Towards the end of the class Mr. Rivers gave us an assignment to make up an argument ourselves using any speaker, audience, and purpose.  
Rhetorical Devices can tremendously help an argument and help persuade people over to your side by using word play. They can be used to make an emotional connection, to keep the reader entertained or to make the reader focus on a specific/important point. 

Rhetorical Devices in Action Movies

Today in class we went over some rhetorical devices and literary devices found in action movies. Mr.Rivers started off by talking about Black panther and how almost all action movies have a grand speech. So he showed us a scene from the action movie Independence day; it was the president of the United States giving a speech to the army and maybe civilians how they need to fight together against the aliens or else if they separate the aliens will kill human kind. We were then told to go off in our groups and find any rhetorical devices in the speech. One group found an antithesis which is a sentence with two opposite idea; united we stand, but separate we will fall. To make it a more precise idea of the speech the class revised it to, united, mankind will live, but separate, our world will be destroyed by extraterrestrials. After this Mr. Rivers asked us to find literary devices in the New Orleans speech and explain why it improved the argument of the speech. My example was an anaphora which is when the same phrase is repeated in the beginning of consecutive sentences.  “This is not about politics. It's not about blame. It's not about retaliation. This is not about a naïve quest to solve all of our problems at once.” This rhetorical device helps further the speech's argument because he is establishing that this is not a biased argument and it is just facts that it's wrong to to still have those statues up. Knowing how to use rhetorical devices helps further an argument and make it was more specific. It shows that you can be a trusted source of information and persuade people to be on the same side as you. These rhetorical devices are used all the time in action movies to make people have more of an emotional connection and root for the person giving the speech and using these rhetorical devices. 

Analyzing the Arguments of Speakers Through Rhetoric

           So today in class we dove further into our analysis of rhetoric. We first began by watching a speech made in a movie called Independence Day. Personally, I have never seen it, but Finn would not stop talking about it. After the speech was seen we broke into our groups to discuss the argument that the speaker was attempting to convey. We came up with the argument; United we stand, but separated we will fall. Now this was a sufficient argument but we decided to add specificity by looking at the speakers rhetoric and discuses as a class how to add more details to this argument. The final argument that was made was; United, man kind will live, but separated our world will be destroyed by the extra terrestrials. After finishing everything we had to on the analyze the rhetoric of the speech we listened to on Friday about the removal of the confederate statues in New Orleans given by the mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu. We did not get to his argument, but we did analyze the rhetoric which brings me to the homework. In your group, you needed three pieces of rhetoric found in the speech, tell what the rhetoric was and write a sentence describing why this piece of rhetoric strengthens the speakers speech.
           What we are learning right now in class has an immense correlation to everyday life skills. Primarily we can use this skill on picking up rhetoric to better break down someones argument to help keep us from getting so influenced so easily. From seeing a commercials bs to watching a politician on TV, with rhetoric it help keep us from becoming of enthralled with someone else's argument. It can help us become more independent thinkers instead of just absorbing everything that is seen on TV and will prevent the vapid consumerism that plagues this country. But learning this rhetoric will make our arguments stronger, and also provide a source for people to breakdown and analyze other peoples arguments.

Literary and Rhetorical 2/15/18

The objectives of today's class were "To identify literary/rhetorical devices" And then to "Evaluate the impact of rhetorical devices in an argumentative speech." After we were done going over the objectives Mr. Rivers then told us to wish our group members a good morning and to talk about the differences between literature which is a noun and the adjective literacy. He told us to compare that to Rhetoric which is also a noun that comes from Rhetorical which is an adjective. When we were done discussing the difference, he then told us to write down the actual definitions. Literature is narrative writing that is intending to tell a story. An example of that would be the Great Gatsby written by F.Scott. Fitzgerald. And a rhetoric is used more for argumentative writing. The definition is intending to persuade someone to something. And an example of that would be Michael Moore's documentary which argues that gun laws are too lose. After that he then had us figure out whether a metaphor would go into a piece of literature or an argumentative piece. Some argued that it was just literature because you can be comparing the characters, the setting, and the themes. Where as to an argumentative piece you can have a negative connotation or could be comparing two different argumentative pieces. If you really think about it, a metaphor can be used in both of these types of writing to either further your story or to prove a point. After we were done with that, we went back to the beginning of the year and talked about literary devices. As a group we talked about what one we knew and then as a class we went over all of them. We didn't get to talk about whether they can be used to further our argumentative essays but we will eventually get to that. After that we went on to listen to a speech that we will later examine the argument and what literary devices support it. We didn't have time to finish the speech in class today so we will be doing that tomorrow.

Overall, I think it would be very useful to know what literary devices help prove a point and what ones can further a story. You can be able to use this in college when you are doing hundreds of research papers and essays. It will be useful in the long run to know that literary devices can be used in both argumentative and narrative writings. Knowing how to write Narrative and argumentative essays can help you in college and knowing literary devices can help you make your writing stronger. 

Research Synthesis 2/14/18

Today in class, Mr. Rivers went over the MLA format again just to refresh our minds. We also had a delay opening so we didn't really talk as much, he just let us work on our synthesis. After that  he told us to make sure everything is double spaced, times new roman, and point 12 font. He also included that we need to have a title, and our last name at the top of the page with the page number. The MLA format is name, teachers name, English 11, the date (14 February 2018). After he was done explaining how to do the format we continued to work on our research synthesis, he also reminded us that it was due tonight at 11:59.
Since it was a delay opening we didn't have much time to work but I was able to get all of my citations correct and everything nice and neat. He also reminded us that the instruction sheet was to be copied and pasted in our notes and then deleted from your essay. After that, everyone sat quietly and worked really hard on their synthesis. For my synthesis I am doing it on the documentary Newtown which was about the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. This documentary was very hard to watch and I really recommend it. The documentary includes families that lost their kids in this tragic event and they talk about how hard it is to realize that they are really gone. One family in particular that I am using for my argumentative essay is the mother of Dylan. The mother talks about Dylan in a way that is just so heartbreaking, she talks about how her older son Jake was in 3rd grade at the time and how it affected him just as much as any adult. One quote that really stuck out to me was when she was saying that she has these memories, she has picture, teeth and hair. But its like he never exist. This was really hard to hear because at that time they were showing old pictures of him and as you watch more you can see the psychological impact it had on every family.
This film was really interesting to watch and watch how the families cope with the tragedy. I really think that this film is very useful in the future because people should be aware that gun violence has been taken to a whole other level and I think that if you watch this it will really open your eyes to how bad it really is. I believe that school shootings have become more common and I think believe should start paying attention to people in their communities whether they have been bullied or have a psychological problem. This film really did open my eyes, and it shows that shootings can happen at anytime anywhere and that's the scary part about it. You don't know what someone is thinking, and to be in any kind of situation like Newtown, Columbine, or even Las Vegas is really scary.

Research Synthesis 2/13/18

Today in the beginning of class, Mr.Rivers told us to take out our notebooks or computers to start taking notes. We took notes on introductions and conclusions, he told us before we started the synthesis that we should bring with the body paragraphs so that the introductions and conclusions will be easier. For the  introductions he told us that it is important to introduce necessary nouns, which would be relevant people, relevant places, and lastly relevant things. With these three things in the introduction will give the reader a brief history and background information. To make it easier for you to understand, he broke down all of the relevant things to something simpler. For example, for relevant people you would want to research the directors, or authors to make your claim stronger. For relevant places he told us that the topic would be important to include the location and how it connects to the American life. And lastly for relevant things he said to give the ideas of the events, the terms so that the reader will be able to know what they are getting into. Also an important way to start the introduction is to have these three important things which are Artist+text+active verbs. So with that being said he gave us a useful example, "Michael Moore's, Bowling for Columbine questions the National Rifle Association's role in American fun deaths." With this being the first sentence of the introduction it is allowing the reader to know the most important things, Who, What, and where. However, you are more than welcome to include how and why. In this example, the things he includes are who what and where. (see highlighted words) Just so you know, the "American" was highlighted because it has to relate back to the American life.

After we are done going over the introduction, we then went over the conclusion and how to start it. The whole idea of the conclusion is to wrap it all up back to the main claim. You can either go about making your conclusion 50/50 meaning that you first talk about what does it proves that your analysis? And then you start to think about how does your text evolved the intro. And then you would need to look at "the Forward" and why it is important to make you argument. what is the result of your research? and it also gives you a way to start to introduce the argument you believe in.

Overall, today's class was very beneficial because it gave everyone a reason to have very good intros and conclusions. Also he said that using a random quote, or a board statement, etc are considered too simple and not really a good introduction. But anyways, you will be able to use this in your later life, when in college because you are going to need to write papers and to know the proper way to start it and end it will be helpful in the long run.

2/12/18

Today class was introduced with an essay sample from a senior's paper.  We had to go over it in our group and figure out whether the essay is descriptive or argumentative.  Also how well the student established clear/specific topic sentence, integrate evidence, and analyze evidence.  Along with what advice what advice would we would give to this student for his next draft.

After reading the draft we realized that the draft was descriptive because there is no opinion from the writer, along with using words like "described".  The topic sentence was strong as it introduced credible people, and breaks down the topic into a smaller topic.  We also found that there is a lot of scholarly evidence in the beginning with an immediate analysis.  However towards the end of the second paragraph there is a lot of evidence with lack of analyses.

We then for the rest of class moved on to work on our own essays, and they are going to be due Tuesday night.  My paper is on the documentary Blackfish which is about killer whales at Sea World.  So I have been doing research about animals in captivity, reasons whales shouldn't be kept captive, and even about Zoos not just Aquariums.  We will also have class tomorrow to continue working on this. 

Research Synthesis Work 2/9/17

Today was another day of working on our research synthesis essay for our documentary that we watched last week. This synthesis is the first draft for our finalized essay we are supposed to have finished by the start of march. You have to connect your documentary's claim with the claim of two other sources one good source that's reliable and one bad source that you just found off of google. We only have till Tuesday to keep working on this and we have been working since about last Friday. The importance of writing a synthesis in the first place is to identify your author/directors various claims and to connect them to other sources themes and claims to see what they have in common thus creating a synthesis. To give you a general idea of how it works my documentary focuses on the the topic of Human Morality and how it isn't always so black and white how it can be clouded as to what seems right and wrong. Now I would have to connect this to my two other documents, one of my documents talks about moral dilemmas similar into my documentary and asks the question would you kill a baby to save the lives if about twenty other people or not. So because they both pertain to moral dilemmas that go against natural human morale, they share something in common. I just have to write a bit more till I reach the word count then integrate mt other source into it then I'll be done. This is only just the start the, the next draft for this is coming up soon. But that's about it, well be working one Monday and Tuesday and finish on Tuesday, then well move into our outlines for the next rough draft afterward.

2/8/18

Today in class we spent the period working on our research synthesis. We used EBSCO and Gale to better search for accurate sources to use in our writing. We typed or wrote down evidence from articles and online books we found through these sources and started organizing our information in preparation to write the synthesis. What the research synthesis is, is a 750-1000 word descriptive essay giving information for both sides of the argument. The essay must be done in MLA format with evidence and quotes neatly integrated. The conclusion should be somewhat of an intro to your essay, although it is NOT the actual research essay. This assignment will be due next Tuesday.

Writing essays such as this one are important for our future because as we begin to search for colleges, we may be asked to write research essays such as this one. Even as we attend college, essays in this format (MLA/research) will be important in our classes. The skills of writing an essay in MLA format and writing a research essay are vital for our futures as successful young adults.

2/2/18

Today in class it was a half day we focused our attention on the classroom page.  Starting independently looking at a counterclaim, what it is, and how it is refuted.  This counterclaim paragraph was a students in our class that Mr. Rivers selected.  We then came together as a class to pick the paragraph apart and look at the good writing choices along with how the writer pieced together all of the claims with the evidence and the analyses. The counter claim in this paragraph was that American weapons are used to conserve peace.  The writer then refuted this by saying weapons can be seen throughout history as weapons to inspire terror among foreign lands. After stating this the writer used words such as naive to refute the counterclaim along with using a credible outside source, and specific on screen evidence from the documentary.  The analysis is brilliantly put together because it connects the evidence to the claim by relieving the hypocrisy, and talking about the organization connects back to who is being brought up in the claim. The citation is correct and incorporated in the text, because of all of this the paragraph comes off to be very reliable.  In doing this it helped the class to see a what good writing is and to be able to learn from it.  It also showed us how to really pick apart and soak up all of the information in a paragraph. In the final five minutes of class we were asked to revisit our own paragraphs and edit them by taking advice from this example to make our paragraph better, and it should be revised by Monday.

2/1/18

Today, we discussed Citation formats. At the beginning of the class, we talked about MLA citation, which is used for English writing, and how to cite sources outside of our documentary. The chart Mr. Rivers showed us was

We talked about how to build it into our essay, such as putting the author while citing in text, like this “Blah Blah Blah, Blah”(Author).

The examples given on how to cite a film with a director were

Film Title. Director Firstname Lastname. Container, Distributor, Year of Release

Director Firstname Lastname. Film Title. Container, Distributor, Year of Release

The points we made were that they were virtually the same except for some changes in order. By modifying the placement of the name, you can change the importance of certain facts in the citation. This is how we cited Bowling for Columbine.

Bowling for Columbine. Director Michael Moore. Amazon, Dog Eat Dog Film, 2002.

We also discussed the integrated claims we did at the end of class yesterday, and we had to support or refute a claim from a person in the film using argumentative language.

My Claim and refuted statement.

James Nichols- Every person should be armed, because the government should have no control over what we want in life.

In the film Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore, one person he talks to is the brother of the Oklahoma City Bomber, James Nichols. While having firearms is not a bad thing, James Nichols’ point is incorrect.

This can be included in real life, because proper citation of sources in real life prevents plagiarism, which gives proper credit to the author. By learning proper citations, we can do better when we go off to college, allowing us to get better grades when we have to write essays. This allows us to excel in our learning.