Reflection Blog

 

Discourse Community Map Response

While writing the Discourse Community Map Response at fisrt I was struggling at deciding what discourse communities should I include in my map. Then when I was done with the map, I took a long time to decide how to start my paper, becasue I did not knew what to put on the introduction. But after a while it was easier for me to just write my ideas and thoughts. I learned many things while writing this paper. One of them is that I found out that I was part of many discourse communities, without knowing it. Every person is part of a discourse community, becasue everyone is part of something, such as a family, friends, social clubs, or sports. On the other hand, while writing this response I noticed that I am missing vocabulary words and some spelling. Becasue when I read my finished paper, I noticed that sometimes I repeat some words constantly, so I went back to change them. Also since my first language is Spanish, sometimes I have trouble expresing myself in English.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis

When I started writing the Visual and Rhetorical Analysis on animal testing, I was having difficulties in understanding what things fall under each category, which in this case were Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. But afterwards I did some research in order to fully understand the exact meaning and purpose of each one, the assignment became much easier to do. Then after having my thoughts and facts in order, I took a long time deciding what to put in my introduction. This was because the assignment needed to be unbiased, so I needed to be very carefull on what words and facts I was putting in the introduction, in order to always stay neutral throughout the entire paper. This assignment helped me to understand more deeply the reasons and meaning of my topic (Animal Testing). Also I learned how to use APA style when doing a paper. There are many little things that I needed to be carefull with, in order to fulfill all the requirements for the APA style. Such as do not forget that the words runnig head only goes on the first page, or that the title goes on all the pages and it is always capitalized. Therefore in the future this paper will be a good reference to go back and review a visual rhetotical analysis, as well as what things does an APA style papar needs.

Annotated Bibliography

For this assignment I had very few difficulties. Although when the Annotated Bibliography was mentioned for the first time in class it seemed that it was going to take a long time to do it and that it will be very difficult since it was in APA style and you needed to site all your sources in a very specific way, after the explanation in class and all the examples we went through, instead of being difficult it became an easy assignment. I think that the hardest parts of doing this assignment was to cite your sources in APA style and the other one was to remain unbiasied while explaining the content of your source, even though the mayority of them were biased. Therefore I learned how to stay in a neutral position throughout the assignment even when all the information I was working with was biased. Another thing I learned while doing the Annotated Bibliography was how to cite in APA style, because it really has many details that are easily forgotten when citing a source, but we went through many examples in class and with practice it became much easier.

Community Problem Report

In this assignment I had some problems. The main problem or difficulty was to have enough research and facts in order to write 4 to 5 pages of accurate and credible information about my topic. Then after complete the pages required of text, the images were very easy to add them in te paper, because there were many images describing different characteristics of animal testing. The text box that we needed to add at the top or bottom of the image was very to add it a well, because you just need to click an option called text box, and write a little description of it. And when adding the references in APA format, it was really easy, because I just used the same ones as the past assignment, which was the annotated bibliography. I liked this assignment because it made me do many research, so I got to learned many facts and statistics about animal testing, which helped me decide which side I was going to pick. Also the information I researched made me change my opinion regarding animal testing. Overall this assignment was not that difficult, because I already had the information and references, in order to write the paper, so the only hard part of it was to complete the 4 to 5 pages.

 

Visual Argument Memo

To: Christine Endlich

 

From: Diego Seira

 

Date: 12-05-2014

 

Subject: PSA Assignment

 

Dear Mrs. Endlich,

 

The problems that I faced while working on the PSA was to learn how to use the program, because it had many different tools which I needed to use in order to accomplish a fluid and informative video. Also in order to obtain the part of the video where the same photo had words that were just appearing, was kind of difficult and time consuming because actually there were many pictures involved, but each one with the same words plus another one as the one before. My intended audience is everyone, because I wanted to let people know how animal testing is not just bad, but it should be illegal as well. I selected this issue because in this days the controversy of this topic has grow a lot, meaning more people is getting involved to many groups and protests concerning animal rights. The most challenging part of the project were two things, the first one was to decide whether we will go for or against animal testing, and the second one was to get to know all the functions of the application. But once I saw a tutorial for the application it became much more easier and it actually became easy. The systematic approach I used is an application called iMovie, which actually is really easy to use and understand, but I would recommend to see a tutorial first that way it actually becomes easier and faster to do it. The most effective aspect of my PSA in terms of presentation and design is that it looks dark making the viewer fell sad. Also I added a sad song which also contributes to the emotions of any viewer, also the description of how animal testing is practiced that the video presents makes them to be focused all the time and to feel bad about all the awful things animals go through will being tested. The way I made my design decisions was by wanting that each person who saw this video, at the end of it, they would be shocked on how animals actually suffer in laboratories. Also the design needed to be dark and sad because that’s how animals feel while being abused during experimentation. I was advocating in order for people to know how bad and illegal is animal experimentation, and to show them how animals suffer and are being held in dark and cold cages their entire life. My solution was to stop buying products that were tested on animals, to sign a petition, to inform people about the true horrors of it, and to donate to certain funds, such as PETA. I feel that I was successful in delivering my advocacy, because by explaining the horrific things animals go through, and giving facts and statistics on how this process actually fails in a constantly, the viewers will stop and think on how they can help to stop this tremendous acts.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration,

 

Diego Seira