Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

4/24/2017

HR: peer review, spell check, works cited

Until coming to VMI I have never been a fan of reading or writing, and in many ways I despised it. I came in as chemistry major and just wanted to get my credits done and get out of there, and never take an English course again. This has all change for me over the year and I have grown to really enjoy writing. I have learned a lot this year, and found ways to improve my writing which makes my writing better and more enjoyable. I have learned to use Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos to connect the reader and really draw them in to the reading. I have also learned the importance exigence, in writing with a specific purpose to a specific audience. And possibly the strategies that have improved my grade the most this semester are the changes I have made in my writing process. I have learned the importance of drafting and peer review in producing a final paper. And I have also changed the way I prepare my final draft to turn in. All of the things that I have learned and the changes I have made this semester have improved my writing tremendously, and have made writing so much more enjoyable for me.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos are a very important aspect of any piece of writing that some people either just skip over or don’t even know they are using it. After we learned about them early on in the semester I was able to recognize them and utilize them in every piece of writing we did for the rest of the semester. The second paper I wrote this semester entitled “Is the reality of waking up and getting ready for school coming to an end?” was riddled with and pathos. A lot of pathos was used when giving the reasons online education should not be denied. I used the effect on family who could not attend school for financial reasons, and the effect on people working with not enough time attend school to effect the readers emotions and feel sympathy for these people (Briggs,2).  The last paper I wrote entitled “Breaking the bank with Higher Education” on the other hand was loaded with logos. I use a lot of data and much statistical information to persuade the reader of my topic. After research I was able to support points such as “According to a news article written in 2015, the U.S. news reports that the average cost of tuition for an in state university has risen two hundred and ninety six percent from the years 1995 to 2015(Mitchell).”(Briggs, 1). This gives the reader hard evidence to persuade them of my topic in order to make a decision on their side of the story. All of these methods have improved my writing tremendously over the past semester. Knowing these methods I can now be much more persuasive and appeal to the reader in many ways.

Another thing we have learned to do is writing with a specific exigence to argue a specific point. In order to write a persuasive topic you need to have a purpose for writing your paper and a specific argument that you are going to persuade the reader of. All of your supporting points should then build off of this argument to develop your argument. If you also know your argument before you begin it will also help you to stay on track and not stray from the thesis. If you also know the audience who you ae writing to it will be tremendously helpful. Writing with a specific exigence is very important to the overall success of your writing. Although I learned about writing with a specific exigence last semester I continue to improve and make my argument stronger. This was very important in my last paper when trying to persuade the reader that schools need to watch their spending in order to improve tuition and allow more students to attend their school (Briggs, 2). This would affect a lot of employees and professors and man many people would not be happy with the idea. So you use these effective ways of persuading them to change their mind.

Possibly the most important changes I have made this year to my writing is the changes in my writing process. The first major change in my writing process is a change in my drafting of my essays. Up until this year I hadn’t seen drafts as very important to my final essay because inevitably they were going to be edited and changed anyway, so I gave half effort in writing them because I know they were going to be changed anyway. Over the course of this year I have learned that the peer reviewing of the drafts can really help outline things that need to be fixed. Just having another set of eyes can be a tremendous help. And as a bonus If you write every draft as a final then when it actually comes time for the final it is not only a much better paper but easier to finish. Drafting is very important to writing a good paper. Another major thing I have changed in my writing process is my method of reviewing my own paper. Before submitting my paper, I now read them aloud to make sure the sentences and structured and the whole piece flows much better. This has improved my writing tremendously over the course of the last semester.  These small changes have led to big differences in my writing.

Who would have known I would enjoy writing as much as I do today. The improvements I have made this semester to my writing have made my writing much better and the writing process much more enjoyable. The things I have learned this semester such as ethos, pathos, logos, Kairos, and exigence have made my writing a lot more persuasive and have helped me to write a much more structured argument. Knowing these strategies we can now writing a persuasive argument on any topic even if it is not one our favorites. The improvements I have made to my writing process are also very important to the development of my writing. Now that I take time to reread my paper aloud and I take drafting very seriously, my papers have improved tremendously. My papers flow a lot smoother and my sentence structure is much better. The things I have learned in ERH 102 and changes I have made to my writing have improved my writing tremendously over the semester and have made writing much more enjoyable.

Word Count: 1,124

Works Cited

1. Briggs, Mason. “Is the reality of waking up and getting ready for school coming to an

end?” VMI. March 4, 2017.

2. Briggs, Mason. “Breaking the Bank with Higher Education” VMI. March 27, 2017.

Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

March 27, 2017

Help received: Purdue Owl, Works Cited, peer review

Could you imagine living in a world where the cost of higher education is higher than it already is? Some families are spending up to seventy thousand dollars or more per year on one child alone. According to a news article written in 2015, the U.S. news reports that the average cost of tuition for an in state university has risen two hundred and ninety six percent from the years 1995 to 2015(Mitchell). The cost has almost tripled in only 20 year; this could mean thousands and thousands of dollars out of some family’s pockets.  According to advisorperspectives.com the median household income is actually one thousand dollars lower in 2017 than in the year 2000(Mislinski). In a previous writing I wrote that “If the cost of tuition has tripled and the average family income has dropped, how are families expected to pay that much, if many could not afford it before the price increased? Some people just do not have that much money in their budget to pay for the school.  This has prevented many people from attending college and in many cases from getting a good job.  A college degree is very important in today’s world to get a good paying job. Many people are also complaining about where all the money is going. They say that the money from tuition and board are going toward programs such as the sports teams and not toward their kids’ education.  The money needs to be going towards the books and classes and not random things (Briggs, Mason, 1).”  We also need to come up with plans to make college more affordable to all families regardless of their background. The governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has proposed a plan in order to make tuition in New York free to families making an annual income of less than $125,000 (Lobosko). These ideas need to be considered when the cost of tuition continues to rise as it is. Colleges and universities are raising the costs of tuition for a variety of reasons which is causing many kids to not enroll in school and this needs to be changed.

One of the reasons for this is the extreme competition between universities. Now day’s schools want to be the most appealing to the upcoming students to get the most people to apply to their school. Schools are literally dumping tons of money in to things like landscape, housing, facilities, and meal plans for students in order to attack as many students as possible. In an article written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important Drivers of College Cost?” many examples are given on where this money is going.   One place a lot of this money is feeding in to heating and air conditioning in dorms. Many rooms did not have heating or cooling until the last few years. A chart on page thirty four of Robert Archibald and David Feldmans article shows the trend in the room prices at private universities. Since 1965 the cost of rent has gone up nearly two hundred and fifty percent. They calculated a six point six four percent increase every year which is very significant when you are talking about tens of thousands of dollars. The cost of meal plans has also gone up close to a hundred dollars (Archibald and Feldman). Schools want to offer high end foods to make the school look more attractive but all that money has to come from somewhere. Schools are trying to offer foods like sushi and steak to attract my applicants. During my interview with High school AP Physics teacher, Jennifer Briggs, I asked where she thought all of the money for tuition was going. She went on to tell me about a tour she took her students on to High Point University to show them what the college experience was like. She told me about the “amazing facilities”, “grass that looked like Disney world”, and “free ice-cream!!” (Briggs, Jennifer). She used the tem free very lightly because then she went on to tell me approximately how much it costs per year to go there. She said for tuition and board it cost somewhere around seventy thousand dollars a year which is absurd (Briggs, Jennifer). These upgrades may seem nice but all that money has to come from somewhere. Students are not even given the option wither they want theses amenities or not, and these can raise the cost in some cases thousands of dollars.

Over the past years college has gotten so expensive that many kids can no longer afford to go there. Many people question whether it is still even worth the cost to go there. In some cases now a days colleges can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a four year education. Many students come out of college with so much debt it takes a good portion of their life to pay it off, if they can even pay it off. In many cases in today’s world in order to get a good paying job you need a masters or a Phd, in order to get the job you want and earn an affordable living. Does the cost even outweigh the benefits of going to college? Because of the huge rise of the cost of higher education, this thought has been brought to the minds of thousands all over the world. College is a crucial point in a person’s life that cannot be passed up. It is often seem to help transition you from childhood to adulthood. Jennifer Briggs said it is an important experience of living on your own and learning how to socially adapt to those around you. It helps you manage your own finances, belongings, and prepares you to live on your own (Briggs, Jennifer). The thought of not attending college because of finances should never happen.

I am currently a student of the Virginia Military Institute paying an annual tuition of fifty two thousand dollars a year. If the tuition is increasing at an exponential rate while the cost of the annual family income has dropped almost one thousand dollars over the last fifteen years, and the average family income in the United States is right at fifty thousand dollars how do they expect some family’s to pay that (Mislinski). Fifty percent of the population makes less than enough to pay for one year of education for one person. And although the Virginia Military Institute is a great school there are even more expensive ones out there.  How can they send their kids to a good school and get an education to get a good job, if they make less in a year than the cost of one year of school. They would have to spend a majority of their life paying off their college education. That is just unfair to the families who do not make enough money to send their kids to school

Another conclusion I would like to bring up is that a ton of this money for tuition is also being brought in to get better teachers. Universities want to get the best professors that they can and this like before leads to more competition, causing an exponential growth in teacher salaries per year. Based on the chart provided By John Thelin, we learn that the annual cost of instructors can be extremely high. At the University of Wisconsin the average annual salaries is the instructing staff is approximately $489,810 dollars and at Columbia University they can even get up to $1,145,000 dollars per year (Thelin, 589). If you think about it, if you have fifty to a hundred professors at a university that is going to be a large sum of money. All of that money has to come from somewhere and that usually means from the students pockets once again. Just because the schools want to be the most appealing it is causing many kids to decide not to go to school, and the students need an education to be successful.

Are schools right in justifying their reasons behind raising the price of tuition for students? Schools need to cut back on their spending on appearance and many more kids would be able go to school. Archibald and Feldman gave many examples of were a lot of the money is going. Schools are putting a lot of money in to things that are making the school look aesthetically pleasing. They are putting large sums of money in to heating and air-conditioning, Landscaping, facilities, and amazing meal plans that will now serve high end food. They are trying to draw the attention of students to get them to apply and come to their school (Archibald and Feldman). A lot of money is also being put in to get the best professors they can which leads to competition. Some universities are even paying up to millions of dollars for their professors. The university of Columbia is paying on average 1.4 million to its professors, and and last time I checked that money doesn’t just appear (Thelin). This may be very good for education but leads to competition among the schools which has been raising the cost of tuition at an exponential rate making it very hard to afford. Higher education is very important for a student to get a good job after graduation, have a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood, and do something that they enjoy doing. Many families cannot afford to send their kids to college now days. Schools need to monitor their spending or come up with alternate plans to allow lower income families to attend their school. Although these things are appealing they are not as important as getting a degree and a good job. And if the colleges are not going to change what they are spending they need to create new opportunities for lower income families to send their kids to school. One option is they could provide opportunities such as the ones provided in New York implemented in the year 2017. New York is offering free tuition to families making less than a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year, thus allowing those families to attend college (Lobosko). Opertunities like this counld help lower income families attend universities that they could not before. Schools tuition has been increasing at an exponential rate and if schools do not rethink their budget and spending students all over the world will soon not be able to attend college. College is a very important part of people lives and development and it should not exclude anyone from attending and getting a degree.

Word Count: 2,015

Works Cited

Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz. “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?.”

Current Issues in Economics & Finance, vol. 20, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96880995&site=ehost-live.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important

Drivers of College Cost?.” Change, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan/Feb2011, pp. 31-37. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1080/00091383.2011.538649.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”

Journal of Higher Education, vol. 79, no. 3, May/Jun2008, pp. 268-295. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31597078&site=ehost-live.

Briggs, Jennifer. Personal Interview. April 10, 2017.

Briggs, Mason. “Proposal: Breaking the Bank with Higher Education” March 4, 2017.

Lobosco, Katie. “ New York Governor proposes free tuition at state colleges.” CNN Money,

January 4, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/pf/college/cuomo-new-york-free

tuition/index.html, Accessed April 12, 2017.

Mislinski, Jill. “January Real Median Household Income: Little change from December at

$58,056.”Advisor Perspectives

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/03/02/january-real-median

household-income-little-change-from-december-at-58-056

Mitchell, Travis. “See 20 Years of Tuition Growth in National Universities” U.S. News

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for

college/articles/2015/07/29/chart-see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities.

Accessed March 4, 2017.

Thelin, John. “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a

Century Ago.”Society, vol. 52, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 585-589. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1007/s12115-015-9953-8.

“Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” ASHE Higher Education Report, vol. 39, no. 2,

May 2013, pp. 71-77. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/aehe.20008.

Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 102

3/19/17

HR; Peer Review

Why is the cost of higher education increasing at an exponential rate while the rate of annual income per house hold is decreasing? The growing expenses of higher education have cause very many problems throughout the United States. Now a days even if you are an instate student, one year of school can cost you tens of thousands of dollars. Many people can just not afford these raising costs. Many students cannot go to college, or have to work for many years before school just to go to college. Where is all this extra money going? Is it even worth spending the money to go to college anymore? These are just a few of the questions raised by thousands of Americans when choosing to go to college. I plan to explore the reasons why college’s tuition fees are increasing so much and whither the benefits outweigh the costs of higher education.

In order to prove the trend in the cost of tuition is increasing, I used an article written by John Thelin entitled “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a Century Ago.” Thelin gives very reliable data describing the change over the last century in the cost of tuition for universities. He displays his data in very detailed and organized graphs, which is very easy to read. Another point Thelin describes is the trend in the average annual salary of professors at the major institutions. This point would be used to answer the question of where the money is going. And lastly Thelin talks about state endowment at these major universities, and how more money is coming in.  This point could be used in favor of the colleges and how they are providing more scholarships to students. This article will be used to support universities are becoming too expensive to attend.

The second article I gathered was written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important Drivers of College Cost?”  I found this source to use more data to detail where a lot of the cost of tuition nowadays is going. This article informs us that a lot of universities put their money into things that make the campus and living more enjoyable and elegant. Archibald gives us strong data on how universities over the past years have added heating and cooling units to almost every building on campus to make it more enjoyable. The article also tells us how the universities are dumping money in to the landscape and the food that they serve to draw more students in to go there. Although all of these things are appealing all of the money has to come from somewhere and unfortunately that is the student’s pockets. This article will be used against the argument that schools are justified in their raising of tuition over the past years.

The third article I discovered written by Jaisin Abel and Richard Diaz, entitled “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?” justifies that colleges can raise their prices for tuition and fees. It describes the benefits of going in to the work force with a college degree how you would benefit from it. It describes how the majority of times you will get jobs that are much higher paying than a job without a college degree. This higher paying job will allow you to pay off the college debt and provide a lot more than not having a degree. Not only will you be able to get a better paying job, you will also be able to get a job that is enjoyable to you. You will have more opportunities to do what you want to do not what you have to do. This article will be used as an argument article, describing why colleges are justified in raising tuition fees.

The fourth article that I will use is entitled “Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” This article describes how many colleges have been cutting their enrollment to students in coming years; this would lead to an increase in the amount they would have to charge each student. If there are fewer students than each student would need to pay more in order to cover the schools fees. I will use this point on the side of the school, saying that the schools need to raise tuition in order to cover expenses.

The last article I used was also written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”. This article was very similar to the other article written by the duo, it describes where all the money is going. It also describes the Bowens revenue theory on how the tuition will continue to rise at a constant rate for many years to come. This would allow us to predict how much universities are going to cost in the near future. I will use this article as information to back up the side of universities nit being justified in raising tuition.

I don’t know about you but gourmet food and heating in my room sounds pretty good, but the expenses of tens of thousands of dollars for these does not make much sense.  After all of my research I do believe colleges need to cut cost in order to make higher education more available to students that cannot afford it, but also colleges are justified in their reasoning behind raising tuition.

Word Count: 1,053

Works cited

Thelin, John. “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a

Century Ago.”Society, vol. 52, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 585-589. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1007/s12115-015-9953-8.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important

Drivers of College Cost?.” Change, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan/Feb2011, pp. 31-37. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1080/00091383.2011.538649.

Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz. “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?.”

Current Issues in Economics & Finance, vol. 20, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96880995&site=ehost-live.

“Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” ASHE Higher Education Report, vol. 39, no. 2,

May 2013, pp. 71-77. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/aehe.20008.

Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”

Journal of Higher Education, vol. 79, no. 3, May/Jun2008, pp. 268-295. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31597078&site=ehost-live.

Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH-102

February 19, 2017

Help received: text cited in works cited, Purdue owl to cite anthology

Kids of today’s world could not imagine growing up in a world without the use of the internet and other aids to get them through. Now full classes and even degrees are available for you to take online at your own convenience from the comforts of your own home. In the article titled “The changing face of higher education: the future of the traditional university experience” by Chrissie Long, the importance of online courses is described in many ways. Online courses can be extremely helpful for people with full time jobs, people supporting a kid, people who can’t afford college, and many more reasons. Online courses are also a great aid to students when it comes to learning or relearning a topic that you don’t understand very well in the class, no matter what the level of education is (Long, 456, 19). The matter of online education has also brought up many problems in the education world. Many colleges and universities are concerned that with available free and online education there will be no need for students to enroll and go to a college or university. Though enrollment could dip a little you would not see much of an effect to the higher education systems (Long, 456, 11-17). Online courses are a very important to the overall success to the modern student and in some cases they only recourse people have to get an education. Online courses should not be removed as an option for higher education, and if anything they should be improved and expanded to help anyone that they can.

For thousands of people in today’s world an online education is the only chance they have at getting a degree. Long goes as far as saying “ Online learning allowing students to more easily study abroad or time off due to personal issues” (Long, 456, 19). When I read personal issues I thought of even more reasons online learning is very helpful. People who have full time jobs do not have time during the day to attend a class room setting in order to get an education. The only way they can go to class is outside of work and for some people that can be late at night. An online education allows them to take classes at their own convenience, from wherever they need to take it. Online classes would also be very helpful to some parents or young adults who need to support a kid. These adults may need to work during the day and take care of the kids when they are not at work, but still want to get an education. Possibly the most important reason to make available online courses are for people who cannot afford college. In today’s age college can cost an arm and a leg to get in to. Many of today’s colleges and universities can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars a year to attend. This is just not plausibly in the budget for some people. Online courses are usually much cheaper if not free, and you can get the same education. This opportunity gives people the possibility of getting an education and a good job no matter of what your time schedule and financial circumstances are.

Other online learning opportunities are available to students no matter what the education level they are in. Long brings up the idea of flipped classroom style learning. This allows students to learn the material at home and do example problems in class and ask questions (Long, 457, 20). Another great resource is online lessons such as Khan Academy and crash course. Inevitably over the course of your education wither in elementary school, middle school, high school or even college some courses will not come easy to you. You may either have trouble with learning the material, or you may not be able to understand the teachers teaching style. With these resources available you can re learn the lesson over and over at home if that helps you. From my experience this method has been extremely effective. I have used these online resources to relearn my class topics, and in many cases it has saved my grade. Online learning devices such Khan Academy, crash course and flipped classes are very helpful and effective resources to the students of today’s world.

Even though these advancements in education are extremely helpful and important, many people are very concerned with how this will affect schools. This point was highlighted by Long in the impact on campus based education section. She states “there is some concern that the rise of online education will purge institutions” (Long, 456, 12). And what she means by this is that with the rise of the free online courses and educations the amount of enroll students could drop tremendously. From my experience at VMI this would not be the case. Most of the people attending the Virginia military institute are intending on joining the military. In order to get the training needed and hands on skills learned you would need to attend a school. Without the hands on skills learned in a military school we could have no military. Long brings up another good point in opposition to these criticisms. She says “AS far as the undergraduate level, the ivy-covered brick towers, dorm room keg parties, and large lecture halls still have their place. Experts agree that campuses serve as an important venue for the transition from adolescent to adulthood” (Long, 456, 16). Many kids just want to get out and learn to live on their own and have some freedom from their parents, without being kicked straight in to the world. Although many people argue that these new technologies will hurt the enrollment to schools, it is likely to have little to no effect on enrollment.

The use of online education as a source of education is crucial to the success of many people in today’s world. Many people for various reasons are not able to attend a higher education and would still be able to with these online resources. Many people also use these sources as a means of prep and learning of classes they are currently in in a normal school. And though many people argue that it would hurt the enrollment of universities, it would have little to no effect at all. Online education is a glimpse in to a more prepared and well educated society.

Work Cited:

Long, Chrissie. “The Changing Face of Higher Education: The Future of the Traditional

University Experience.” Writing Argument, edited by John D. Ramage, John C. Bean,

June Johnson, Pearson Education ,2016, 455-459.

Cadet Mason Briggs

Mrs. Smith

ERH 101-02

4 December 2016

Help Received: Peer reading, spell check, the everyday writer book page 507

Writing with a purpose

Throughout my school career I have always written papers and assignments because I had to but never because I wanted to. This has all changed for me after this semester. Learning many skills has improved my writing tremendously and also made writing way more exciting. I have learned which writing strategies come easiest to me, and some have allowed me to analyze myself as a writer. I learned how to write things to fulfill a purpose and to fit a certain audience. I have learned how to use specific word choice to persuade people of their topic, like how newspaper journalists write their papers. And lastly, I learned many everyday practical times in which I could use these skills, such as writing journals and even things as simple as improving text messages. All of these skills have not only improved my writing skills tremendous, but have also made writing way more enjoyable and with a clear purpose.

Free writing to me, was the most influential to my writing this year. One class a week we would start off by writing a journal. During this time I wrote about whatever topic I wanted to. This allows me to open up my mind and allow the words to just flow from my hands. This not only made my writing more entertaining but it also was much of a stress relief. Going through this whole rat line stuff is not easy. And this gave us twenty minutes at the beginning of class every Monday to write about whatever we wanted. This allowed us to open our minds to whatever came to our mind first.  We could write about the hard times the good time, the funny things, and the awful things. This method of opening up my mind also allows me to analyze myself more as a writer and not just writing to fulfil a prompt. I can really now see how I write in comparison to others. This not only helped open my mind, but it also gave me practice using the rhetorical devices that I have learned this year. Free writing was very important to my success in seeing these different writing techniques we learned this semester.

Learning how to write to a specific audience was another very important thing I learned this year. We learned about this mode of writing in one of our earliest readings on discourse communities. This lesson taught me that many papers are written to a specific audience to achieve a specific goal. This goal could be anywhere from persuading the reader of something, or just entertaining them. In order to do this though, you may need to use of specific language and specific ways of speech to appeal to different readers. Depending on where you live and what you are involved in interests change drastically based on different groups of people. In the past I have just written as if the words were coming off my tongue in order to answer the essay topic not thinking about who is reading it. For our second paper in this course, we had to choose a discourse community that we are a part of with the same interests and language that we could relate to. I choose baseball, a sport in which I have played for almost eleven years. I used very specific language that was only used by teammates and coaches in order to communicate and win ball games. I can take the essay and not only write it so that the audience is entertained but I enjoy writing it. Discourse communities can also use specific words that make them distinct from other groups. For example my baseball team uses words such as strike, ball, quick pitch, tracking, and crow hop which if you are not part of the community it would be confusing to most people. When you use these in your writing, your writing is much more persuasive. It gives the reader something to attach to and relate to their life. Without this your paper may just be not attached to the reader and very vague. These two techniques that I have learned when writing to a specific community have improved my writing tremendously.

Another word choice method that we have studied that has improved my writing is how different genres use words to achieve their main goal. For example we saw media used big words, hazardous words, and words that don’t even make sense in order to draw the reader in and give them a sense of urgency. In one of our research projects we were told to compare the form of writing of someone in a media article and one of someone in a research article used to inform the reader on a specific topic. The newspaper article was written for the purpose of entertaining the audience and catching the reader’s attention. One of the techniques the writer used was to use exciting and big words to draw the reader in. He told a story of how glaciers are melting and cracking and killing people. He used words such as surge, collapse, and crevasses to excite the reader in to reading the whole story. The author also used a countdown in his reading that drew in the attention of the reader. On the other hand in the research article the author did not use these big fancy words to draw the reader in because that wasn’t the purpose of his writing. His writing was very influential based off of the format in which it was written. It was very visually appealing with data tables and facts straight to the point without a lot of non-sense. And it also completes its purpose very well, letting the reader know exactly what he needs to know and in the clearest way possible. In this case it was the size of the glaciers. Both are very effective ways that have influenced the way I write to help me achieve my goals.

Writing every day has also improved many of my everyday forms of writing such as emails, letter, and text messages. When writing these messages I now think about how I change my writing when writing to different people. For example, when I write a text message to my hunting buddy I am not going to use the same language I use when sending an email to my girlfriend. I alter it slightly so that it gets a different point across and is more appealing. This is the same concept with writing email. They may be slightly altered in order to fit who I’m writing it to. Until I took this class I never looked in to this deeply and saw the differences in my writing. This course has helped me to analyze my own writing and gather things from it.

Another very important thing that I have learned this year is that every piece of writing has a purpose. Also known as exigence, every piece of writing is written with the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Even though these goals can be very different it is the goal of the writer to accomplish it. This goal could be to entertain the reader, give an opinion, tell a story, give information, or just to communicate with a friend. All of which we have used this year in class to accomplish the goals of each one of our papers. Every piece of writing has a purpose and there is no useless writing out there in the world. No matter what the piece of literature is written for, every piece of writing has a specific exigence or is meant to complete its goal.

This course has helped in prove my writing way more than ever could have imagined in one semester. It has taught me how writing I a specific discourse community can influence my writing in many ways and can even change my vocabulary based on who I am writing to.  I learned how practicing my writing just a few short minutes a day can improve my writing tremendously, and open my mind to many new ideas and also allow me to analyze my own writing. This course lastly, has shown me how every piece of writing is written with a specific goal and can be changed drastically based on who is writing. All of these skills will be very useful and can be used in any form of writing I do for the rest of my life, and help me to analyze pieces of literature I read further and with a deeper meaning.

Works Cited

Briggs, Mason. Sliding into Discourse Communities and Activity Systems. Virginia

Military Institute. 7^th October 2016.

Briggs, Mason. “Melting” Down the Writers. Virginia Military Institute. 7th October

2016.

Briggs, Mason. Literary Narrative. Virginia Military Institute. 7th October 2016.

Wardle, Elizabeth and Downs, Doug. “Writing about Processes: Major Writing Assignments.”

Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print.

Page 673.

Word Count: 1517

Help Received: Spell and Grammar checker, writing about writing book, easy bib, The every day writer.

“Melting” Down the Writers

                 Which is more dangerous the avalanches caused by melting glaciers or the fear caused by the tongue of a news reporter? News articles are often twisted and reworded to have the greatest effect on the reader or audience. I gathered a news article on the effects of glaciers on avalanches, and also a research article on Glaciers in the Chinghai- Tibet plateau. Then analyzed the differences in writing based on their perspective audiences. Media has a way of shifting the information to being very entertaining the reader where, researchers are very straight to the point, and informative on avalanches. Although media may be easier to understand it may not always have the most reliable information. Researchers use hard data, where the media may add numbers to appeal more to the reader’s emotion.  Both methods are strong, but all depend on the audience and purpose for the writing. The effect of writing a piece to appeal to a certain audience is necessary to draw their attention in and relay information, but may not always be the most factual information.

The first piece that I looked at was a newspaper article titled “When Glaciers Transform into Deadly 150-mph Avalanches” written by Robinson Meyer in the News Bank. This article gives us several examples of when Glaciers have cracked when melting and slid down the mountain face and caused many deaths. It was written with the exigence of showing how bad global warming is.  The first example Robinson gives is the glacier Kolka on the Georgia- Russian boarder. Robinson adds rhetorical information such as many numerical details and also scientific terminology to this article to effect the reader’s emotions. One example of how he uses numerical values to appeal to ones emotions in in the use of time. He uses exact times like 8:08, and 8:13 to make it seem like he is counting down in anticipation of something major. This excites the reader and gives them a rush that draws them in to the story. The addition of scientific terms to the article also gives it a more appealing dialect. He uses phrases such as “million cubic meters, land sat 7, miles of ice, and 10 meters per year” to give the reader what he thinks is factual information to draw from the text. This may sound really good but could just be non-important information. The true information that is important is amount of people that died and where and not the speed at which the rate fell and size of the ice. Those facts just make the article more interesting. The other thing that the writer of the news article did was to use vocabulary the appealed to the readers. He uses words such as surge, collapse, crevasses, pooled, and captured to excite the reader. An example of this from the article is “The glacier before its collapse in early July. Some crevasses, a sign of imminent surging.”   These words give the reader a sense of urgency and danger and get the adrenalin pumping. This contrasts with what you would see in a research article where the writer is just giving hard facts and does not worry about drawing the reader in. An example from the research text is, “Wissman (1959) calculated that the total area of the Himalayas in 33,250 Km².” This method of drawing in the readers emotions can be very important the overall success of this news article in the media.

The second article I drew was from a research stand point, with the purpose of giving a reader specific information on that specific topic. The article was titled “Recent Research on glaciers on the Chinghai-Tibet Plateau” written by Li Chi-chun and Cheng Pen-hsing. As you can see there is a major difference in the two titles of the articles. The newspaper article title creates that since of urgency in the words used. The research article on the other hand was written to tell you exactly what is going to be about.                                                                                                                         Not unlike the news article the research article was most likely also written because of global change and the effects on glaciers. Since this article was not based on getting the reader’s attention drawn in, it was more based on telling the reader hard facts about the glaciers. This research tells up the exact size and location of every glacier on this plateau. It informs us of the exact area in Km² of each type of glacier and the structures there are and even the amount of precipitation and what the totals are for each season. It is important to get this information straight up for anyone doing other research on the glaciers and not the random facts like the news article.  If the research article had all the other random details in it, it would waist way too much time for the reader trying to gather information. But on the other hand for someone trying to read an article for entertainment this article would not be the one to choose out of the two. Another thing that sets the research article apart from the newspaper article is the use of charts and graphs to give the data. In the newspaper article, the author just develops a story and does not give us any other types of information. In the research article, the author uses graphs to clearly lay out and labeled the data to make it easy for the person reading the information to understand it. This form of research article can be very useful and important but only to the right reader. Research articles are structured very informational based on their specific topic of study.

Both of these writing methods are good but very specific based on the audience it is being written too. In the newspaper article the facts all flow together and are all general based on the topic. In the research article on the other hand the claims and facts are very direct and straight to the point all on the same topic with specific factual data. Not saying that all the newspaper articles facts are false but they may have been changed slightly to appeal to the reader. The information from the research came from specific scientific calculations using geological mapping to calculate the area. The newspaper article does not tell where its information came from. Another major difference in the two articles is the difference in the development of the information. In the news article, the information was developed based on a story telling how the ice cracked and then leading to the conclusion, whereas the other article just went straight to the facts. The information in the news article did not contradict the information in the research article just gave more information than was needed from the research article. The scientist would not have to refute any claims made by this article he would just not need most of them for his specific research.  Research articles are very specific and give the reader important data on their topic.

As you can see newspaper articles and research articles are very different but both fulfill their own separate purpose. The newspaper article has the goal of entertaining the reader and engaging them in the story. The research article is made to give specific information to someone interested in that same field of study. The methods by which they get their message across may be different but they are both very effective at what they do. The newspaper article gives a lot of numerical values and scientific sounding data points in order to make the information sound like a reliable source. It also adds time and specific vocabulary into the writing in order to give the reader a sense of urgency and danger when reading. This draws the reader and engages them in to what is going on, even if the information is not one hundred percent reliable. The research article on the other hand is based on cold hard facts. It is informing the people on a specific topic and giving them real data. In this case it gave us specific information on the areas and locations of glaciers on the Chinghai-Tibet Plateau but research articles can give you information on just about anything. They are very important for information and research purposes. Both types of writing are very specific for their varied audiences. Even though they may appeal the same exigence, they are made for very specific audiences, and very specific rhetors, and come up with very different conclusions.

Word count: 1534

Works cited

Covino,William, and David Jolliffe.”What is rhetoric?”Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions,

 Boundaries. Ed William Covino and David Jollife. Boston: Allyn &Bacon 1995. 3-26.

Print.

Grant-1Davie, Keith. “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.”Rhetoric Review 15.2

(1997): 264-79.Print.

Inventory, World Glacier. Recent Research on Glaciers on the Chinghai-Tibet Plateau (n.d.): n.

pag. Web.

Meyers, Robinson. “when glaciers transform into deadly 150-mph avalanches.” Atlantic: Web

Edition Articles (USA) 18 October 2016, News. NewsBank . Web. 21 October 18, 2016.

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discource Community” Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986):

34-47. Print.

Help Received: Peer reading, spell check

Sliding in to Activity Systems and Discourse Communities

From the feeling of the ball hitting the bat, to the taste of crackerjacks at a game, baseball has always been a part of my life.   I have played baseball for almost eleven years, since I was seven years old. Many would say that I have become part of the baseball discourse community, with a very specific activity system. The activity system has very specific goals set to try to achieve. In which they use very specific tools to accomplish these goals. The activity system is structured in to three main groups; the coaches leading the team, the players compete in the games and last but not least the fans cheering us on. Each role has specific motives for wanting to win. But lastly on top of all this, there are many, many rules in the game of baseball that make this very complicating. Not only has baseball affected me in this way but it has also change my vocabualy a lot too. I am a member of the baseball activity system with a common goal set out to win every game.

As an activity system our goal is win every game as a team, but everyone also has individual goals that they work toward achieving. The coach’s goals are to improve every one of his player’s abilities, and to win as many games as possible. They achieve this by giving the knowledge of baseball that they have on to the next generation of players.  The players on the other hand, not only set goals as a team, but individual as well. Going in to my senior year my batting average was at .280, and I wanted to finish out high school with above a .300 average. I trained really hard and ended up batting .315 on the season which was much better than I had hoped. This was all possible because of the help of my coaches, and fellow player pushing me to get better each day. And because my betting average was better our whole team’s performance was better in our next games. My activity system not only helped me to achieve my goals , but also in return it helped out the teams goals.

Activity system’s, also use tools to help them achieve their goals. The two most common tools in my activity system are the baseball bat and the glove. The baseball bat is used to hit the baseball as far as possible when thrown by the pitcher. The pitch could be thrown anywhere from 75- 95 miles per hours, and have some crazy spin on it as well. It is our job as the batter to make sure that ball does not get past us. The baseball bat is a very important tool, and is necessary to achieve our goal. The other main tool our activity system uses is the baseball glove, commonly known as the “mitt” in the community. This tool is used to keep the baseball from touching the ground when it is hit up in to the air by the opposing team, or to stop the ball from getting past you if it is hit on the ground. If you could not stop or catch the ball, you could not get out, and if you could not get outs, you could not win ball games. My activity system could not achieve its goal of winning without these tools necessary to win. We would not be about to hit, or make outs, and we would lose.

Our activity system is very structured between the leadership and players on the team. This structure is necessary to improve and win ball games. Our activity system is structured in to three groups; coaches, players, and fans. The role of our coaches is to improve our skills and to lead us to winning ball games. They improve our skills by setting up practices, workout groups, and scrimmages for us to play against other teams. In our practices our coaches set us up to work on the things we are the weakest in. This helps us to gain muscle memory and to be very precise in everything that we do. The work out groups that we are put in help improve our strength. This new strength leads to improvements in speed, agility, and over all power in the fundamental parts of baseball such as throwing, catching, and hitting. These skills will help us to win games. And lastly, our coaches set up scrimmages for us to get a chance to play another team and see where our skills need improving. We get to see how well we play in a live game time scenario and individually what we need to improve on most. All scrimmages, practices, and workouts are all very important to the success of our team and these come down to the coaches. The role of the players on the other had is to take in all of this information and apply it to their skills and to give one hundred and fifty percent every day. But ultimately in the end, it comes down to the players to win every game. And lastly, but possibly the most important the fans are a very important role to the success of the activity system. The fans role in the system is to motivate the players on the team, to support us in all of the travel, but also to get in the head of the opposing team. They cheer for us all game long no matter how good we are doing or how bad. They will always yell”come now kid” when we are up to bat and keep our heads high. We could not do it without the fans in the crowd cheering us on. Every role in our activity system is needed in order to achieve our goals.

What make baseball so complicated and not fun to watch for some people are all of the rules that go in to it. Baseball has rules for literally every scenario of what could happen. There are rules for the players, rules for the coaches, rules for the umpires and even rules for the fans. These rules can make or break a game. You could be winning by ten runs and if you have three fouled up plays you could be losing by two. Like if a ball rolls under the fence and you don’t hold your arm up they could run all around the bases and get a homerun. And this could be a game changer. Your parents could be asked to leave if they are being too loud or obstructing the game. Rules can even be called wrong by the umpire and the result of the game could switch. Last year I was in a game that was tied two to two in the twelfth inning. The game had gone on for three hours nonstop. And it all came down to one play. It was the bottom of the twelfth inning and we were on defense out in the field. The count was three and two with two outs and the bases loaded. It can down all to one pitch. Ball or strike. Bo Kenan was on the mound.  The pitch was thrown and the umpire called a “BALL”. We lost the game all because the umpire was wrong. The rules of our activity system caused us to lose our game and not achieve our goal.

Many of the common baseball phrases come from what you hear in the stands from the parents cheering. Things like “swing batter swing” or “come on ump what are ya blind”, but the ones that affect me the most are the ones that come from inside the dugout. When anyone on our team does anything good or goes up to bat we are cheering for them. We are yelling things like “come now kid” which mean get a hit, or “Or throw him one right down the pipe” which means throw a strike. And these are only two examples of many, of parts of my vocabulary that have been changed. but the discourse community baseball has definitely changed me.

Our activity system could not function without all of these things working in sink.  Our community set goals that we try to achieve both individually and as a group. As you could see the tools we use such as the baseball bat and the baseball glove are necessary for us to achieve these goals. It is also very necessary for all of the different roles of my discourse community to function together in order to achieve our goal. The coaches, the players, and fans need to function as one in order to keep winning. And lastly many rules factor in that must go perfectly as planned to in order for the community to achieve the goal. Not even to mention how the community has changed the way I talk. This activity system has to go exactly as planned in order to achieve our goal and win ball games.

Words: 1554

Works cited

** need to fix   Pg. 273- 283 “Activity Systems.” Writing about writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2011. Print.