English 103 Final

Goals are always important when it comes the learning and English 103 has been no different. Setting up goals creates a point that students and teachers must strive to reach. One such goal of English 103 is course goal number four or “compose texts in various media using solid logic, claims, evidence, creativity, and audience awareness.”

Throughout the course of this class, the proof of this goal has been obvious. Professor McArdle constantly reminded us to remember who we were writing for. Whether it is government politicians or our friends on Facebook we had to keep in mind of how our selected audience would respond to our words. For instance, if we wrote something offensive or insulting to the audience, many would stop reading our essays right there and then. Situations like this are often good to avoid. Evidence and claims are also important when appealing to an audience. Well founded claims backed with solid evidence will often be the best way to persuade another person into changing their mind about a subject. Of course the evidence must be true and its source must be valid in the field being represented. If the evidence is used to appeal to the reader’s sense of reasoning, logic becomes an important tool. One of the three main appeals, logic, or logos, can be the best option if the intended audience is most moved by facts, data and statistics. The cold, hard, reasoning types can rarely deny claims that are well established facts. These dimensions in writing are good to keep an eye out for when critically reviewing the work of others.

Course goal number six states “develop strategies for becoming more critical and careful readers of both your own and others’ texts.” This goal cannot be more evident than when the class held group reviews and critically reviewed the works of other students. These review groups encouraged us to keep an eye out for all the ideas we had come to learn in English 103. Appeals, facts, and intended audience were all subjects that we as reviewers kept in mind as we read each others’ essays. I noticed that as the semester went on, more and more people were able to give helpful criticisms of works and find solutions that could solve problems in the text. I notice I myself have become more observant of the texts I read even when not in class. Whenever I see advertisements or the like, I begin to question who the intended audience is or what appeals the advertisers are using. This goal introduced some pretty helpful life skills that I can easily see myself using in the future. This leads me to another life skill I acquired from this class, the skill of appeals.

Course goal number one states “understand that persuasion-both visual and verbal-is integral to reading and composing.” I think this can best be described as the three appeals ethos, pathos, and logos. These three appeals, the appeal of the credibility of the author, the appeal of emotion, and the appeal of logic, all play essential roles in the foundations of persuasion. By learning about these appeals, I feel that I can more successfully write a persuasive essay and realize when those appeals are being used on me.

Lost

I thought I might as well make a blog post about this as I chose it as my favorite text today in English. If you haven't seen Lost, it's about survivors of a plane crash on an island. The island however is not at all ordinary with its smoke monsters and electromagnetic activity. This show is very character driven and has a great plot even with all the holes that McArdle will point out. Anyways I really enjoy this show and I have found that when watching it on DVD it is nearly impossible to stop at one episode.

THX 1138

This time I watched THX 1138, one of George Lucas's first films. I have to say that I was very impressed with the visuals and the sound was great. The movie tells the story of a society where everyone is in a sedated state and has the only purpose of keeping the society in working order. I'm reminded of the movie Equilibrium but in a more subtle, artistic form. The interesting thing about this movie is that the antagonist is the society itself. A community where human emotions are not only discouraged but outlawed. Another funny thing I noticed is all the influences this had on Star Wars. At one point in the movie, there was some off-screen conversation and I believe I caught someone saying "Yeah, I think I ran over a wookie." A must see for any science fiction fan or anyone who enjoys movies.

Boondock Saints

Boondock Saints is an interesting movie about two brothers who believe that a message from God has told them to destroy evil in the city. I really liked this movie, the acting was great and the movie was put together very well. Throughout most of the movie, any action that happened was in the past tense which made the story a little more interesting because you saw the results before you saw the actual events. This movie also brings up an interesting rhetorical idea. If vigilantes were to show up and start killing criminals, should they be labeled criminals themselves?

Dr. Strangelove

As I stated in a previous post, I planned on watching more Stanley Kubrick films. Well, I decided to watch Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and I suppose I was a little disappointed. That's probably because I hyped the movie up for myself or maybe I didn't find much to relate to because of the generational gap. I think it was pretty good satire of when you give too much power to an unorganized government. Peter Sellers was brilliant in this film as I didn't realize that he also played the President and thought he was only the British officer and Dr. Strangelove. I would still recommend it though.

Blog Assignment

Over Thanksgiving break, my family watched several movies, one of which was The Godfather. I'm not a huge fan of watching movies because my family always seems to be able to ruin it for me. For instance, while watching Seven Pounds, my mom was talking all the way through one of the last most emotional scenes by asking random questions like how that could work and stuff like that (if you've seen Seven Pounds you know which scene I'm talking about). Well during my sister asked if the character on screen was about to die and my dad, who had seen the movie before, said "ya, he dies here." I was pretty ticked. I stopped the movie and explained how they had been ruining movies for me for a while now and I wish they would stop. My mom responded that she just wanted to know what was going on sometimes. I told her that if she payed attention to the movie she would know and wouldn't have to ask. I guess I was trying to approach the situation logically and hope that they would understand that all I want to do is enjoy a movie without spoilers being shouted out in the middle of them.

A Clockwork Orange

I just watched A Clockwork Orange the other day and man... I'm not sure what to say. I felt pretty desensitized to the violence as we all see so much every day in this modern era, but all the nudity still struck me. And that's what I hear most of the complaints about, the violence and the nudity. I think that people who watch this film and can only complain about those things are looking into the film with a rather shallow approach. If you focus more on the idea this film is getting across, it becomes a brilliant film. So what do we do with hardened criminals? Do we punish them, try to cure them, or just kill them off to get rid of them? Can a sociopath ever be cured or is he bound to be that way forever? Overall, I really enjoyed this film. Well, maybe enjoyed isn't the right term, but it got me thinking. I've already seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I think I'll watch many more of Stanley Kubrick's films.