What's a Major Concept? Group #3

            Like all other courses, this course revolved around a few main topics. Some of which were very broad, and others which were more direct and will stick with us for the rest of our lives. English 1101 is supposed to steer us down a path of writing that is professional, yet still our own. I believe that one of the major concepts that is being taught to us is creativity. Whether we’re reading our own pieces, or those of other’s, we are using our imagination to see further into the reading than just the explicit. Our professor greatly urges us to be creative in our writing because it shows the reader that we have personalities, not just monotone boring mumbles. This concept leads into the next: communication. I believe that people will better understand what is going on if they can relate to what they are reading and as young adults, we have unique voices that can be understood by many readers. Whether we’re telling a story about our childhood, or analyzing the genome of corn, writing is supposed to deliver a message. Thus, communication is a key concept in writing of this course.

            Now one concept works as the backbone of all the others: revision and editing. Entering this course, I would usually edit my own papers and would rarely ask a complete stranger to proofread my work. However, this course has taught me to use the resources around me and accept the criticism as constructive instead of personal and derogatory. Passing our papers onto almost the entire class has not only improved my writing, but it has made me comfortable with my mistakes. Following our first rough draft for our first project, I realized that editing was not the only thing that makes a paper better, but the entire first rough draft as a whole. As Anne Lamott describes in Shitty First Drafts, first drafts are inevitably the core of any successful piece of work. Stephen King did not publish the first draft of his first book. He worked towards making it the best it can be, through a multiple of drafts AND editing! Thus, revision is one of the major concepts that drives this course.

            Last but not least, genre. Genre works as an organizer of ideas. This course has taken us across a wide spectrum of works. Each being categorized under a different genre, our professor has opened our eyes to a load of different subject matters. Whether it was the significance of a handwritten letter, or the purposefully done typos in a scholarly article, each piece of work fell into its own category. I realized that the genre I was trying to write for shifted my writing style. Not necessarily in a negative way, but of course writing a freeverse poem and a research paper on corn will be differently worded.  These major concepts have led us through ENC 1101 and have set up a backbone of writing for the rest of our lives and we thank our professor, Joe Cirio, for his guidance.

Group #4 Collab: Conner, Raegan, Austin, and Jake

A major concept in our class is how writing influences our life in different ways. We've always knows that writing can teach us through books and articles, but we've learned of the other ways that we were oblivious to realizing. We see writing all over the place in the form of social media, texting, and songs. They are unexpected ways that have influenced us without us really knowing that it was writing that did it. We see posts on social media that help us come up with ideas and ways we think we think writing is supposed to look. The way we text our friends no stop has developed a form of slang that we use to communicate faster. In songs we hear all these meaningful lyrics that can either make us feel good about our self, or influence us to go out and do bad things that the song makes us see as cool. We are all writers in the world today even if we aren't famous, without knowing it sometimes we all write our thoughts and ideas and that will in term let them be seen. 

A question we’ve been hearing a lot in class is “What is writing?”  Going into ENC 1101 the idea of writing was very black and white, but class has added another grey area to the mix.  The question what is writing was not just the question, but also the answer.  Writing is unique and up to the individual to understand and decipher.  Writing is not just a way of communication or vocalization, but it is also a way of self-understanding.   The answer to the question what is writing is the only thing in writing class I actually do not know how to put in words, I’ve been taught that the question and the passion put into writing deserves so much more than just a simple written answer.

Not only does writing give us the basic tools of the trade to communicate with each other. It binds us to a community and gives us an underlying purpose. Community deeply affects the way we interact with other human beings. Yes, your parents raise you, but I think we all know that our experiences and community is what really contributes to our upbringing the most. Writing is affected by this. We can see the differences in community in text sent from person to person now, from ancient times, and everything in between. If you look at writing in the correct way, and read between the lines if you will, you can get an insight on some astonishing things, and gain a gateway to what these people’s lives are like, and the community that they belong to.

Discourse was one of the first major concepts we talked about in class. The term has carried over into every lesson and story we have learned and now plays a vital role in how we understand writing. Discourse is what we use to identify ourselves, it is very similar to a community. A discourse is divided into two categories, primary and secondary. Primary is everything you have learned, all of the knowledge you gain from teachers giving lessons and studying for their exams. Secondary discourse is everything we acquire. This is what we learn subconsciously, like song lyrics for example. You are not trying to memorize them but after listening to it for a while you are able to sing along. You have acquired the lyrics.  Discourses can be created based on your beliefs, location, age and many other things. These discourses also affect how you see and relate to other things and people.

group 6 collaboration journal

One major concept associated with this course is the effectiveness of editing and revision. This has been stressed various times throughout the course whether it was in one of the textbook readings or through practice. Coming into this course I rarely revised my own work let alone even ponder letting someone else do it. My mindset and attitude towards this process has drastically changed. Although this concept was forced on me thanks to the mandatory writing conferences, I have grown to welcome the help. Everyone thinks differently, so as a result others can offer a different take on your paper. This is especially effective when you have a rough draft, which is another major concept of this class. Rough drafts weren’t something I did much of in high school. Usually the teacher would just assign a due date for the final draft. Much like revising my papers, I rejected the notion of having rough drafts. One of the readings I believe it was called, “Shitty Rough Drafts” I thought explained the effectiveness of them very well. Sometimes just writing your ideas down in an essay form can spark something great.

Genres are a major concept of this course because everything falls into a genre. All pieces of literature fall into some form of genre; therefore, genres are unavoidable and are all around everyone. According to Dirk genres are rhetorical situations that are created when something happens over and over again and receives the same response each time. Once we experience a particular response to something we start to understand that response as “normal” and it is expected of us to continue to respond to particular situations in particular ways.  Some forms of literature, movies, and songs can fall into many different genres at the same time making it hard to form a fill in the blank formula for writing different genres. Each genre has certain characteristics that classify it and help to distinguish different genres. There is not set rule for writing; however, all writings will have similarities that allow the to be categorized into different genres. Genres are very important in the world because they allow us to expect certain responses from certain things.

Audience plays an important role in writing by being a main reason of why people write. Audience is a person or group of people which a writer is directing his thoughts and words to in order to tell something. Different types of audiences can also change the way that the writing is discussed and how it is taken. The opinions of the audience may differ from reader to reader but the message that is to be conveyed should always stay the same. A writer may direct certain writings to certain groups or audiences and other pieces to other different audiences.

Group 3 Collaborative Journal

Throughout this course there have been multiple different main ideas and concepts that has been taught to us. The main concept of this course is to see how writing impacts our everyday life. These past four weeks I have realize that writing is a major factor in every one’s life in today’s day in age. Whether you are captioning an Instagram post, texting a friend, or writing a poem, we all use writing as a tool to communicate or entertain. This course has expanded my overall knowledge capacity of writing, it has challenged me in different aspects in writing that I’ve never faced. For example writing about peoples tweets is something I haven’t done before and it was very challenging.  I think this goes to show that this class’s main concept is to challenge the students in a unique way to make them realize that writing isn’t always traditional and it could be as simple as a tweet or quote.  Another concept of this class is that has been brought up multiple times is the question of why should we study writing? This question has made us all think deeply about it because it is not an easy question to answer. But the fact of the matter is we study writing to improve our better understanding of life. Studying writing allows us to see how people feel about certain topics and also understand different cultures and experiences one has.

When looking at the major concepts of this course you should also look at literacy.  Literacy is the ability to read and write.  When you think about it, that’s pretty much you do in this course.  Although you delve into more detail when reading and writing, they are the base of what this course is all about.  Discourse, as we have heard many times over the weeks is also a very important concept of this course.  Discourse is the process of identifying yourself through language.  This is a key concept in this course because much of what we read is how people use their writing to identify themselves.  In “The Library Card” by Wright, we saw a writer identify himself in his community as not well respected and pretty much looked down on by everyone except for one man.  Wright used discourse here to help explain where he fit in to his community and how it shaped him as person along with the forming of his own values.  Then there is learning and acquisition to consider.  Learning is taught to you in your conscious state of mind.  You are aware that you are retaining information when you are learning and that is what we have done in class whenever we learn about a new concept.  We pay attention to what Joe has to say and we consciously remember it.  Then with acquisition we are subconsciously or “unknowingly” absorbing knowledge.  An example of this would be when we were watching the “Everything’s a Remix” videos.  We were not actively trying to remember what we were learning but the next time we listened to Led Zeppelin on the radio, most of us would have remembered that they have used beats from other bands without even trying to recall it.

Group 1: Michaela, Nick, Lexi, Kate

An important concept for this course is Literacy. Literacy is the ability to read and write. Without literacy, we would not have an awesome English class to go to Monday through Thursday. If we did not have literacy, I am not sure how the world would function. There would be no street signs, no texting, emailing, social media, menus, or letters. People would be lost in the world. Literacy allows us to be able to participate in the discourse series. Literacy allows the same nation to communicate with each other. People use literacy to describe their feelings, days, and what is going on in their lives. Without literacy we would not know anything about the past, because people wrote down their discoveries, and without those we would not know about illnesses, the presidents, or the theory of evolution. ~Michaela

There are two types of discourse, primary and secondary. Primary discourse is influenced by your family. How and where they brought you up and what you believe in is part of primary discourse. As well as morals and beliefs. Secondary discourse is what you encounter outside of your primary discourse. The thoughts and beliefs you encounter are interpreted by your primary discourse. The things you were presented or aware of during primary discourse allow for you to view certain things certain ways. ~Nick

Exigence is a problem or demand. There are multiple types of exigence like rhetorical exigence and a just a regular exigence. Usually they are presented to an audience and it is up to the audience to solve it. ~Nick

When writing an organized, audience-focused paper, you have to be able to analyze rhetorical situations. A rhetorical situation has the context of an event that consists of a rhetor, audience, and constraints. A rhetor is the speaker who addresses the audience by creating situations by making issues noticeable. The exigence is the problem/issue that exists. The audience is very attentive and open to learning about the exigence because it can be changed by human interactions. They function as mediators of change. Writing cannot be interesting if it does not have a set of constraints. Constraints are made up of persons, events, objects, and relations that limit decisions and action.  Overall, writing a good paper is tied together by rhetorical situations because that is how writing flows and hooks the reader. ~Lexi

One of the major concepts of this course I believe is writing. Writing has ultimately been the center topic that everything we have done comes down to. Such as how certain things affect our understanding of writing or what roles it has writing taken in our life so far. Writing is defined as the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text. But through this course, we have learned that it is much more than that. The definition of writing can be anything that we want it to be because we are the writers, we get to make our own rules and choose to convey our thoughts through any form we choose. Writing influences and informs in more drastic ways than speaking ever can, it spreads faster and stays out in the world forever, attracting attention by each person who reads it. As we have studied writing in this course as one of our major concepts, we now have realized the deeper meaning of writing. ~Kate

Group 2 collaborative journal

Writing is a cognitive process that is learned from an early age. It's a combination of words and phrases that are strung together to form thoughts, opinions, and ideas. As young children, we begin to comprehend language by hearing it all around us. It then translates into an understanding of how to communicate and express emotions through a pencil or keyboard. Writing comes in numerous styles and forms and could be as simple as a Facebook status or as complex as a well thought out research paper. Whether it would be a handwritten letter or a text message to a friend, both are examples of personal ways to share feelings or experiences. Writing could also be a more formal and public form of expression in cases such as written novels or magazines. Each piece of writing is unique and special in its own way. Figuring out how writing works is crucial in understanding what writing does, the function it has in our lives, and why we should study it.

Writing is a way to inform people of information. It could be described as therapy to the author or reader by the way it could open someone’s mind to see another side of something. It helps someone organize his or her own thoughts and emotions. 

Writing has a major function in life today. It has had a major function in life 1,000,000 years ago, too. Writing is a way for people to communicate with others their personal thoughts along with ideas. It is a way to connect by sharing opinions and stories. This form of communication has the purpose of being very personal. A letter or note can give us insight on the author’s personality from the writing style and word use. Without writing, where would we all be today? We would not know anything about the pass because writing is the strongest, most powerful item we have to figuring out about history. It educates us about what was going on in those generations. Writing should never loss it meaning.  

We should study writing because it provides us with something that we cannot see or understand through just using our words.  With writing we have the opportunity to really understand what is being said and we also can see things through another person's eyes.  Writing has the ability to feel what someone else is feeling and see what they are seeing.  Writing is how we as a people have advanced in this world up to this point.  We can build off of prior knowledge from the peoples before us and apply that to our future for the better.  An example of this would be the tragic events of the Holocaust.  It is a horrible portion of human history but in order to ensure that we never have to come face to face with a situation like that again, we keep a hold of autobiographies of victims of this tragic event.  All in all, we should study writing so that we can be better from it and secure a safer and peaceful future.

Group 4 Collaborative Journal

Writing functions in many different ways. It works to provide our world with a way to communicate and develop, it is also a way to express and convey meaning. Writing comes in different forms: speech, reading, and the written word. There are also different ways to use words; they can be hand-written, typed, or spoken. Without writing we also would have no way of keeping historical records and without historical records there would be no way to advance. The way a piece of writing is presented also has a great deal to do with its effect. Hand written pieces tend to have a more personal feeling while typed papers are more formal. When speaking to a crowd the writing can be more effective because the crowd can hear the inflection and feel the emotion the speaker has. Writing is anything that conveys a message and anything that is used to communicate. It can be as simple as a text message or a fortune in a fortune cookie to as complex as an encyclopedia or text book. Starting as young as toddlers we begin to learn and process spoken word and after that comes the understanding of writing. Writing in every way is the basis of our world. Writing serves as a way for people to communicate. Whether it is through text, tweet, mail, article, or book, someone is trying to convey their thoughts, emotions, and stories to others. The use of writing will be carried with us throughout our entire lives, and because of technological advances we now write constantly on our phones, laptops, and ipads. Writing helps us connect with others that we may not be able to see everyday and keep in touch with them. Because of writing, we are able to build more and stronger relationships with our family and friends. From reading news articles and magazines, we are able to keep up with the current events in our country and around the globe, these things that are very important for the public to be aware of. The function that writing serves in our lives is essential and is used by every person nationwide, obviously meaning that it is significant especially in todays generation of electronics. We should study writing because by reading other peoples writing, our brain is paying more attention and retaining more information than it would if someone were speaking it to you. This allows us to expand our vocabulary and learn new things. Writing has shaped this country and is the backbone of communication.