Bibliography

Learning to Teach the Five-Paragraph Theme

Tara Star Johnson, Leigh Thompson, Peter Smagorinsky and Pamela G. Fry

Research in the Teaching of English 
Vol. 38, No. 2 (Nov., 2003), pp. 136-176

Published by: National Council of Teachers of English

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40171635

Title:	Moving High School Juniors Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay Through Teacher-Modeling
Author:	Burks, Brooke

http://etd.auburn.edu/etd/handle/10415/2398

Two New Heuristics in Response to Formulaic Writing: What Lies beyond Oversimplified Composition Instruction

James T. Davis II, Georgia State University

http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/73/

McCloud

 

In this article, McCloud talks a lot about images and pictures that we see everyday, but puts them in a different light. He talks about cartoons, especially their faces, and relates to humans being self-centered. He believes that we see ourselves everywhere, even in inanimate objects, and we give things identities and characterisitcs that don''t need them. Lastly, he says that our face is a mask like any other, we have just worn it since we were born. Also, how one sees their face is different from how others see it and vice versa.

 

 

Bernhardt

 

Bernhardt's whole article is about how different characteristics and ways of writing appeal to different readers. Depending on what type of paper it is or who it is for should change what the paper looks like so it will appeal to the reader. It is almost like how they say we eat with our eyes first. If a reader looks down at an article and it is just one long paragraph with no indents, titles, etc., the reader will lose interest very quickly. The way you display your work is just as important as the words in it. I know that for myself I hat reading really long paragraphs. If the article has short paragraphs with titles, indents and the like, I find it easier to read. The more white space the better.

 

 

Opinions

 

I didnt't find McCloud's article to contain anything of great importance. He calls humans selfish because we see ourselves in everything else, but that's because we are a part of everything else. Most things are designed so we can relate to them, like cars. I felt like he was just trying to confuse us to make himself sound smarter than us but he really didn't have an interesting idea.

 

On the other hand, I did like Bernhardt's article, and I agree with what he says. Like I said earlier, if a person looks down at an article that is just pages and pages long with no spaces or titles, they will lose track and get bored quickly. I agree that the way a text is organized is very important if you want your words and ideas to appeal to the reader.

Project 2 Topic

Five Paragraphs

 

One topic of the writing construct that really stood out to me when we were talking in class was that of having to use 5 Paragraphs when writing a paper. The main reason I question this is because what happens if you either have more or less than 3 main points in your paper. You either have to stretch to find another main point and then you have a weak paragraph, or you have to shrink two or more main points into one and then you would have a super paragraph and it may be confusing to read. Also, I feel like dividing your paper into may paragraphs makes it easier to read. If you have to write a 10 page paper and you can only use 5 paragraphs, that means the paragraphs are going to be two pages a piece. For me, reading for that long without a break in the words can get confusing, but if you break it up into sub paragraphs, it will look less intimidating and be easier to read.

Porter

Summary

 

The main point that Porter talks about throughout the entire article is intertextuality. This is the idea that all texts ever written have taken traces of previous texts or ideas throughout them. There is no text that is completely original. He even goes as far as saying that the Declaration of Independance, written by Thomas Jefferson, used intertextuality. We think of this wriiten work as an original piece that used new ideas to assert our independence, but Porter says that even Jefferson took words and ideas from other papers or people, and used them in the writing of the Declaration. Lastly, he talks about the discourse community, which is a group of people who communicate and regulate around a common interest.

 

 

 

QD #4

 

In the past my writing has been evaluated on whether it was correct grammar and punctuation and all that jazz, and also if it was an original idea and didn't just summarize other peoples ideas and say it was my own. Porter thinks that it is okay to have other peoples ideas in your paper because every paper ever written has traces of other peoples ideas or thoughts. What really matters is if your points gets across and is accepted by the reader. I agree with this.

 

 

AEI#1

 

This is not really a recent commercia, but it was one that was on during the Superbowl back when I was a kid, and I still remember it pretty well because I liked it. It was a commercial for McDonald's. In this commercial, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan are in the gym shooting basketball. Now for any sports fan, you know that these are two of the top icons in basketball. They proceed to play a game of horse, where the first one to miss has to watch the other eat the Big Mac. I believe this has intertextuality because it utilizes two people that everyone knows and looks up to, and portrays that they like McDonalds so much that they are willing to use their skills to play for it and win the Big Mac. This commercial is directed at the kids who look up to these two players and hope they will say if Michael Jordan and Larry Bird eat Macdonalds, then so should I.

 

Opinion

 

I agree with Porter's views on plagiarism. I find it interesting how he came up with a word for using other people's words or ideas and using them as your own, but not calling it plagiarism, because plagiarism has a negative connotation to it. By calling it intertextuality, it almost allows us to use other peoples ideas to support our ideas. I always hated the idea of plagiarism because every idea that I would have for a paper came from somewhere, whether it was an article I read or something a previous teacher told, and I fel like using these ideas should not be considered plagiarism. I agree with Porter that there is a difference between plagiarism and unconsciously using someone else's ideas in our papers, because everybody does it. 

Kleine Article

                                                        Summary

Michael Kleine's article begins with a very interesting story about a night when he was at the library. As he looked around, he noticed students writing research papers. He said he could tell they were writing research papers because they weren't really working, they were just copying or paraphrasing from books, article, etc. He then says that he is worried because he himself is there to write a research paper, only on a much higher level. He then gives two different types of writers, the hunters who go on a mission and find what they are looking for, and the gatherers, who simply discover or come across things that may be helpful. Next, he decided to test this hunter/gatherer theory by gathering colleagues from different subjects and asking them questions about a recent research paper the wrote. What Kleine discovered is that more educated people, like professors, do their research in hopes of learning something new and being able to inform others about. Students, on the other hand, just want to get the paper over with. Kleine expresses that he hopes one day students will change and start caring about their research and their papers.

                                                    Connections

Right of the bat, i noticed a similarity between Kleine and Rosenberg's article because they both start with a story involving he or she and how they came upon the idea for this article. I also believe these two articles are similar in the aspect that they both try to help students organize and get more enthralled into writing a paper. However, in my opinion, by looking at the titles of the article, it seems that Rosenberg;s article was directed at the students to read, Kleine's article was more directed at the teachers to read.

QDJ#3

 

Research plays an important role in the professionals that Kleine interviews, however it plays a different role than in my papers. For the professionals, they do research to confirm the ideas and thoughts that they are going to write about, but they don't actually take any of their ideas. For students like me, we do research to add substance and words to our papers, and sometimes take words that aren't ours but use them because they relate to our topic and help us reach our page or length requirement.

                                                      Opinion

The first half of the Kleine article had my attention because of the story of the high school kids writing their reserch papers and just paraphrasing sections of books and articles. I remember when i had to write my research paper in high school, and I was definitely guilty of writing my paper similar to the high schoolers that Kleine described. The only thing that I didn't like about this article was that I though his findings section was a little wordy and I found myself having trouble finding what the results actually were.