They Say I Say Ex. 1

1.) Charlip refers to the views of others right off the bat when he writes, "Marx and Engels wrote: "society as a whole is more....", she then says "If only that were true, things..." distinguishing her opinion from those before her. She also uses phrases such as "his definition" or "the average American will tell you...."

Chapter 4, ex. 1

1.) While it is not very clear in the article, I think the author agrees somewhat with the other authors, however, she wants to see more data before she can make a clear cut decision. I've come to this conclusion because she cites the other authors' and seems to think they have logical points but she also says, "There has been little or no attempt to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and classrooms in this country." If you could not tell by what I previously wrote, the article left me somewhat confused.

Exercise 7j

1.) In terms of layout and design, the paper most resembles a magazine article. This is due mainly to the text style of the title and the various pictures throughout the paper. Also the columns of writing give it a magazine-like feel.

2.) The layout of the paper influenced the way I personally read it a lot. The columns and pictures made it more ascetically appealing and made it an easier read. Also the pictures got me to think about the era more in depth as opposed to just seeing text. It also gave the paper more of a feel of authority, mainly due to it looking more professional.

3.) If the paper was reformatted to resemble a college research paper, it would lose a lot of it's appeal. I wouldn't be as nearly as interested in the paper if it lacked images and if the columns were taken away it would be much harder for me to stay focused.

Movie review with additions

"Persepolis", by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that details the story of a young girls tribulations during the Iranian revolution of the 1980's. It was recently made into a movie which stays as faithful as possible while is still a great movie for those who have never read it.

"Persepolis" starts out in a French airport as we see Marjane smoking a cigarette, looking around pensively as the story goes back a few decades to her childhood. To keep things brief, as we go through Marjane's story she clearly went through a lot, from losing family members and friends, to having to deal with "The Guardians". As we go through her life we are introduced to various characters, all with distinct personalities and each add something extra to the story. From the general kindheartedness of Marji's father to the heartbreaking story of Fereydoon, they all make the story all the more heart wrenching. The level of emotion derived from the movie is also stepped up from the different animation and cinematography used. At a particular point in the movie when Marjane is at probably the lowest point of her life, the background turns darker and the world turns utterly bleek, which really made me get into the movie.

I am not the only one who is singing Persepolis' praises though, as in his recent review, Roger Ebert states,"It might seem that her story is too large for one 98-minute film, but Persepolis tells it carefully, lovingly and with great style", and I for one could not agree more. But "Persepolis" is also great for other reasons. For one, it proves McCloud right when he states, "The world of comics is a huge and varied one", as when someone thinks of a comic, I highly doubt they would think of anything like Ms. Satrapi's "Persepolis".

"Persepolis" is not without it faults, however, but they are minor. It leaves a few scenes out from the graphic novel version but also adds a few scenes that weren't present in the novel which added more to the movie overall. The movie also took several scenes out of order from the graphic novel, but they still work and are cohesive.

Overall, I definitely give my highest accolades to "Persepolis", it was a heart wrenching detailing of a girl's struggles growing up in one of the toughest of environments possible, yet still has moments of pure happiness. It really toys with your emotions and for that I love it.

Draft

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel that details the story of a young girls tribulations during the Iranian revolution of the 1980's. It was recently made into a movie which stays as faithful as possible while is still a great movie for those who have never read it.

Persepolis starts out in a French airport as we see Marjane smoking a cigarette, looking around pensively as the story goes back a few decades to her childhood. To keep things brief, as we go through Marjane's story she clearly went through a lot, from losing family members and friends, to having to deal with "The Guardians". As we go through her life we are introduced to various characters, all with distinct personalities and each add something extra to the story. From the general kindheartedness of Marji's father to the heartbreaking story of Fereydoon, they all make the story all the more heart wrenching. The level of emotion derived from the movie is also stepped up from the different animation and cinematography used. At a particular point in the movie when Marjane is at probably the lowest point of her life, the background turns darker and the world turns utterly bleek, which really made me get into the movie.

Persepolis is not without it faults, however, but they are minor. It leaves a few scenes out from the graphic novel version but also adds a few scenes that weren't present in the novel which added more to the movie overall. The movie also took several scenes out of order from the graphic novel, but they still work and are cohesive.

Overall, I definitely give my highest accolades to Persepolis, it was a heart wrenching detailing of a girl's struggles growing up in one of the toughest of environments possible, yet still has moments of pure happiness. It really toys with your emotions and for that I love it.

Critcal Criteria

While both provide a good critical review of Spiderman 2, Mr.Ebert and Mr.Gilchrist cover a wide array of topics and differ on the importance placed on them. Gilchrist and Ebert covered a lot of the same topics however disagreed on most. Gilchrest thought that most scenes were drawnout and had to lengthy of dialogue while Ebert viewed them as just the right amount of time to develop the characters. On the topic of special effects, Gilchrest liked Raimi's earleir work however barely mentions the subject when compared to Ebert who thought they were fantastic. Ebert also goes on to say how pleased he was the Toby Maguire reprises his role as Spiderman in the sequel, while Gilchrist fails to speak much if at all about the actors. Gilchrist does, however, mention that fans of 70's Spiderman books will enjoy this movie as its storyline is more similar to the comics of that era, where as Ebert doesn't mention similarities to the comic version at all. Over all, Gilchrest takes a more negative approach and doesn't seem to have enjoyed the movie that much where as Ebert gave the movie much praise. Personal taste seemed to have somewhat of an influence on the critics as Ebert obviously had different expectations for the movie than Gilchrest.

Persepolis

After watching the movie version of Persepolis, I think it did justice to the graphic novel. The movie is animated and keeps the same style as the novel, essentially becoming a moving version of it. One difference, however, is that the movie seemed to a have a darker undertone than the novel, as we could now hear the character's voices and tones. Another few differences between the novel and movie is that many scenes were dropped or in the wrong sequence in the movie version as well creating a few scenes. The movie also was in French with English subtitles, which I actually enjoyed. I do not know French but felt that having the characters speaking a foreign language instead of English helped me get into the movie more for whatever reason.

Exercise 1

1.) a.) A recent experiment suggests that there are dangerous levels of Chemical X in the Ohio groundwater.
b.) Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that this novel has certian flaws.
c.) I've always believed that football is so boring.
d.) It is often said that male students often dominate class discussions.
e.) You would think that the film is really about the problems of romantic relationships.
f.) I cannot help thinking that templates like the ones in this book will stifle my creativity.

Reaction to Eisner

I found the Eisner comic strip explaining comics to be a pretty interesting read. According to Will Eisner, comics have to have sequential art which is somewhat common sense, but he also adds that it is stirctly neutral when it comes to style, quality, and subject matter. Meaning that a comic can pretty much cover any topic. The comic goes on to say that most people stereotype comic books into being for 8 year olds, an offense I am definetly guilty of. The comic often takes to long to get it's point across but still gets the information about comics across. The part about abstracting a real life photo was particularly interesting and the images used were particularly helpful.

Exercise 4.m

Although this is my first English class at Virginia Tech, I have written many papers so far this year for school. I usually write in my dorm room in Pritchard at my desk mainly due to the fact that my laptop, which I almost always do my writing with, is always sitting there. The conditions I write in have varied widely so far this year. As I sit typing now, my surroundings are complete silent, which is a rarity as most of the time I write a paper my conditions are far worse. On one occasion I had a paper due at 8 am Friday morning. Being the intelligent person I am, I waited till Thursday night to do it. To add to this I also planned on going out that night, so it was a race against the clock to finish my paper by around 10 pm. To make things even worse, a good number of my friends were in my room watching television and thought it would be hilarious to repeatedly bother me while I sat typing. Somehow despite this I received an A. So to sum up a slight rant, the conditions that I write in vary extremely. I really don't use any stategies in my process, I usually type what comes to mind, as I am doing right now. As for drafting processes, sometimes I will ask my friends what they think of my paper, but that is somewhat of a rarity. When it comes to revision, if my friends read my paper and find an error or out of place sentence I usually take their advice. Other than that, I usually will read over my paper and fix what I find wrong. My ideal writing conditions would be just to have my room to myself, little or no noise and for it to be an hour to two after I am done class. This way I wouldnt being worry about being constricted by my schedule or have to deal with distractions. My experience with workshop and peer reviews is certainly not negative, however, I rarely accomplish much when participating in one, but hopefully that will change this semester.

Workshop Homework

1.) As a genre, workshop drafts have a few specifics as to what they look like. For instance, most workshop drafts may be more choppy, as the writer is just beginning the process of writing his paper. The draft may also contain grammatical errors that the writer may have overlooked or need rewording, due to it being his first draft. If the writer did a good job, however, the paper should mainly be a preliminary version of what the writer wants to achieve, basically being a written out outline.The audience for a workshop draft is the writer's fellow student as the purpose of a workshop is to get your peer's response in order to improve your paper. The teacher may also be included in the audience if he provides additional recommendations for the writer. A final draft differs from a workshop draft in its purpose and audience in that the final draft is your final version of your paper and is written for only your teacher. Also, a final draft is for a grade where as a workshop draft is not usually graded, atleast in my own experience.

2.) If I were to review Essay R in a workshop I would provide a few reccomendations. First, I would reccomend he looks back over his paper for grammatical errors, as there were many in the essay and it's a simple error to correct. I would also reccomend he provide more sources in his paper as he only cites a website, which has weak credibility. Referencing the WWE's website, for instance, would be a much better option. Another issue the paper had was that while the writer discussed present day wrestling throroughly, he barely touched upon wrestling of the 80's. Seeing how the purpose of the paper was to compare and contrast the two, the focus should be more equal. A last reccomendation would be to reorder some of his sentences and to scrap some of his paragraphs althogether in an effort to improve the flow of his paper, as it felt choppy and oddly ordered.

Grading Essay R

After reading the essay contrasting wrestling today vs. wrestling of the past, I would say the author deserves an A-. The author uses all the rhetorical appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos, in presenting his argument. He has credibility as he cites specifically mentions statistics describing how the WWE generates much more money comparitively to the past, as well as citing that he has been a wrestling fan since his youth. Logos is used as the author uses common sense reasoning, citing facts that contrast wrestlers from two different areas, such as how today's wrestlers are more devoted to stay in shape and lift weights many times a day. Finally, pathos is used as the author sadly notes how wrestling of today is more vulgar than the past and cites specific words to evoke a reaction from the reader. The author has decent diction, his opening and closing sentences are decent as well. One thing he could have improved was the flow of his essay, as some paragraphs are somewhat choppy, although it doesn't interfere with him accomplishing the purpose of his essay.

Exercise 2h

1.) The writer's rhetorical situation seems to be the Primaries for the Democrats in the presidential election. He seems to be writing for the main purpose as to dissuade people from voting for Hilary Clinton, mainly because he focuses on her husband's faults and assumes she will be similar to him in office. His audience would be his fellow college students who also read Collegiate Times, due to him writing an editorial posted by the paper.

2.) The genre conventions used in the text are referring to past errors (such as Clinton's sex scandal) and also making strong claims, as many editorials do. I have never written in this genre, however I have read various editorials and political writings and both the conventions used were familiar to me.

3.) Instead of an Editorial, the writer could have used another genre such as an actual article. An article would have had an advantage of being more fact based and less opinionated, however he may be sacrificing some of his appeal for his side if he does not come off strong enough as he would in an editorial.

4.) The writer could deliver a speech in front of a public space in order to communicate his purpose to another audience altogether. This would allow him to communicate to a wide array of people, as almost anyone can attend a speech. The writer may need to censor himself somewhat, as the array of people attending could vary in age. He would also need to alter his style of writing, as a speech has a completely different writing style than a speech.

5.) Another profession's writings that would have the same genre conventions as an editorial would possibly be movie reviewers or food critics, as the base a lot of what they say on their opinion, which is what editorials essentialy are. I can't imagine a social worker, teacher, or scientist using the same genre conventions.