methodology in writing

Writing an essay is no simple task. You absolutely have to use a process when you are writing an essay. Unless you want your work to be completely useless, use a process. It’s more than the drafting, brainstorming and editing. You want your essay to be effective or persuasive. Whether it is arguing for or against something, moving the reader by simply telling a story, comparing or contrasting a thought or idea or to break down and elaborate on something important you, you want to get your message across.  Using tools in writing to make your essay effective and persuasive is called using rhetoric. 

Depending on the type of essay you are writing there are tons of different rules in rhetoric you can use to get your message across. When writing a narrative, you want to use story grammars. Story grammars are explicit, vivid details that provide a framework and structure to make the story make sense.  Cause and effect is an important aspect of rhetoric that provides depth and flow in an essay. Comparing and contrasting in rhetoric allows the reader depth as well as gaps so they can better relate to the essay. Lastly, classifying and defining in writing is a very effective tool you can use when you need to reach an audience. Classifying is taking a topic or idea and breaking it down into subtopics. Defining is taking those subtopics and elaborating and defining them. Using rhetoric in writing is essential to reaching an audience.

classification and definition

Classification and definition in writing is yet another way to reach your reader. I know, I'm sick of them too. When using classification and definition to reach your audience, you are simply breaking down each aspect of your text and elaborating on them. By doing this you are making it a lot easier for your readers to get into your mind and see and understand the ideas you are talking about.

For example, let's say you're writing an essay on a newspaper article. After analyzing and thinking critically about the article, you need to break down each subtopic of the article and with each of those subtopics, defining them and elaborating on them. By doing this, you will reach your audience with great depth. 

definitions

Using definitions when reaching your audience is extremely important. Especially when you are writing about a news article, current event, etc. If you don't define, or break down to every little detail, the audience isn't going to understand and your writing is also left up to interpretation. When defining, you want to be perfectly clear so that your audience has no question as to what you are talking about or explaining. 

In the article I chose, democratic senator Tom Harkin, is proposing a bill that would in a few ways 'overhaul' the No Child Left Behind law. President Obama recently stated that he was to use executive power to override and to attempt to fix the law because he had no hope in congress to alleviate the problem. The Harkin bill is looking to give power back to the states to run their own education system. The main problem and criticism of the bill is that is would scrap the central accountability system proposed in No Child Left Behind. In doing so, schools would have no access to federal funding unless they were to show a certain percentage of achievement each year. 9 out of 10 schools have been driven in classroom teaching for the past decade. Many think that the Harkin bill would be a major step backward.

rhetoric and the writing process

Rhetoric is defined as the art of effective or persuasive writing or speaking. Visual rhetoric is all around us and we see it multiple times a day in all sorts of uses. It's used in advertisement's for many, if not all, promotions. Visual rhetoric is used in politics, consumer advertising and company promotions. More recently and importantly, rhetoric has begun to appear in writing. Now days, it's a very important and vital aspect in writing and it is found everywhere. 

There are a few different ways to use visual rhetoric in writing. Compare and contrast is one of the most effective. Describing similarities and differences in narratives adds great vision and depth to any writing. Another is cause and effect. This adds also adds a lot of depth as well as a nice flow. One use of rhetoric we've all seen without even knowing are called content and textual signatures. In any image or persuasive essay, there is an underlying structure and reoccurring trend that reveals a common undercover idea or thought. Okay, I've only got two more. I promise. Master narratives are common stories that are common to a country, religion, region or group of people. The last one I got is a persuasive theme. Those use persuasive appeals to people or groups to persuade to an idea. Okay, I'm done.

compare and contrast

Comparing and contrasting is an effective way to create vision and add strength to any text or writing. Comparing is looking at the similarities between two or more things whereas contrasting is looking at the differences. When you are writing a descriptive essay, it is common to need to compare and contrast. If you didn't, there wouldn't be any differential between points or items you need to point out or describe. 

There are two different ways to effectively compare and contrast. The first is the side by side, and the second is subject to subject. Side by side takes each concept and compares them point by point. Subject to subject takes the concept as a whole and compares off of that. For example, let's say we're comparing two images. The side by side techniques takes each aspect of the image and compares them side by side; comparing the setting, then comparing the timing, people in the image, etc. Subject to subject says this is an image of a flower in the summer, and this is an image of a leave in the fall, comparing the image as a whole. Both are equally effective and are very successful in comparing and contrasting in any text.  

cause and effect

cause and effect are huge in narrative writing. They benefit the reader so much by being able to understand why events happen, why certain things follow certain events and how events tie together. They engage the reader as well because they in ways define how things happen and create a chain reaction. This provides clarity and understanding to the audience.

cause and effect are great tools for writers to look for in text. When analyzing a cause and effect paper you have to be actively reading and soaking up your text. you have to look for causes of effects and how they tie together. Writer's should always be asking questions about the text they are reading like why it happened, how it happened, what let up to it, etc. 

assignment 2

Narrative Structure

When writing a narrative, you can't just throw a bunch of details together and hope that the reader will understand. Narrative's have to have structure. Narrative's are telling a story so they have to be engaging and make sense to the reader. When telling a story, it's not just about telling point A, then point B. It's a story, sometimes our own and it needs life, and emotion. Otherwise it would be like hearing a story from Mr. Rogers over and over and over again. Boring, dull and lifeless. 

Underneath all the great detail, you will see a structure. A framework or blueprint if you will. Most narrative's follow the framework of starting with the setup or background for the story, next the conflict which is why the story is important and makes up the bulk of the story and then the resolution which is the finishing and concluding of the conflict. Then, underneath it all, Narrative's are written in chronological order. On top of this, many narrative's will have a flashback or a flash-forward to show significance to a detail or to an insight.

assignment 1

yay! first post on a blog ever! woop!

anyways, onto the assignment.

Narratives

A narrative after all is telling a story. What does a story need to be engaging to your audience? What does a story need to be fluent and make sense? When writing a narrative you can use what are called story grammar's. Story grammar's are an attempt to set up rules that provide a framework and structure for any story. They make any story easily comprehensible to any desired audience. Story grammar's identify basics in any story and tie those basics together to create a great story. To use story grammar's you must identify the topics of the story that are most important and use them in the body of a paragraph followed by a transition into the next topic(s) in the next paragraph. Of course, after identifying those topics, details need to be added to paint the picture in the reader's mind. The following paragraph is an example of story grammar's at work. It is out of a paper for my english class that is entitled "Four Defining Moments."

The first moment that came to mind is not only memorable but totally defines a piece of the puzzle that is Sarah Hatch. One day, a week into Kindergarten I was admiring a girl’s outfit in my class. Chloe always wore the latest styles for kids our age and she owned it.  I remembered wishing I looked like that. By no means did I look straight off of the street or like I crawled out of a garbage can, but I didn’t look stylish. My mom dressed me and she loved to see me in ethereal florals, pretty pastels and whimsical lines which are really what girls my age should be wearing.  I couldn’t take it anymore. After school that day, I marched right up to my mother and said, “I wanna dress cool. I don’t think you should dress me anymore.” And we marched straight off to the mall. From that moment on, I have been fashion-obsessed and best dressed all by my own accord. Kindergarten? 5 years-old? Was I really already that outspoken? Later, that quickly found talent would get me into trouble.