PB2A

The publication I choose was an academic article about the effectiveness of reforestation, particularly on the east coast of New Zealand. This article was a research paper that explained the effect of people and therefore included the same structure as that of a typical research paper (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion). This paper uses many scientific terms in order to better explain to those within the fields of this type of science what is going on while maintaining a concise paper. The explanation of what erosion is as well as the effects it as on the environment around it further aid the reader in their understanding of the experiment. The inclusion of specific percent differences are also throughout the paper as they serve to show the reader the differences between the inclusion and exclusion of the experimental technique at hand. If these were to be excluded the importance of what was done within the experiment would not be as easy to understand. Diagrams of the landscape to show the the of geography within the area of discussion and pictures of the location from year to year are also included for the understanding of the reader. By knowing how steep the hills are as well as what the physical changes of introducing more trees to the land scape looks like, anyone who reads this article can begin to form an image in their own minds as to how important it is that the scientists made this change to the landscape. This article also takes the benefits of the process and specifically calls attention to them. The effect of this on the reader is that they do not have to try to figure out why what was done was important, it is explicitly shown to the reader and eliminated the possibility for confusion of purpose.

Questions that were posed within this article were: “Which type of plant is most effective for soil retention?”, “What effect does reforestation have on erosion?”, and “What are the benefits of reforestation in terms of prevention of erosion?”. The idea of reforestation is operationalized by how the author explains its importance. The author makes a point to explain the type of environment that erosion occurs in, the changes in the environment that cause increased erosion, what can be done to stop erosion, the impact the experiment has had on the amount of soil that does not get washed away from the rain, the types of plants that most effectively as well as most quickly aid the reduction of erosion, and the benefits that have been injured from the reforestation of the hills in New Zealand. The most important aspects within this piece are the explanations of the processes and the inclusion of the benefits of the reforestation of New Zealand. The article contains a bulk of material which can make it difficult for someone completely understand all of what they are being told. It also gets tiring to a reader to continuously have to make their own connections as to what the importance of the included material is within this type of paper. It is for this reason that the two aspects were chosen to be the most important, the lead the reader to the highest amount of understanding as well as make it possible for anyone to be able to understand the article. With the inclusion of the benefits of the work that was done in New Zealand one can gain the idea that doing work with reforestation could be beneficial to other similar areas in the world. The inclusion of these aspects does not allow for the reader to get lost at all; they are guided to the importance of the information presented to them and its implications. 

Works Cited

Marden, Michael. "Effectiveness of Reforestation in Erosion Mitigation and Implications for Future Sediment Yields, East Coast Catchments, New Zealand: A Review." New Zealand Geographer 68.1 (2012): 24-35. ProQuest. 25 Apr. 2016 .

Thogg Week 4

This week in class we worked a lot more on our WP1s before submitting them on Monday. After many many hours and lots of revisions, additions, and a lot of thought I thought the paper I had written was at least in the slightest decent, but after seeing how our teacher felt about it I honestly just don't want to touch it again, good thing I'm forced to for our final projects. Ugh. I guess when looking at this paper again I will change it almost completely and focus on how the billboards are targeting a more specific audience, busy people who need quick food at a relatively non expensive price. I had thought about including where billboards are placed, why, and the audience they target by their placement and use of small bits of language, i.e. a person in a rush who doesn't have time to cook let alone read something that asks them to spend more of their hard earned money, but a classmate of mind discouraged the thought and said what I had done was good, maybe it was not the best idea to follow what someone else said as that is what I will now be changing my paper to. That is a much more interesting topic that I believe my teacher would like much more than the piece I did turn in. Oh well, as he said its a drop in the bucket and I can still get a good grade later. Now were starting to work on our WP2 and I'm not so sure what I want to write on for the PB2A. Something maybe along the lines of environmental science would be great as that is what I am most passionate about. My only problem is that so many studies fall into this subject i'm not sure what I would rather focus on. Our journals this class were meant to help us understand how writing makes someone sound and the assumptions made based off of what is written. Person number 18 and14 look as though they are science majors of some sort, but upon discussing with my classmates many were classified as this and were majors like communications. This I found very interesting as I was assumed to be a communications major and am environmental science, so the questions I picked didn't hint to who I really am. This weeks class was quite interesting and frustrating at times. It will be interesting to see how my other writing pieces go this quarter.

Week 3 Thogg

I apologize in advance for this thogg being a day late, this weekend I was in and out of the hospital due to horrible abdominal pains that follow after eating anything. This was a challenging situation in which I had to try my best to keep up with assignments, as the pain was so extreme that it was all I could do to lie in bed and try to sleep versus focus on the pain. Tests are still coming back to see what caused this to happen and why it continues to still happen. In class this week we really did our best to improve our first drafts of our WP1. As the prompt came to be a bit of a challenge to my fellow students, and myself all seemed to write to the best of our ability in order to complete the assignment in terms of analyzing the genres we picked, but it was not until we collaborated with each other that we were finally able to determine what we were able to argue about the genres. In mine I decided to pick the genre of fast food billboards, as did another classmate I saw in the journal entries. Both of us struggled to find something that we really wanted to argue about them but found them interesting in the sense that the conventions included are used to make people want the product. This problem was seen throughout all of the journal entries. Making an argument for something that also included analyzing all of the components of it turned out to be difficult, but once done the papers almost seemed to write themselves. This class is really making me think about how I write and overall has already greatly changed and or bettered my writing.

Week 2 Thogg

This week in writing was quite brief and therefore enjoyable, its not that I don't like this class its just that its so long I often feel a bit over the type of work we do by the end of the two hours. We went over our PB1A exercises as well as dug deeper in to what we started to learn as we wrote them. As a few of my class mates pointed out, in this assignment we were to be as specific as possible, which proved to be a challenge at first but once the topic was selected the writing assignment became much easier and started to flow naturally. Person number two was correct that writing with first order thinking made this assignment much easier and once the words started they did not stop. Many of us also encountered our inner struggles such as not liking what we write and then proceeding to delete it, only to write the same sentence down by the end of this repetitive process. As classmate nine pointed out, some genres were quite easy to pin point and write out while others upon further inspection were much more complex than we had first anticipated. This leads not only to defining one genre being complex but also leads to many overlapping and seeming as though they are the same as another with the exception of a few subtle details. I found the writing process that guy used in the video very interesting; while he wanted to give himself the ability to have enough creative time he also pushed himself to meet dead lines in order to keep himself on track and strike a balance between creative and timely. This is something that I hope to be able to incorporate into my writing as it seems to be the perfect balance of pressure and creativity. 

PB1B

The research paper generator has many conventions of what normally can be found in any more specific type of research paper. This generator seemed to be more generic and did not hone in on anything unique to a specific type of research paper. The structure of the paper is the same as many research papers in that it includes an abstract, introduction, related works, citations, multiple paragraphs per section, thoughts behind the research, labeled sections, diagrams that contain explanations, the way the idea was researched, the discussion of the results found within all of the different experiments discussed, and a conclusion to further summarize the findings of the research paper. All of the conventions within this genre are mean to convey all of the pieces of the research paper to a reader in such a way that they could recreate the experiment or experiments and have a full understanding of what was observed by the authors of the paper.   

The comic strip generator has dialogue boxes, characters, facial expressions of varying emotions such: as happiness, surprise,  anger, and awkwardness, conversation between characters, interactions between characters, tell a story, are intended to be humorous regardless of the execution of the joke, have an intended audience of the type of humor portrayed, have cartoon drawings, and varying colors that do not seem to have much importance to the comic as a whole.  All of these pieces are meant to entertain the audience and make the comic more visually appealing towards those who can encounter it.  

In the random meme generator the creators of these are drawing on the audiences familiarity of the image they have chosen as many people have already encountered them before. they also use creative word play to make a reference to something well known to an audience, use puns, attempt to be humorous or please the audience, relate to an interest of the mass majority of people, and draw on emotions such as irritation and annoyance. Memes also have bold fonts to draw the attention of the viewer and brief statements as to make the image more quickly read. The purpose of these conventions is to entertain the viewer with all combination of the image and a brief statement.  

The random generator i choose was a horror story generator. This genre had characters, adjectives that were meant to describe something frightening such as the word zombified, random details to create the story such as a setting, included an accident, body parts, deadly weapon such as a gun or knife, and had background stories that gave the characters more meaning and depth than just random strangers. The horror story also included a plot, the feeling of danger, a curse, and the ability for a solution to the problems to be solved by the characters. All of these pieces were key to creating a story that was meant to be scary by the use of common ideas of what can scare people. These conventions all play a part in entertaining the reader as well as keeping their attention.  

These websites set out a familiar framework of each type of genre, which allows of the person viewing each of these to being to see the conventions within them. By making a template that people can put random words or phrases into, these websites are giving the viewer a basic understanding as to what each type of genre requires for it to be categorized as that genre. When one considers what they are writing in the blanks as well as the way the words chosen are used in the generator a deeper understanding of what is required to make the genre is gained. The viewer also gains insight as to the purpose of each type of genre as they play with the random generators. 

PB1A: Biological Research Paper

A biological research paper has many components that make it stand out from other types of research papers. This can first be noticed when considering its rhetorical features. Every biology research paper is comprised of various parts including an abstract, introduction, methods, results, the discussion of the results, and a conclusion. The abstract serves to summarize the important pieces of the paper and is meant to be written at the end, but placed at the beginning of the paper to inform readers about the key pieces of the paper and inform them as to whether or not it is relevant to what they are searching for. This piece is followed by a basic introduction containing information relevant to understand the study as well as the hypothesis being tested. The next component is the methods and materials section, the purpose of which to allow the reader to recreate the experiment. This contains very specific explanation of each step as well as the required materials. Following this is the result section which just lists out the data with or without graphs and very brief explanations of the data. Discussing the data is done within the discussion, which is meant to explain what the data shows as well as whether or not the hypothesis tested was supported or refuted by the results. The conclusion section of a biological research paper is meant to summarize briefly the results and their implications in relation to the hypothesis. All of these papers have a target audience of other scientific researchers, a tone of sophistication, and have the purpose of telling other researchers what they were able to find with their experimentation. The context of all that is written within a biological research paper is all related to the hypothesis the scientist is testing. The conventions of biological research paper include concise language, scientific terminology, very specific thesis, multiple pages long, explanations of experiment and data, graphs or some type of visual representation of the information, citations for facts, connections to other research, potential use of results, and summary of the paper as a whole. It is the pieces of a biological research paper and their uses towards their audience that make this a research paper. The author is trying to find an answer to a question that could help others answer their own relatively related questions. It is the set up and purpose of a biological research paper that makes it different from other types of research papers. Few others is any include a brief but informative summary of the entire paper at the very beginning to aid those who are also doing research. Papers of this type are attempting to answer pieces of a larger question that often many people are collaborating on, further making the format of it necessary and different from other research papers. They build on the research of others, which requires many citations to give the paper more legitimacy and standing in the world of biology research. These things are not found as often in other types of research papers and differentiates them from this genre.