Category Archives: Essays

In this “Portrait of a Writer essay,” I tell my audience how I have developed as a student and as a writer this past month in ERH-101.  I explain what resources, strategies, and tools that I have learned to use in order to develop my writing.  My main point of this essay is how the source from where my writing has originated from has transfered from what I have learned in high school to what I have learned in ERH-101.

“High School, to Pre-Strain, to Rathood”

Help received on July 25, 2018, from 15:45-16:15

This summer has been one that I will remember for the rest of my life.  The people that I have met, the places that I have been throughout VMI and Lexington, and the informative English class that was keeping me out of trouble.  I came to STP determined to change the way I study, read, and write for my new academic life.  My ERH-101 has been a great Community of Practice (Johns 322), and Mrs. Mattie Smith has also has become a great literacy sponsor (Brandt 73).  What I have learned in this class will probably affect the way that I will write for my remaining time at VMI.  In class, we have learned how people and groups influence our literacy, what creates our scholarship, and what rhetoric is.  I believe that the most important topic, which we are currently learning now, is the process of writing.  How we prepare, revise, and edit our papers, or how we follow specific structures, use appropriate diction, and mix up different sentence structures within our texts.  During these past four weeks,  I have witnessed how I have matured as a writer in and out of the classroom.  This change is created by a demand for next level writing within students from colleges across the country, and the high level of excellence that VMI commands out of the corps.  My new discourse communities and literacy sponsors have given me a new found knowledge that will create intertextuality that will change the way that I will write for the rest of my life.  My discovery of new revision strategies, and learning how to write for the context rather than the structure will help make this change as well.  

      The writing process is one of the first things that you learn throughout one’s journey in grade school.  In fourth grade, I learned how to write a full sentence and how to use commas.  In middle school, it was learning how to write a proper book report and write about a science experiment.  High School tried to prepare me for college-level curriculum by teaching me how to analyze an essay or poem and tell the teacher what the message is that the composition or poetry is trying to relay to its audience.  High School teachers wanted to know what was happening in the piece that I was analyzing.  College professors, on the other hand, want to know why I am writing about what is happening within a text, and how it is related to what my peers and I are learning in the classroom.  This change is the critical point in my writing, and it determines where my intertextuality(Porter 544) originates.  Throughout middle and High school, I have always based my writing off of the specific structures that my teachers produced for me to learn.  These structures were taught to me in middle school and then used throughout the High school curriculum.  Our prewriting would consist of a bubble diagram with the central point in the middle.  The conclusion paragraph would be based off a question that the writer must ask me about the prompt. Issues such as “what is happening that is important?” “who is the most important character and why?” or “how does the setting affect the main character’s actions.”  There would then be three smaller bubbles which would be my main points about what I would be writing about.  Next, there would be notes that would sprout off of the primary point bubbles to help me produce the context for my paragraph.  Then I would start the actual paper with a simple introduction of what I am writing about, three body paragraphs that would help answer the question in the opening, and then a conclusion to tie it all up with a bow.  This step is followed by a quick and unskilled revision and editing of the paper.  This process had to change as I got older and started to explore higher levels of education. Otherwise, I would not become successful.

College level writing now consists of elaborate prewriting, composing, revision, and editing steps that I must follow.  After taking ERH-101, Mrs. Smith has taught us how to thoroughly read through the evidence that we must include in our writing.  She also preaches that I must continually evaluate my sentences, paragraphs, and even my rough drafts when they are finished.  I now prepare and correctly revise more than one draft before turning in a final paper, and I am always vigilant for grammatical errors and correct sentence fluency.  As I follow this new process of writing, I have begun to see the change in the caliber of my writing and the quality of my grades. I would never get an A on a paper during my junior and senior years in high school, that is because my writing was affected by my past discourse communities and literacy sponsors.  I would follow the same structure that was drilled into my head since the first day of the fifth-grade.  Now I have become a successful writer, and I tend to receive A and B averages on my papers rather than just being handed back C’s all year.  The influences that Mrs. Smith and my classmates has had on me has changed my writing for the better.  The way that I write in the future will always relate back to what I have learned during this class this past summer.  The transfer of my basic knowledge from my old sources and beliefs that once influenced my writing, to the way that I write due to my current sources and habits is already in motion.  ERH-101 will now be the sole source of my writing going forward, and the kid who used to write based on what his fifth-grade teacher taught him is no more.  

     One of the most critical tools that ERH-101 has taught me is how to revise my papers correctly.  In Nancy Sommers study on “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” she explains what these different these strategies used by students and accomplished writers are. Some are different, and some are very similar, but the way that I can manipulate the strategies and the tools that create them are how I have become a better writer.  Some of the students that Sommers interviewed all had a similar belief that revision is just elimination words and sentences, putting in “better” words that fit the prompt better, or adding a word to a weak sentence.  One of the interviewees said, “I don’t use the word rewriting because I only write one draft and the changes that I make are made on top of the draft (Sommers 863).”  This is an example of how simple a students revision process is lacking the proper skills to be a successful writer outside of middle or high school.  When Sommers interviewed Adult writers about their revision processes, they gave very different answers.  They came up with the major ideas of “rewriting” and “revision.”  Rewriting to one of the adult writers claimed: “it is a matter of looking at the kernel of what I have written, the content, and then thinking about it, responding to it, making decisions, and actually restructuring it.”  This idea of rewriting is much different from that of a student writer.  More skilled writers are responding to their writing by coming up with new ideas to use in the sentence and flipping it totally upside down.  They do this to see a different point of view of what that sentence is trying to tell the audience. Revision is also a very crucial part of an adult’s writing process that is rarely explored in a student’s writing process.  One writer said “My cardinal rule in revising is never to fall in love with what I have written in a first or second draft…I am much more in love with something after I have written it than I am a day or two later.  It is much easier to change anything with time (Sommers 866).”  This is another crucial difference between student and adult writers.  The adults’ idea of revision of is entirely spreading out all of the content that you have, rearranging it, changing it, and even totally getting rid of it.  They put in a lot more time and effort into their works and revise it regularly, while their prodigies tend to procrastinate writing a paper and not revising it at all.  I am currently both a student and an adult writer, and I have revision habits of both of these kinds of writers, but I am slowly and steadily maturing into more of an adult writer.  I have been more productive, using the revising strategies that Sommers adult interviewees have shared, and starting assignments the day they are given rather than a day or two before they are due. 

    As I stated above, during middle school and high school there were constraints(Rose 787) that affected my writing.  I had to follow a specific structure, use particular diction that was related to the prompt, and be sure that we were answering the question that was in our introduction.  This is what holds back so many Rats in their ERH-101 class.  We are so used to worrying about how our essays appear and the grammatical errors that occur within the pages rather than writing to explain the context of what we are writing about.  We are now taught to use heuristics rather than algorithms(Rose 797).  An algorithm in literacy is something that we always follow, a plan, much like how I used to write as a student writer by following the five-paragraph system.  That can limit invention, fluidity and affect the tone of a paper.  In ERH-101 we adapt to the prompts that we are given and teach ourselves how to heuristics within a document instead of algorithms.  Heuristics is almost like how Rose describes it in his article “Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language.” He claims that heuristics is almost like “having a plan that is not a plan.”  This means that I do not have to be bound to a precise structure to follow in all of my writings, as long as I make sure that the context, sources, and data that I provide explain what is happening within the prompt that I am writing about.  

This is what my English professors want to see constant growth in my writing.  Variability, adaptability, and perseverance are what they expect to look at, and ERH-101 has helped me create those characteristics in my writing.  The ability to come up with something new each time I write, adapt to specific prompts that I like or dislike, and to keep on writing past a word count minimum because I may want a good grade or I might want to be a good writer.  This class has made me want to be a better writer, and it has helped me get to that point in so many ways.  I have learned what my literacy is and how it has been created from those in past and present.  I understand how my writing is one within a large group of literacies to develop a community, and how we use rhetoric to communicate with each other.  The most important thing that I have learned has been my newly found process of how I write.  The strategies of how to invent, compose, and revise my papers in ERH-101 will probably be the backbone of how I will write in all of my classes at VMI for the next four years.   This past month has taught me a lot about VMI, about my brother rats, and about writing.  What I have learned here during the heat, sleep deprivation, and the rain will help me at VMI, in the Army, and beyond.  

Word Count: 1975

Citations

Brandt, Deborah.  “Sponsors of Literacy.”  Writing about Writing.  Downs, Wardle.  Pp. 68-98

Johns, Ann M.  “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice.”  Writing about Writing.  

Downs, Wardle. Pp.  319-338

Porter, James E. “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.”  Writing about Writing.  

Downs, Wardle.  Pp.  542-554

Sommers, Nancy.  “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.”

Writing about Writing.  Downs, Wardle.  Pp.  858-870

This essay shows the differences between the two pieces of writing but they are both centralized around the same research topic.  One is a mass media article written for a medical magazine centralized around prostate cancer.  The other piece of writing is an experiment in a medical journal, and it is the primary source for this research.  In my writing, I explain why their differences are important and how they create those differences.

“Prostate Cancer and How it’s Explained”

Help received from Mrs. Mattie Smith on July 20, 2018, from 14:15-14:30

Writing in any Scientific field can have various forms of structure, analysis, and can be written for different audiences the same way that writing in English or History can.  They both appeal to Kairos, which means that specific variables affect the timeliness of their publishment. Examples could be that an author’s competitors have just failed to or have put out a theory of his own and now the author plans to retaliate with his theory or article.  Ethos and pathos can be used as well to help the reader persuade their audiences by appealing to their ethical mindsets and their emotions. For these particular writings, the kairos appeal is good news about the development of a more successful treatment option for hormone-sensitive prostate cancer (Sweeney 737).  This is an important topic because men all over the country are affected by this devastating illness, and this new treatment option gives the patient a better chance to spend more time with their families and loved ones. I have had two grandfathers pass away from cancer, and I understand how precious the time to be with our sick loved ones is.  Between “Upfront chemo plus ADT dramatically improves survival,” written by Wayne Kuznar for the Urology Times, and Dr. Christopher J. Sweeney’s “Chemohormonal Therapy in Metastatic Hormone-Sensitive Prostate Cancer” experiment for the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a significant difference of language usage between the two passages. That is because the authors wrote the two articles intended for different audiences, the authors are a part of different discourse communities (Porter 548), and they were written for different reasons.  The usage of different styles of writing, different diction usage, deliberate omission of data and information, and the contrast of design and visual concepts are the essential elements that make these articles different from each other.

   Kuznar is a reporter, so his job is to tell his audience important information and use his words to persuade his readers that the information that he is providing is correct.  His other objective is to keep his readers coming back to read the Urology Times. Sweeney’s Journal was written to be presented to a slew of doctors and others within the oncology community.  He fills it to the brim with specific information about his experiment, background information to support the findings of his experiment, and proof that two other authors that studied the same hypothesis.  There is much more information within Sweeney’s work because he is also trying to continue his credibility to his superiors, colleagues, and his patients. So, Kuznar creates tons of optimism and enthusiasm, while Dr. Sweeney sounds confident, sincere, and intensity.  The tones that are produced are products of the diction used, different amounts of data produced, and the different structures that the two articles use. In other words, Kuznar is much more interested in getting his readers to research the topic that he is writing about and he hopes that they will continue reading what he produces because they think that he is a credible source.  Dr. Sweeney takes a much more clinical approach because he is more worried about convincing his patients that this new treatment option does work and he also wants to persuade his colleagues to use the same treatment as well.

   Sweeney and Kuznar come from different backgrounds and have different forms and intensities of education, which creates them to use different forms and levels of diction.  Sweeney, who is a well-respected oncologist, might say that he is researching about “metastatic prostate cancer,” but Kuznar claims that the research is about “hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.”  The two terms mean the same thing except that the two authors are talking to different audiences. If Sweeney were talking to a moderate audience, they would not understand what “metastatic” means.  On the flip side of that, if Kuznar were speaking to an audience full of Oncologists, PA’s, and nurses, then the term “hormone-sensitive” would be too broad for them to verify the exact type of prostate cancer that he is talking about.  Sweeney also mentions other topics of the experiment such dose modifications, toxic effects and efficacy, and secondary endpoints and toxic effects. Terms such as these are most likely only understood by those who are trained in the medical field.  They all have to do with how the patients are treated, monitored, and how that information is recorded to be used in the research article that Sweeney wrote. There is not as professional and advanced medical diction in Kuznar’s article because he fears that his audience will not understand the meaning behind them, or because he does not understand them himself.  

   Kuznar’s article briefly explains what the experiment is and what it’s findings are.  He explains how doctors are adding docetaxel, also known as Taxotere, on top of Androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to help improve the time of survival.  He is writing to an audience of cancer patients with prostate cancer or those who know people who are affected by the terrorizing disease. The audience does not have to be doctors or nurses because the diction that is used is not too advanced for the average person to understand.  Kuznar helps the audience understand advanced medical terms by saying “that the results apply to chemotherapy for patients as determined by the treating clinician.” He says this instead of quoting Sweeney directly, who explains that the “eligible patients had a pathological diagnosis of prostate cancer…with an elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level; radiologic evidence of metastatic disease; and an ECOG performance status score of 0,1, or 2 (Pp. 738)” By making these terms easier for a less medically inclined audience to read, there is a better chance for this information to be rhetorically amplified(Ridolfo and Devoss 527), and spread throughout various discourse communities.  Sweeney added simple terms into his article such as “The primary objective of the E3805 study was to determine whether docetaxel therapy at the beginning of ADT for metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer would result in longer overall survival than that with ADT alone (Pp. 737).” He does this so that researchers like Kuznar can rearrange those words to make them more understandable for audiences who do not understand advanced medical terms can relate better to the context. This rearrangement is an example of how Sweeney uses rhetorical velocity (Ridolfo and Devoss 529) to theorize how third parties might recompose a text strategically. These third parties can consist of news companies, social media websites, and writers such as Kuznar.  So, Sweeney is “trying to determine how this recomposing may be useful or not to the short-or long-term rhetorical objectives of the rhetorician (529).”

Kuznar omits large portions of data, tables, and graphs that show the medically advanced measurements, stratifications, and different races to make the information more appealing to his audience.  Percentages of the patients who has or has not had prior treatment for prostate cancer is also not shown. This is because Kuznar did not want to lose his audience’s attention by putting in too much monotonous information that does not support the main point of if this particular treatment improves survival time of the patients.  There are also very knowledgeable line graphs that show ratios between survival rates of Patients with a “High-volume” or a “Low-volume” disease and the number of months that they live on page 742 of Sweeney’s article. That would have been a good visual for a non-medically inclined audience to understand, but instead, Kuznar only showed the number of deaths between the two different treatments. He also shows the median of months of overall survival, and the median of months of survival of high volume diseases, time to clinical disease progression, and time to castration-resistant prostate cancer in a self-made table. Kuznar probably believed that his readers would have overlooked this valuable data if he added these tables into his article.  This omission of various forms of data from Sweeney’s article that is not put into Kuznar’s article is a big reason why the research was manipulated so that the research could be presented to a different audience.

   The overall appearance of the two articles is dramatically different as well.  Kuznar uses colors like red, black, and dark gray to hook his readers and almost force them into reading the article.  He also includes a picture of Dr. Sweeney to use as pathos; he tries to show his audience that this “sweet man” is working hard to find a better treatment for his patients. The subtitles used are another way that Kuznar tries to direct the attention of the readers by saying “Survival benefit evident in all subgroups,” and “Findings very significant.”  At first glance, the first subtitle makes the reader believe that the two different variables create the same results, but after reading under the subtitle, they can see that there is a large difference between the two treatments. Sweeney’s medical journal uses a softer coloration scheme with colors like orange and white with only black lettering. There are no decorative patterns like there is in Kuznar’s article, but there is a larger amount of graphs, diagrams, and tables that will catch the reader’s attention more than it’s color schemes.  The subtitles that Sweeney uses are much more specific and are used more so to explain what is happening in the experiment rather than catch the reader’s attention. The examples of these subtitles are “dose modifications, statistical analysis, patients,” and more like them that helps the reader understand what the text underneath will be talking about. The different formats and color usage of the two articles show how dramatically different the objects of these two pieces are. It also shows how color, appearance, and presentation can talk to an audience almost as much as words can.

   As stated before, both of these authors use the same information within there articles to achieve different objectives.  They use different tones and styles that are produced in the texts to appeal to different audiences. The diction, sentence fluency, and topics that are discussed show how the authors have different education focus and influences to create their voice in their articles.  The different amounts of data shown in the articles is a significant indicator of credibility between the authors, and it leads cretics, patients, and others interested in believing one source more than the other. Research on a specific topic can be manipulated in many ways to appeal to many audiences, but the source is the most important.  This is because it sets up third-party writers to either succeed or fail in their interpretations of the data. This experiment was successful in showing other doctors how useful this particular treatment is, and the Urology Times article is also very successful in showing this experiment to a broader range of audiences. One could say that they could work together to help prostate cancer patients.  Only the reader’s interpretation of both pieces of literature can determine if that is true or not.

  Word Count: 1825

Citations

Kuznar, Wayne.  “Upfront chemo plus ADT dramatically improves survival.”  Accessed on 17

July 2018.  

Porter, James E.  “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community.”  Writing about Writing.  

Downs, Wardle.  Pp. 542-555

Ridolfo, Devoss.  “Composing for Recomposition.”  Writing about Writing.  Downs, Wardle.  

Pp.  512-539

Sweeney, Christopher J., et al. “Chemohormonal therapy in metastatic hormone-sensitive

prostate cancer.” New England Journal of Medicine 373.8 (2015): 737-746.

This is probably the best essay that I have written at STP.  I am writing about the ends and outs of the North Berry Farm Hunting Club, and how it is considered a discourse community.  I enjoyed writing this paper because I am very passionate about North Berry, hunting, and the outdoors.

“Take ‘Em”

Help received on July 13, 2018, from Mrs. Mattie Smith from 14:00-14:30

When most people think about hunting they believe that it is one of the simplest activities to do in the world.  One must simply walk into the woods or beside a river with a rifle or shotgun and wait for the specific game that they are hunting to appear.  The common thought about hunting clubs is that a group of men, who may or may not have had a little to drink, roam the woods or wade a river together and they shoot at whatever moves.  Hunting clubs are a little bit more complex than that.  My hunting club in New Kent, Virginia, has been a true discourse community for the past eighty years, as both a farm and a hunting club. In Ann M. Johns discussion about Discourse Communities and Communities at Practice, she explains that “in the term discourse communities, the focus is on texts and language, the genres and lexis that enable members throughout the world to maintain their goals, regulate their membership, and communicate effectively with one another.”  The North Berry Farm, which is the club’s name, fits all of this criteria perfectly.  The clubs common goals that are to have safe and successful hunts and fishing trips.  We also aim to conserve habitats, preserve the natural population of the game in our area, and create a comradery that will flow into our lives outside of our shared love for the outdoors.  There is a large text message and email list where all of the members get the necessary information about the various events and chores that are in the near or distant future.  There are different reasons why people are a part of this club.  Hunters, fishers, nature enthusiasts, and conservationist come from all over central Virginia to be a part of this community.  The participatory mechanisms (Swales 25) that provide information and feedback are functions such as steak night, fishing tournaments, skeet and trap practice, and the more apparent events that take place there as well. Older members of the club also pass down knowledge, techniques, tools, and of course, literacy to keep the passion for the land and the outdoors alive within the club.

  The different tools that we used in the club are essential to our success within our genres (Kain, Wardle 399).  These tools include firearms, archery equipment, vehicles, cell phones and their applications, pen, and paper.  Some are only specific to one type of member within the club, while some may be used in all of them.   One of the most common tools, and also one of the most essential to all genres in any discourse community, is communication.  Within our club, communication is used so that we may reach our many goals.  It is the most critical tool that is used and is one of the many characteristics that makes North Berry a successful discourse community.  There is also a unique and strategic communication network that is used so our members know what is going on within the club.

  As soon as you turn on to the long gravel road that heads in between corn and bean fields there stands a sign and a mailbox.  The mailbox reads “North Berry Farm” and the sign reads “Members and Guests only, Violators will be prosecuted!  KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN DURING HUNTING SEASON.”  This helps the club communicate with its members and others who are allowed on the property.  It also serves as a warning to those entering the property as friends and to those who are entering as trespassers.  For example, I am not a “full member” of the club yet.  This is because I am not paying the monthly or annual fee to be an active member of the club.  So, if my friends and I decided to go up there for a weekend all by ourselves and got caught by dad or another member, I would be in serious trouble.  That sign’s message is also for the kids like me whenever we aren’t with our fathers or another authorized person, but we refuse to follow that rule.  Therefore, I am smart enough to receive the message that I am not allowed at the club by myself or there will be consequences.   As you pass the sign and continue on the road you end up at the big house at the corner of the road.  It is an old three-story plantation house, but it still works as a warm place to sleep.  The road then takes a ninety-degree turn towards the right and remains parallel to the Pamunkey River until it hits the end of the property.  At the property line, there are signs that read “POSTED” which tells us that we can no longer move forward.  Even if it means that it would be a better spot to hunt, if we are chasing a deer that we saw, or if we just wanted to go for a walk in the fields or woods.  These tools of communication establish respect for the leadership of North Berry and our neighbors around us.  That way trust can be built and relationships can form.

The most common form of communication at North Berry is our lexicon.  The terms that are used on a day-to-day basis that helps the members understand. In a personal interview with Tom Gates, one of our veteran hunters, he explained the different types of the lexicon that we use and why they are so important to the sport.  “Some of the particular terms that we use are specific to duck or goose breeds while we are hunting waterfowl,” Gates said.  The names are either changed, shortened, or flipped around so that we know precisely what species that we are shooting at if someone sees a flock of ducks.  We call Canadian geese “honkers,” Wood ducks are predominantly called “woodies.”  Pintails maybe called “Sprig tails” or “Pins,” and Male ducks are known as “Drakes” or “Bulls” while females are called “Hens.”  Ring-necked ducks turn into simply “blackheads,” the same way Greater or Lesser Scaup both become “Bluebills.”  The slang is not just created and used to identify waterfowl species but is also used to call out movements or name equip.  A flock of ducks or geese is simply called a “knot,” and when a knot is flying away after being shot at or it gets spooked, someone would say “they’re burning out” or “they’re high-tailing.”  If there is a group circling the blind and they are about to land into our “dec spread,” or decoy spread,  one of the veteran hunters, who would be in charge of that hunt, would yell “Take ‘em” when it is time to start firing.  By listening to these hunting terms and commands, the result will be that the group will have a more successful hunt.  On top of that, by listening for “take em” to shoot instead of shooting whenever you may please, the hunt becomes safer as well.  No one likes getting a haircut with birdshot.  These terms help our community run smoother and more efficient.  It is vital that our members learn these terms so that the members know what is going on in certain situations. 

The modern world has also helped us adapt to waterfowl situations by giving us a communication tool that has changed the sport for the better. Cell Phones have unlocked many new doors of how outdoorsmen talk with one another.  It has increased the number of ways of how knowledge is passed between scientists, conservationists, and hunters.  Anything from apps, phone calls, direct messages, text messages, social media, and more.  The apps that are on Cell Phones are tools because there is now a constant state of new and improved techniques, information, gear, firearms, and contacts to hunt with that are continually flowing between people.  Technology companies have also worked with conservation groups, and hunting professionals to create phone applications that show hunters and fishermen the weather forecast, wind speed and direction, sunset and sunrise, and the rise and fall of the tides all at once!  It can tell them when to wake up in the morning, which spot to hunt or fish that day, how to dress, where to put the decoys,  and when they can start and stop shooting. iPhone and Android applications such as “GoOutdoorsVa,” “Primos Wind,” “Ducks Unlimited,” and “Fishbrain” are great examples.  More actions can be affected by that, but I don’t have enough time to explain it all.  

 The original use for which the cell phone was created, calling and texting, is also very beneficial to a hunter’s stealth and knowledge while he is in the woods.  People can now communicate without uttering a single word, and all they have to do is lift and put down his/her thumbs.  If there is more than one group hunting on the property at the same time, then group leaders can text back and forth to tell each other flock movements, if the inclement weather in the area, or if they want to switch spots or move to make no one is accidentally getting shot at.  Another instance where instant communication is helpful to maintain safety in the club is when different members of the hunting club are in action at the same time.  For example, when one group is duck hunting, and another is out on the river fishing for striped bass, the cell phone provides the communication that the group leaders need to know where everyone is and what they are doing. That way no one is getting shot at accidentally and the fishermen aren’t scaring away the birds that might be in the hunters’ area.  The ability to communicate with each other at an instant has revolutionized the worlds of outdoorsmen everywhere.  When you add technology to something that you are passionate about, and the communication between you and those who share the same passion is improved, it will change for the better.

 The switch towards more technology usage instead of paper usage has also become beneficial because the communication network that we use is all at our fingertips.  Instead of writing down the date of the next club function on a piece of paper or calendar that no one looks at, you can plug it into your phone.  Everyone’s name, address, email, and other vital communication information is there as well.  These functions help the club run more efficiently, come up with plans with everyone’s input, and it creates an environment so that everyone feels a part of the family.  For example, let’s say that there is a specific function on a particular date and it is put into the mass email group to see who can attend. If there is a vast majority of members who cannot participate in that certain date but can the next day or the next week, then the time will most likely be changed.  An efficient communication network such as this helps the club to get more events, hunts, and chore days done at a much faster rate.  The more chores and activities that we get done, and the quicker that we do them, helps us to achieve our primary goal which is to hunt, fish, and enjoy the outdoors.

  The way that members talk to each other, and the tools that we use to talk to each other and those outside of our club create the means of communication.  Communication is the central tool that our hunting club uses that makes our operations and business run smoothly.  If our operations and business run smoothly, then we can have more fun.  The North Berry Farm is a prosperous discourse community because of many things.  The respect that younger outdoorsmen have for the veterans, or how the members trust one another with their gear, hunting spots, or their children.  Our modernized communication network makes the club run more efficiently, gather more ideas together at the same time, and help one another to accomplish the needs of the community.   Tools of all kinds are used within our communication such as education, prior knowledge, imagination, and passion. It creates bonds and memories, knowledge is passed down to younger generations and sets the tone that creates the main goals and characteristics of North Berry, and it’s members.  

Word Count: 2041

Citations

Gates, Tom.  Personal Interview (Cellphone), 10 July. 2018.  

Johns, Ann M.  “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice.”  Writing about Writing.                 

Downs, Wardle. Pp 321-338

Kane, Wardle.  “Activity Theory: An Introduction for the Writing Classroom.”  Writing about 

Writing.  Downs, Wardle.  Pp 395-405

Swales, John.  “The Concept of Discourse Community.”  Genre Analysis: English in Academic and

Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.

This essay is the Literacy Narrative that I wrote for my STP ERH-101 class during July.  I focused on how literary sponsors in my life and their influences have molded together to form my own personal Literacy.  I provided examples of sponsors from my family, my educators, and others who have played essential roles in my life.  I followed the prompt well, and the main reason why I lost points was due to grammatical errors.

“Teaching Me How to Speak”

Help received on July 6, 2018, from Mrs. Mattie Smith from 14:00-14:30.

New Parents are predictable. As soon as an infant so much as makes a chirp out of its mouth they rush to the infant store or “Babies R Us” to by books for the babies first words and letters.  They shove the content right into the feeble hands of their “pride and joy” and begin the journey of the first credible word in a dictionary to come out of his/her mouth.  Months later they are communicating and then making complete sentences, and the road towards literacy can now take place. One of my earliest memories of talking to myself or other people is when my mom’s father was still alive.  I was in a golf cart with my grandfather when he stopped at the curb to talk to a neighbor.  Being the boy who always wanted to go fast while growing up, became bored quickly and I searched for a way to get my grandfather out of the conversation and into the wind.  So, I slowly inched my foot from the passenger side floorboards towards the driving pedals, and I gave the accelerator one quick punch.  The Kart violently jerked forward and scared the heck out of everybody.  I heard my first curse word, receiving my first physical discipline, and the first time remembering the feeling of being guilty, upset, and emotional.  At the end of it all, I remember having to write my first apology letters to both my grandfather and his neighbor.  My literacy was created at that very moment by my immature actions, my grandfather, and my mother on that very day.  Not only has my family influenced my literacy, my various jobs, social life, and my schooling, of course, are all just as important developmental building blocks that have created my writing. People in my life, from all types of different backgrounds, opinions, and ideas have shaped me into the writer and the English student that I am today. 

Deborah Brandt said in her “Sponsors of Literacy” essay that sponsors are “usually richer, more entrenched than the sponsor” (Brandt, 73).  This is true.  Anyone who has influenced my literacy, from the beginning of my memory to the present, has had a more skillful and versatile literacy than myself.  Especially teachers and professors who help or have helped my mind grow and become a better writer.  At the beginning of High School, I was not the best writer, and I did not care until it started to matter around halfway through my junior year.  I began to realize that colleges wanted students who knew how to write and write well.  So, I began to buckle down and the woman who helped me do it was Susan Hughes, my AP 12 Literacy, and English teacher.  Her class was a huge influence on what my writing is today.  At the beginning of her class, I would only get mostly 4s and the occasional five on her essays that she would assign in class.  Around December I began going to her for help, receiving helpful feedback on some of my prior essays, and focusing more on the content of the assignments, I began to get either 5s or 6s for the rest of the school year.  She showed me how some of my sentences were not making sense, how certain styles would work for certain prompts of writing, and how semicolons were more for people who know how to use them.  Being as observational as I am I also picked up some essential vocabulary in her class as well.  She was a short and sweet “old school” southern democrat, who always had to let her students know how smart she was.  She would use words that I would constantly have to look up on my phone such as dubious, clinical, and ambiguous.  Now I can’t stop saying “It is dubious to me” when I don’t know what an answer is to a question a friend asks me.  Another example of how Mrs. Hughes had sponsored my literacy is when she taught our class how to write thank you and sympathy cards at the end of the spring semester.  She explained the different context, syntax, and diction that is used between both types of cards.  She also told us the difference between the amount of voice that I can put into each one.  This small but crucial exercise taught me to know when and how to correctly blend my prior knowledge, family literacy, and professional literacy to perfectly fulfill a certain context through my writing.   Teachers from all parts of my past were significant influences on my literacy, but for some reason, I believe that she was the one teacher who helped me create my unique voice that is within my writing. 

On top of what I learn at school, the terms, words, and speeches that I receive at home and on the farm are also a big part of what has created my literacy.  My family and the others that I love always want to talk with me when I’m around, especially the old folks who don’t know when to stop talking.  I learned most of my first words, may the big good or bad, from my parents and their parents who are constantly in and out of my house because they all live only 30 minutes away.  I picked up words from books and television shows or movies that they showed me, lectures on how I should or should not treat my brother, and little words that they all mumbled under their breath as they stumped their toe against a chair or accidently hammer their thumb instead of the nail.  These words and sentences would either make me look like a genius in front of others, or, when using the wrong words at the wrong time, I would be looked at as a little devil or appear to have a below average IQ.  As I grew older I began to see how these influences began to mix into my speech and my writing.  On the other side of that, grades were very important to my parents.  In elementary school, if we came home with anything lower than a plain “B” or “P”, my mom would line up whoever didn’t have the adequate grades and tan our hides with a wooden spoon until she believed the message was received.   In Middle School and High School my parents decided to take a different approach.  They began to reward us for good grades instead of disciplining us for bad ones.  For every B in a standard class we would receive 10 dollars, and for every A we would receive 20 dollars.  If we were taking advanced or AP classes, then a B would be 20 dollars, and an A would be 30 dollars.  As soon as I learned of this new reward system I began studying and received all A’s, in various classes, until my junior.  Although I can admit that we were spoiled with this system, my parents were huge literary sponsors by both disciplining and rewarding us.  Just like Sandra Cisneros’ father who was a big Literacy sponsor in her life.  Although her story may not be as light-hearted as mine, the situation still drove her to become as literate as she possibly could be.  Cisneros remembered when her father would say “Use this” as he tapped his forehead, “and not these” showing them his hands that were worn with years of hard labor that he endured (Cisneros, 103).  But on top of this she constantly had to remind her father “Not seven sons.  Six! And one daughter” (Cisneros, 103) because he always believed that she would become a housewife with no need for education.  Family, no matter how good or how bad, affect our literacy and how we communicate with the world around us.  

The way I create my own literacy is how I combine these two main sponsors in my life.  The perfect combination must be met for each different situation.  If I am about to go into a job interview, my resumes writing and the context that I will say will have more of a professional, or school type, tone, and grammar as I speak while quietly and assertively putting in soft tones of the literacy from my family into it as well.  On the other hand, if I was at a party or reunion of some kind I would want the people to know where my roots come from, but have an equal amount of politeness and intellect at the same time as well. When I am at the lowest extreme of using my professional literacy, I am probably at home with my family and friends, who I don’t have to act smart around because they already know that I am.  Just as Victor Villanueva said in his book Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, “that all language is an approximation”(VIllanueva, 126).  Villanueva knows exactly what it means to find the certain approximation for each situation.  He needs to know how much of his Puerto Rican literacy to mix with his Ph.D in English and author literacy.  That is what makes great writers the way that they are.  They take from what they have learned from where they are from and what they have learned from their schooling and jobs in order to create the unique writing style that audiences recognize only as their own.  

Writers come from all kinds of different family and educational backgrounds.  Some have or had a richer family life, while others focused more on their Masters or Doctorates.  All writers create their individual approximations of literacy based on the literary sponsors that pushed and influenced them throughout their lives. Robertson, Taczak, and Yancey expressed how “we need to explore the relationship between these differentiations and efficacy (Than the mixtures create): surely some are more efficacious than others”(Robertson, Taczak, and Yancy, 207).   This is further supporting Villanueva’s idea about finding the approximation of the mixture of literacies that we learn from our sponsors.  Writers are only distributors of their own sponsorship and prior knowledge, with an addition to constructors which add their own ideas and opinions to create literary pieces that inspire and awe their audiences.  

Word Count: 1711

Citations 

Brandt, Deborah.  “Sponsors of Literacy.”  Writing about Writing.  Wardle, Downs Pp.  68-99

Cisneros, Sandra. “Only Daughter.” Writing about Writing.  Wardle, Downs Pp 101-104

Robertson, Taczak, Yancey. “Notes toward a Theory of Prior Knowledge.” Writing about Writing.  Wardle, Downs Pp.  185-207

Villanueva, Victor.  “Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color.”  Writing about Writing.  Wardle, Downs Pp. 116-127