Opinions, opinions, opinions.

Well... here I am. 12:21 a.m. starting to write my blog post. Can't help but think about how comfortably you all must be sleeping already. The worst thing is I have not even read a single article yet, so I really don't know what I am doing right now. Brb. Btw, since every one of your blog posts contained memes, I included one here. I went on Google and typed "brb meme", which I'm guessing is what you all do. I can see why they're addicting. They are so relatable.

I wish ^

After reading three JSTOR Daily articles and three Op-eds, I can say I am relieved. What a difference from Devitt's article on critical genre awareness. I actually enjoyed reading these pieces. Reading the sentence just once was enough to understand it. Not only did they use more simple language, but were short and got straight to the point.

Guess Googling "straight to the point meme" didn't work out this time.

Anyway, one of the three JSTORs that I decided to read was "Stranger Things and the Psychic Nosebleed". The author cites three examples in which young girls with the ability to perform telekinesis, bleed every time they perform it.  The author then explains how is scientifically unrealistic to bleed from extreme usage of your brain. The three girls addressed by the author are somehow being used to achieve someone else's interests. By the end, the author makes a point to how the scenarios in her example reinforce the gender stereotype that girls need a strong father figure to "focus their uncontrolled abilities".

The second JSTOR I read was "Where American Public Universities Came From" which provides much insight as to how is it that public education in the United States is free. Pushed first by the Puritans in New Hampshire, then Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and shortly after, all of the states. The author ends the author by stating how although many Americans find taxes annoying, no one denies the public responsibility of contributing to universal education.

Finally, I read "How Does the Language of Headlines Work?". This JSTOR narrates how headlines throughout history have changed with the purpose of making the readers more inclined to read a certain piece to keep on receiving revenue from advertising. The author then compares how the popular click bait we find on the internet every day with titles like "You Won't Believe What This 17 Year Old Did To Earn His First Million!", which attracts curiosity, to every day newspaper headlines.

What I noticed when reading these JSTORs is that it is that they are mainly informative. For this same reason, it is hard to find ways in which they appeal to you as a person. I don't feel any of these three articles appealed to my feelings. On the other hand, I could find some Logos in how the author explains how headlines have changed from passive sentences to sentences that make people want to read the article and why this has happened. I also found some ethos appeal when the author explained where public schooling came from. He sure seemed knowledgeable about the topic.

On the other hand, the three Op-eds that I read were the ones relating to politics. What I noticed about these are that there is a strong noticeable bias in every article you read that you didn't see in the JSTORs. For example, before opening the article "Liberals Are The Sort of People Who...", I knew the author wouldn't refer to liberals as intellectual, honest and trustworthy beings. Also, phrases like "just look at the glowing orange beacon on your tv screen" referring to a person does not suggest the writer have a high regard for that person. What about stating an article with a question like "Will American voters allow themselves to be insulted, taken for granted, and made fools of?" and continuing with "Donald Trump thinks yes"? Clearly authors in these op-eds don't really care much about at least, perhaps, maybe trying to appear unbiased. This reminds me of the typical middle-school fight that started not because someone called you dumb but because all of your friends would instigate you by saying things like "uuuuuh, you're gonna take that?". So, yes. I would say many of these op-eds used pathos more than any other appeal.

Well, I'll leave you with that to reflect on. I'm now going to sleep about 4 hours. Well, that'd be if I instantly fell asleep right now, which won't happen. See you all tomorrow!

Blog #2: Genre

I've said before I am not such a good writer. I use as an excuse that I am really good at math and numbers but not at writing. Because of this, writing has never been my favorite subject. After reading the article by Amy Devitt, I remembered why reading isn't my favorite either. Im just kidding. I did have a hard time reading it, that, I'm not kidding about that.

I had never thought about genre in the way Amy Devitt expresses it. When it came to genre, I'd relate the word to movies, music, books, writing... etc. Never did I think about genre in such depth as Devitt goes in her article. Sure I had thought about how the purpose of a comedian is to make people laugh, how a horror movie is to supposed to make people scared, a sad song provide empathy for your unfortunate love life and so on... But had never thought "critically" about genre, like Devitt mentions in her article.

I think that if Devitt read that first paragraph, she would argue that I do not possess much genre awareness, if any.

Something that came to my mind is that a lot of the time, I believe we attach the genre of something to the purpose that something attempts to achieve. That is why a horror movie that is not scary is portrayed as a bad scary movie, because it failed to made us scared. Or a comedian that doesn't make you laugh, or a science fiction movie which has horrible special effects. In other words, most of the time we expect something from each specific genre.

After reading Devitt's article, I think this is due to the way Devitt believes genre is taught most of the time. That is: explicitly and outside of social meaning. By explicitly, I mean that genre often is taught in a way that restricts creativity and limits cognition rather than expanding knowledge. For example, Devitt talk about the 5-paragraph essay format which is used in the great majority of high schools. She explains how if a student were to include an anecdote in his/her writing, that anecdote would be limited to one paragraph. The way I interpret this is that by limiting the students' ability to write or reducing a an anecdote to something extremely simplistic such as a paragraph, you also limit that student's ability to write and think critically.

Another way Devitt explains how teaching genre "explicitly" limits the assessment of knowledge is by how a certain genre, if thought about uncritically, will make us write to an unrealistic audience. If we for example write two 5-paragraph essays, one with our professor as the audience while the other is written to a firm with interest in some research we conducted (which it is usually not the case), the genre of the 5-paragraph essay would be completely different while being the same genre, a 5-paragraph essay.

By using an article by Viva Freedman, Devitt asks "whether learners could in fact gain full access to the languages and forms of genres" (338). And from what I understood, the answer to that is no because teachers can not possibly have knowledge for all possible students might want to learn and so their instruction about genre will never be complete. On the other hand, students can be taught "critical genre awareness" which is a skill that results in students distancing themselves from the topic addressed and that way obtain more credibility or ethos to write a certain topic.

Although it was a article which took me a while to read, "Teaching Critical Genre Awareness" by Amy Devitt, gave me a view of genres in a way I had never seen them before. Before reading this article, I didn't give much importance to the implications and norms each genre involves and how they influence our way of writing if it happens to be a written genre or speaking if it happens to be a speech or so. But now I do. Kind of.