Blog post #8- Reflection Writing

When you think about your past as a reader and writer, what person or set of people have been the biggest influence on your reading and/or writing (positive or negative)? Why?

When it comes to my reading/writing, a lot of people have influenced me. The first set of people that come to my mind are my school teachers. By giving innumerable assignments and literature readings, my teachers have helped me to work on my English. From basic grammar rules to reading complex and long paragraphs, my teachers have guided me and helped me overcome every obstacle. In addition to my teachers there are several other people who have influenced my writing/ reading.

My father is a columnist and has published several articles in various newspapers. He has also published a book on Indian Democracy and Electronic Voting Machines. At home, my father used to help me out with my school assignments. Whenever I did not know what a word meant, I would ask my father and he would explain it to me with an interesting example. I and my father both love watching sports. Many a times he would come to me with an interesting sports article or he would send me the link to it on Facebook.

My brother also influenced my reading in a positive way. He is an avid reader and loves to read novels especially biographies. He always tried to convince me to read one of his favorite novels. Most of the times I was too uninterested to read what he suggested. But one time I did give in to his requests and agreed to read a novel on Steve Jobs.  When I started reading the novel, I was so immersed in the book that for the entire day all I did was read the book. That is the time when I started  to develop interest in reading.

It has hard to think about people who have influenced my writing in a negative way. To be honest I do not quite know what influencing writing in a negative way exactly means. Maybe SMS language these days can be thought of as a negative influence on writing although it seems to be very trivial. When I think about it, it is only people who have influenced me either in a positive way or have not influenced me at all.

Blog Post #7 – Grant Writing

The proposal I read was from the Habitat for Humanity, a non profit organization to the Austin Bailey Health and Wellness Foundation. The proposal was regarding a request for  funding  to help HFH in their endeavor to provide simple, decent and affordable housing to low income families in the Stark and Carroll Counties. That year, HFH was faced with four more physically handicapped families than the previous year and in order to provide them with proper housing facilities pertaining to their needs HFH was a bit low on funds. The proposal requests a funding of $50,000 from the Austin Bailey Health and Wellness Foundation to assist HFH with the handicap necessities for these families such as concrete access ramp, wheelchair accessible cabinetry in the kitchen etcetera.

I felt that the Grant proposal was very well written. The most interesting aspect of the proposal was how the author(s) made use of all the three modes of persuasion – Ethos, Pathos and Logos to convince the reader. The proposal started off with some background information about the organization and how groups and individuals in the area granted monetary donations to it. The proposal talked about the organization’s workings and how the money received by the organization was only used in improving the lives of people. In all these statements the author(s) established credibility for the organization. The author(s) made use of Pathos in the entire proposal which made it very convincing. I liked how the proposal  gave life stories of all the four handicapped families to further strengthen the proposal and convince the reader. The proposal was very detailed and explained very elaborately how the proposed money was going to be used. I liked how the budget was laid out indicating the the total income and total spendings of the previous and the current year.

I feel this grant proposal is a bit different from what we are working on because this is for a more humanitarian reason whereas we are aiming to provide students with more online writing resources. Well but in the end we can say that both the grants are for the betterment of society.

Blog Post #6: Plagiarism

After Reading ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’ by Jonathan Lethem I strongly support the idea that nothing in this world is truly original. This is not only the case for literary and artistic work but even our thoughts, ideas and actions are in some way influenced by other people. Letham uses numerous examples to back up his argument about Plagiarism.

He starts off by talking about how plagiarism has been going on for many decades and how people have been using other people’s work for inspiration for their artistic or literary work. The first example he gives is of a tale published by Heinz von Lichberg in 1916 known as Lolita. Forty years later, Vladimir Nabokov adopted the same tale for his own novel. Similarly, he talks about how appropriation has always played a key role in Bob Dylan’s songs and then later talks about how Blues and Jazz musicians have long been enabled to freely rework existing melodic fragments. In all examples Letham tries to convey that no matter how famous a piece or a work is, it is not one hundred percent original and is in some way or the other inspired by people or the present culture.

I feel that it is impossible to produce a truly original piece of work not just in the field of art and literature but in every field of study because we are greatly influenced by the time and place we are living in. If people were to produce only original work, work that did not make use of other people’s work, then we would have never made any advancement. Mankind has always worked in a stacking up knowledge fashion and that is the only way can improve and make global development.

Blog Post #5

I have never done  proper research work before except for a few projects in high school which required a little bit of research. The research mainly involved looking for information online. I used resources like Wikipedia and articles on various websites to learn about the facts and events related to the topic.

The difficult part of research from my past experiences is mainly looking for reliable and appropriate sources of information. Sometimes it gets hard to find information that you’re looking for. Moreover, connecting all the pieces of information that you’ve collected poses as a challenge. However the easy part of research is you have all the resources at your disposal. With the right search terms you can find innumerable articles relating to your topic which aid you in your research.

CDA explains very well about how research is crucial for communicating effectively with your audience. One needs to have in depth knowledge about the topic in order to make an impact on others.I find the information in the book quite helpful because  CDA explains in a step wise fashion on how to achieve a good research paper. It explains how by developing questions one can analyze the topic much better and look for possible sources. It also explains about how one must consider other’s perspective about the topic as well before writing a research paper.

Blog Post #4

The thing that was hard about the website analysis for me was the writing itself. I tend to make a lot of changes to my writing and can never be satisfied with my writing. I’m very indecisive when it comes to writing something and thus take a lot of time in completing it. The only feedback I took as I worked on my final draft was feedback from my teacher and my peers that are in the same class. One thing that helped me improve my writing was a documentation about transitional keywords by the Purdue Owl. It helped me improve my sentence structure and made the writing more coherent. One invaluable resource which I would call as a ‘dream resource’ would be a person who can constantly give me suggestions as soon as I edit my paper and who can give me tips on how I can improve my writing.

Blog Post #3 – Peer Review

1. I never had a peer review earlier. Peer review is a very nice way to look at how your classmates have been working on their assignment. When we review other’s assignment we start comparing our assignment with their’s. This allows us to inspect any kind of errors we had in our assignment and allows us to improve any section we feel can be improved. Peer review also helps the other person as we can give suggestions about their work.
2. I learnt that in my assignment I was quite strong with visual rhetorics and  applied them well to my essay. As a reader I learnt that we should have proper transitions for paragraphs to make it coherent and make it easier for the reader to read.
3. I found the entire idea of peer review quite interesting. The opportunity to review your classmate’s work helps a lot to make improvements to your own work. It was quite difficult to answer all the specific question of the peer review sheet.
4. Our weekly conference is similar to the peer review because in our conferences each one of us discusses about their assignments, read other’s work, give comments and suggestions. It is also different from peer review as in peer review we review our peer’s work more effectively and give suggestions even about the organization of the essay rather than just specific sections.
5. The most helpful thing about peer review, as I stated earlier,  was that we could make improvements to our own work by reviewing someone else’s work. I’ll definitely be open to doing this again.

Blog Assignment #2

link – http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/haunted/hauntedplacesofindiana.htm

1. The primary purpose of the website is to give a list of all the haunted places in Indiana. It’s purpose is also to learn of any new haunted places from the readers, that are not on the list.
2.  First, the website uses many bright colors( Red, Yellow, White and Blue). Second, there is a totally unrelated ad at the top and bottom of the page. Third, the website is too long and does not have any pictures. One has to scroll a lot, to read through the entire webpage.
3. The website’s use of bright colors can cause a strain to the reader’s eyes and make it difficult to read the website. The advertisement at the top may distract the reader from the main purpose of the website. The length of the website may make it very boring for the reader to read through the entire website.
4. The website uses Contrast to some extent. The white colored text contrasts with the dark blue background. The website uses Repetition as well. In the entire website, the name of a haunted place and it’s description repeats itself. The website is also also aligned properly. The main headings are center aligned and all the text in the body of the website is left-aligned. For analyzing proximity, there aren’t many elements in the website. As far as the text is concerned, it does follow proximity because all the haunted places in a certain region are grouped closer together.

Blog Assignment #1

Parents: Life at Purdue has been amazing. These few weeks have been the most exciting weeks of my life. Purdue feels like home already.

Parents: Don’t worry mom and dad, although I forgot to add Detergent the first time, I feel like I’m an expert at doing laundry now.

Parents: Here’s the bus I use for most of my classes, The Silver Loop bus.

Friends: I’ve made a lot of new friends here at Purdue from different parts of the world and having different backgrounds. I cherish these new relations but at the same time I would like to say that no matter where I go you guys ( high school friends) will always stay with me and no one can ever replace you.

Friends: This is our Basketball stadium, The Mackey Arena. Can’t wait to see a Basketball match here.

Friends: The Food here is so delicious!

Mitch Daniels: Sir, this campus is just breathtaking. I’ve never seen an institution this beautiful.

Mitch Daniels: Sir, the club Fair was amazing. There is so much diversity among the clubs. There is a club/organization for almost every field. I found myself interested in many such clubs. There is so much oppurtunity here at Purdue. Proud to be a Boilermaker. BOILER UP!

Mitch Daniels: The Bell Tower looks so beautiful at evening. The Purdue Tradition of not walking under the bell tower makes it all the more fascinating.

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