Dear Future 110 Students,
In this past quarter of taking English 110 I learned a lot about how to write a good paper. This course was designed well to really teach you the fundamentals of writing. Each course was assigned a theme, mine was technology. At first I didn’t think I would like that there was always a certain topic I had to write about but it actually kept me focused on what it was I was writing about throughout the course. The book Writing Analytically really helps as a reference for your writing. We went over a lot of the material in class but it was nice to also have it when I was working on my assignments. Our first assignment was to find the primary and secondary sources for our research paper. This was difficult t me because I had never done this before so I wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to be like. The assignment for the research paper was to analyze these sources, which I also found difficult because it was my first time doing that. With the help of my teacher and the course it really helped me understand how to analyze sources and papers which is an extremely useful thing to be able to do. Once I understood it, it made writing a lot easier because I was also analyzing myself as I would be writing. The Commonplace assignments that we did were a little more interesting and fun; once again we were analyzing most of the things we read on there. What you need to know to be successful in this course is to be able to analyze well and really follow the steps you are given to do so. If you do not understand something I suggest asking your teacher and looking over the Writing Analytically book and the Commonplace examples. I would also recommend you get a good primary source, one that you fully understand, and from my experience a really opinionated primary source is better because it is easier to analyze and find what is wrong with it. At first I did not choose a good primary source and I had a lot of trouble with it so I had to choose another one and when I did it made it much easier.
Best of luck in the course!
-Ali

Do you think it is right to torture animals? I would assume most people's answer to this question would be no. PETA's answer to this question would be definitely not, they are the largest animal rights organization in the world. In the article, "PETA: How the Messenger Kills the Message", the main question Hannah Crisan is asking is if PETA extreme stunts counteract the message they are trying to convey to their audience. PETA is all about trying to prevent animal cruelty, but their ways of going about trying to convince people to join their views are not the most persuasive. PETA does rediculous things such as throwing blood on celebrities if they are wearing fur which completely crosses the line. Their ideas just go too extreme for most people to respect. For example their superbowl commercial that never got aired tried to promote being a vegitarian rather than eating meat, but it was an innapropriate commercial that had a lot of sexual references and most people would have probably gotten offended by it. Another completely rediculous and disrespectful act PETA did was by putting the headstone near Colonel Sander's grave. PETA has it out for KFC because they think they mistreat their chickens, but like KFC points out they do not own any chicken farms and they get them from the same place other fast food places get their chicken so if they are being mistreated it is and issue they should bring up with the supplier. What they did was still completely out of line and showed such disrespect with messing with someone's grave site. Most people would be disgusted by this act, not convinced to support them. PETA should reconsider their methods of persuasion because by continuing stunts like this they are only making themselves look worse and seem less credible to the public.

Are you one of the 4o million americans on internet dating websites? If so, I would tell you to reconsider your decision. The article I read, "Online Dating is Dangerous and Deceptive," is all about how dangerous these types of websites can really be. The author tries to get across the point in a very strong way by giving out numbers of how many people have been abducted, murdered, and raped. By doing this the author was trying to use both ethos and pathos as a method to grab the audience's attention. By giving out these numbers the author was using ethos by trying to make himself seem more credible by giving out stats. He was also using pathos because the stuff he was talking about is very serious and likely to get a strong emotion out of people when they hear the danger of these websites. Throughout the article the tone of the author is serious and trying to be very persuasive in turning people away from online dating. I am not sure exactly how credible this author is and the websites he references in his article, however I do agree online dating is dangerous. In the article he was talking about how easy it is for people to lie and how many predators are on these types of websites and this is all very true. It is very dangerous to give out information about yourself to strangers that you do not know. In this day and age it is only becoming more popular though, because people are getting more and more attached to the internet so this is an easy way in their minds to meet people; They do not consider the extreme danger in doing so.

http://star.txstate.edu/content/online-dating-deceptive-and-dangerous#content

Do you have a facebook or a myspace? If so, do you feel as though your privacy is protected? The truth of the matter is if you do, you really don’t have much privacy at all. The article I chose was the article by Yahoo tech titled, “Is facebook killing privacy—on purpose?”. The article is meant for anyone to read, especially people on the internet who are involved in social networking. In the article the author goes on about how privacy has really gone away over the years. How now people can find out just about anything they want to about you from the internet. The author uses repetition with the word privacy numerously throughout the article. The way the author’s persona affects the way I read the article was the way he goes on about how much things have changed over the years and talks about how privacy always used to be a given thing to people when he was growing up. His tone almost seemed cynical of social networking and how the internet has changed. I did find the article pretty effective in making people think about their privacy. I feel as though the author also used pathos, which was a little bit of fear to get people to worry about the kind of information any stranger could be finding out about them. I think the point he was trying to get across was it is alright to have a facebook or be involved in a social network but if you are you should not expect and privacy because the whole point of a social network kind of takes that away. I found this article interesting because I (and most people I know) do have a facebook so it was intriguing to read about information on the site and how more people can access my information then I realized if they wanted to. The analysis I did for this article was a little different than the articles I’ve done in class because the only picture I had I feel as though didn’t go with the article and it was different analyzing some one else’s blog than an article or advertisement.

Yahoo Tech Blogs-Facebook Killing Privacy?

AND

In my fridge and on my food shelf I have a variety of foods. The food people eat can tell a lot about a person. Sometimes people eat more of a type of food depending on their ethnicity and culture. The food I eat however is not really a reflection on my ethnicity. I am Irish and Swedish but I do not eat a lot of Irish and Swedish food. The food in my fridge and on my shelf is a combination of both some healthy food and junk food. I try to eat healthy to stay in shape and stay healthy but I also love food that is not always the best for you. I try to keep a pretty balanced diet, kind of like my personality. I do not only strictly eat one type of food, healthy or unhealthy, because I like both. That is like a lot of different things in my life, I try to keep an open mind to a lot of things and can go either way, just like my diet. The healthy food in my fridge represents the side of me that likes to take care of myself. I try to eat some healthy food because I am an athlete here so it is important that I stay in shape. My unhealthy side that loves to eat junk food represents my fun side. I love to go out and have a good time and do exciting things. There are still a lot of things the food people eat cannot tell about a person. There is a lot more to my personality than what comes from my diet, but my diet represents how I try to live an over all balance life style.

Primary Sources

The primary source i found interesting that we went over today was the article "The Outsourced Memory" by Brooks. I found his article interesting because what he is basically saying is that the technology is allowing people to become more lazy and actually become less intellegent. Although throughout the article it made technology sound like a good thing because he was explaining how it basically does everything for us, that is also the negative. The younger generation relies a lot more on technology then people used to and he thinks this is causing people to not be as smart and be more lazy. I do agree with his thoughts to an extent but I also think technology is a good thing and there are many benefits coming from it growing.
-Ali