Response to Robert Clemans Post on Rhetoric

I enjoyed your post on rhetoric, it did a great job of defining and giving specific examples of each type of rhetoric. Your writing was very direct and to the point you included a brief history and the examples were also clear and easy to identify the rhetoric involved. I continue to struggle to understand the difference between ethos and pathos sometimes, since it seems to me that if something was involving me specifically, it would be emotional to me. Comparing your examples helped me see the line that exists between the two type of rhetoric, that even though the ethos may be very personal, it doesn't necessarily have to be emotional.

Chapter 6 & 7

The book continues to guide the readers, as authors, to focus our writing and our research to focus on our readers, using them as a guide for how we approach our writing. Chapter 6 centers on tailoring your research around you readers, by doing this it helps to eliminate time that may be wasted on topics that may not quite fit into your readers interest. This ongoing process starts by defining your research before you actually start collecting source and information, once defined you can then compare what you need to research and find how it applies to your reader. Taking this approach will allow you to find source that you may have overlooked, but are of vital interest to your readers. You can also use your sources to find other sources, check the list of referenced materials from your current source, perhaps they found something that may be of use to you. As you research you topic always make sure to evaluate the information you find and make sure they adhere to the goals of you defined at the beginning of your research as well as checking if the information applies to your readers.

Chapter 7 tackles drafting your paper from the smallest of paragraphs up to the largest of chapters. Starting your paragraphs should always be about the topic covered in the paragraph, also if you are using any generalization they should also be up towards the beginning of the paragraphs. Putting the topic and generalization will increase they reader's ability to skim through the writing picking out the sections that are of interest to them. The process of your writing should always progress from most important to least important, that way what is important has a better chance of being read, not skipped over. Use of good organizational skills are vital to writing in a way that the reader's chances of finding what matters to them most.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is as much and art form as it is a science. It is the ability to persuade your audience to seeing your point of view. To truly be proficient in rhetoric it is essential that you can appeal to all types of audience in ways that stir their emotions, makes the message personal to them and makes sense logically. Rhetoric is used every day in any form of communication, advertisements, political campaigns, business proposals and personal messages all use it. Use of rhetoric is how we achieve our goals, anything as large scale as a multi-million dollar business deal to simple request between friends. We appeal to whichever side of our audience we believe will pull the most weight in our favor. Ethos, pathos and logos are the three aspects of rhetoric they cover identity emotion and logic respectively. Through the use of these three aspects of persuasion, we have the tools needed to effectively communicate; the art of rhetoric is knowing how to use these aspects. It is not enough to be able to identify what is what, having the ability to shape peoples’ opinions and feeling through the use of rhetoric is where it’s true power lies.

Chapter Reading

This week’s reading assignment started out with chapter 4, Planning for Usability. It talks about how to plan out the structure and organization of your paper to make it easy to read, as well as easy to refer to. It covers how to create a table of contents to make it easier for readers to go directly to the information they need, reducing the extra frustration that can go along with not being able to find what they are looking for. Also, grouping information that is similar or pertains to the same topic in the same portion of the report will make your writing more user friendly. The chapter also mentions that you want to "Give the bottom line first" this goes for your overall paper as well as each section, whatever point needs to be made with that section, should be stated right up front to make for easier perusal.

Chapter 5 covers persuasion; it explains the goals, strategies and approaches to writing a persuasive paper. Persuasion can be used as a tool to reverse your reader's stance on the topic at hand, reinforce a current opinion held by your reader or shape their opinion on a subject that they have no previous knowledge or feelings about. In order to do this you need to plan ahead, you must know what your reader’s feelings on the subject is. Are they supportive or oppositional? What objections would they have? What is your reader's interest in the subject? Once you can answer these questions you will be well on your way to writing a solid paper that can sway them to your side of things. If you know that what you are proposing will be a costly investment to the reader, you'll want to be able to assure them that it will be worth the money. By the end of your paper the goal is to have laid to rest all concerns and apprehension, leaving your reader feeling confident in your proposal.

Chapter 16 is all about building effective communication and productivity in a team setting. Working by yourself may be hard, but working with a team can prove to be more difficult at times. Organization and planning are key to be successful in group related business and professional ventures. This chapter tackles how to get a team set up and keep it running on task through the duration of the project. First off you want to structure the team, pick a team leader, organizers, researchers, and so on. Everyone should know what the team's expectation of them will be. Once this has been decided a clear statement of the team's goals should be laid out. This is open for revisions as the scope may change during the process of the project, but this outline should always be available to refer back to in order to keep the team on track. Create a schedule of when tasks should be done and stick to it as much as possible. Throughout the term of the project meetings should be organized to keep the team up to date on the progress of the team as a whole as well as individual's progress. This will aid in keeping the project moving forward as well as providing a place for members to voice any issues they are having that someone else in the group may be able to help with. The book also gives pointers on how to conduct meetings as well as how one should act while in these project meetings.

Chapter 23 is about reader-centered instructions and how to write them. The four basic points the book uses are:

1. Writing clearly and succinctly
2. Use plenty of graphics
3. Design usable and attractive pages and screens
4 Test your instructions

The chapter covers how to organize your instructions in a well thought out and logic manor. Don't make assumption about what your readers may or may not know. Assume that they have never done this task before and write in a way that is clear and easy for them to understand. Use of graphics is helpful if not vital in helping your readers along the way. This was they don't have to try and interpret what exactly you are trying to write about and allows them to see what they are suppose to be doing. Make the layout of your instructions easy to read and navigate, not to cluttered or overbearing, your reader should be able to easily follow one step after the other to finish the task. In the end, you want to test the instructions on someone who has no previous knowledge of the task at hand. As a writer who already knows what you are doing, you may have left out some processes that you do naturally, but your readers may not have to experience or knowledge to do it without being told so. The rest of the chapter gives examples and details of how to go about doing this.

Response to Melissa Dawson's Blog Post

Very nice summary of the weekly readings, a thought that your list of all the guidelines was very handy as well. It helped me to grasp the full scope the of the chapter to see them listed out as they were. I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the intercultural aspect of writing, I realized after reading what you had written that I had overlooked some useful information when I had read the chapter. I think you also did a good job of referring back to the examples of possible cultural misunderstanding. After reading your post I went back and read those sections again and noticed quite a bit of new information that I had missed the first time. So thank your for your thoroughness in your post, it helped me get more out of my reading.

Reading Response for Chapter 3

Chapter 3 focuses on setting and defining goals for your writing. The guidelines at the beginning of the reading has guidelines on how to approach your readers as well as mapping out what you really want to convey to them. In order to effectively communicate you will need to know a little about the reader, what type of person are they, how well do you know them, what cultural difference may have a factor in how they read your message. With the rise of a more global workplace the ability to communicate effectively with someone from another culture is a must. I think the book does a thorough job of covering many aspects of intercultural communication, which will become even more necessary as we continue on a path to global business. Another point that stuck out to me was guideline 8, it states that you need to be aware of who all you readers will be. Realizing that even though you may write specifically to one person, that does not mean that it won't be shared with other people that may be working with your original reader. If you can identify that say possibly their manager may be looking over your communications or a different department, your writing can change to make your message clear to all readers involved.

Writing

Writing has never been my strong side, I have a hard time collecting my thoughts and putting them down in an orderly fashion that can be understood by others. I would much prefer to talk an issue out with someone than to try to convey all I need to say in print. When I do have to write, usually for school related reasons, I follow the path of the procrastinator. I found that the best results I get from my papers happen when the majority of the writing has been done within a couple of days from the due date. The urgency to finish my writing drives me and somehow I spend less time agonizing over little issues in my papers and allows me to focus on writing the paper as a whole. Another drawback I face is that my grammar and organizational skills are somewhat lacking and if I spend too much time proofreading and editing my papers, I will tend to edit more mistakes into my writing then I originally had. In short writing papers and reports is quite the ordeal for me, one which I never look forward to. I know that I have a very haphazard approach to writing, but it has served me decently so far. I am more than willing to learn how to improve in this area of writing; I just need some incentive and direction to pull it off.

Assigned Reading Response (Chapters 1, 20 & 22)

As I read chapter one of the textbook I began to gain a better understanding of what this course may be about. Coming into the course I was prepared to learn how to properly write reports and do my paperwork correctly. The feeling I got from the first chapter was that this course and book are focused more on preparing me to become a better communicator as a whole in the professional realm. Previously whenever I compose a message or communicate with teachers or other classmates I always have the message I want to send in mind, though the book points out that the reader should always be the main focus. A section that stood out to me was pointing out that your readers react to what they are reading in the moment that they read it. This section of the text warns against leading your communications with anything that would set the tone for the entire message, such as saying something derogatory that will immediately make your reader defensive to what you are saying.

Chapter 20 focused on writing with a reader centered approach, giving helpful tips on how to remove the focus from yourself and placing it on your reader. One section that I found interesting was guideline 2, where the text states that your main point should always come first, except if it might come across negatively. I had never thought of the order in which I wrote something had much significance beyond simple introduction, main body of text and conclusion. I also found the pointers and guides to writing memos and emails very useful as well.

I can relate the most to chapter 22 the most out of any of the readings so far. Many school projects I have been a part of all require proposals to be approved by the teacher. Some are more in depth than others, but all have specific information that needs to be conveyed. I appreciated the in depth approach the chapter takes in explaining and detailing what your proposal should contain and how they should be arranged.