Reflection on Project 3

Now that I've finished my Project 3 public argument, I'm reflecting on my writing process and the steps I took to complete the paper, which will help me with our final project as well.

Manske, Magnus. "Spring flowers at sunset near Perido, AZ." 2/15/13 via
Wikimedia Commons. Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

1. In order to make the article more of a refutation argument, I focused on refuting each of the steps in the drought plan in my final draft, which was a shift from my first draft.  This added more structure and organization to my argument.  I also shifted the audience from city government officials to Tucson residents, because I was already sort of leaning that way, and it made more sense, given my platform of a newspaper, which Tucson residents read.
2. In reconsidering my thesis, I narrowed my focus to talk about how the drought plan should involve residents more specifically, instead of just talking about general weakness in the plan, and how I didn't think we were doing enough.  In doing this, I was able to make much more pointed arguments, and it was much easier to handle my paper, and narrowed how much research I had to do, which instead would have been much more to also try and understand industrial and agricultural water use as well.
3. I made these changes partially because of a reconsideration of audience, and also because it made the paper shorter, more manageable, and fit better with the platform I was working with.
4. In narrowing my topic, as I mentioned I was able to make more pointed refutations, which helped my credibility.  Before, in my rough draft, I was making more broad statements, without actually specifically bringing up a certain part of the plan, and then proving how it wasn't effective and could be improved.
5. These changes will better address my audience and venue because now my intended audience lines up perfectly with the people who will actually read my article given its venue.  This is an issue that Tucson residents should be concerned about, and it will be Tucson residents who will read the Arizona Daily Star.  By addressing how residents should already be working to reduce their water consumption, I'm making the article more relevant to the audience of the venue, than if the article were directed only at city council members.
6. I didn't do a lot of local revisions concerning sentence structure.  Mostly when I write I have varied enough sentence structure in my first draft that it's not as big as an issue compared to global issues.  However, I did work on cutting wordy parts out of sentences.
7. Local changes don't really help my audience as much as global changes do.  Rather, they just make the article to be a more interesting and well-written read.
8. I didn't really have to reconsider the conventions of my genre when revising, because I had already thought a lot about them while writing the first draft.  Mostly I just had to ensure that my paragraphs where short enough that the article was readable with adequate white space.
9. In reflecting, I realize that most of my revisions are global.  I think this year, it's taken me a while to fully understand what the project is asking, and how I'm going to produce a comprehensive response.  Multiple times, I have believed that what I have written in my first draft has answered what the prompt asked, but then in discussion found out I was lacking critical parts, or could redo my organization.  I'd like to think that by now I am a strong enough writer that I can devote more of my time thinking of ideas and the big picture of the assignment, rather than focus on local revisions involving sentence structure and word choice.

Publishing Public Argumnent

I've finished my Project 3 public argument paper!  It's an opinion piece about the Tucson drought plan, meant to be published in the Arizona Daily Star.

Nikater. "Colorado River 08." 3/15/12 via Wikimedia Commons.
Public Domain License.

View the final project here.

View the rubric guide here.

Reflection on Project 3 Draft

Now that I've received peer reviews, I'm able to begin the revising process and reflect on what needs the most work in my draft.  I peer reviewed Joy and Chad's drafts.

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Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

1. Zayla Crocker and Austin See reviewed my draft.
2. Zayla's comments about my audience helped me realize that I need to change my audience and Mostly the review was helpful.  move away from what I was originally thinking of.  I realized that the idea of writing to city council members was too restrictive, and that instead I should move towards addressing the citizens more, because that's what I was already beginning to do.  Both of them mentioned that praising Tucson worked against me, because I was hindering my own argument, which was important for me to realize.  I think instead I will leave the praise to the end only, because I want to end on a positive note, since I think that will be most effective.  Austin also commented that he felt this was a mix of a pro argument and a solution argument.  I think that I can make it more specifically a refutation argument by directly mentioning the drought plan that I'm refuting in greater depth.
3. The areas I need to focus on most are audience and argumentation.  As I mentioned earlier, I am shifting my audience, so when I revise my paper, I'll have to be clearer about who my new audience is, and keep them in mind while writing.  Mostly though, I'll be working at how to directly refute points in the drought preparedness plan, which will make this a more effective refutation argument, and add organization to my article.
4. Overall, I can definitely see where I need to improve, which is good.  I have a clear plan of immediate changes I'm going to make that will make my paper stronger.  Having a conference with Mr. Bottai also helped me see where I can work on strengthening my paper.  I'm comfortable with the genre and purpose, so now I will focus mainly on how I am conducting my argument. 

Draft of Public Argument

I've finally finished my first draft of Project 3!  It is an opinion piece concerning drought and reducing water consumption locally, meant for the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's local print newspaper.  You can view the first draft here.

In terms of feedback, I have a few questions it would be helpful if you could try to address:

• Was the organization clear?  Did the paragraphs flow, and the argument make logical sense?
• What did you think of the headline?
• Was the opening paragraph intriguing enough?
• Did you feel like you understood the situation, or did it need to be explained further?  Did you understand in general why Tucson's drought plan is ineffective?  Was enough background provided?
• Anything else you see not working that needs to be improved upon?

Thanks so much for all your help!

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Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Considering Visual Elements

As I continue to work on developing Project 3, I'm now beginning to look at the potential visual components of my work.  I know that on some online versions of newspapers, opinion pieces are accompanied by an image, or enlarged quote.  However, because my issue is so local, I'm looking at just how the Arizona Daily Star formats opinion articles.  The Star, even in its online format, provides only text in its opinion articles.  You can view some examples here and here to get an idea of what I mean.  Because of this, I'm rather limited in terms of visual elements.

Ossanna, Lia. "Tucson.com logo." 11/5/15 via http://tucson.com/

Questions (taken from Writing Public Lives)

1. What color choices best reflect the visual-rhetorical tone of my project?
• Since this is going to be for a newspaper, I will stick to just black and white coloring.  Unfortunately I can't include images, my project will basically be a headline and a bunch of text.
2. How might I vary the fonts used in my project for emphasis, such as the title and body of my project?
• I'm not really sure if I really have the power to change the fonts or have multiple fonts in my project, because since newspapers are uniform, the fonts are probably all going to be the same. That being said, there will be a difference in the size of the headline, so I should make the headline itself catchy and interesting.
3. Are the fonts appropriate to the visual-rhetoric tone of my project?
• Since I'm probably going to end up using just one font, I'm going to pick a standard font that is professional to give the right tone; probably something like Times New Roman.
4. Do your eyes move easily from section to section in the order that you intended?
• Print articles are broken up into small columns, which helps the readers scan the page more easily.  I should replicate this in my draft to make sure the effects are what I want. 
5. Could large blocks of text be broken up more effectively using text boxes, lines, headings or images?
• Newspaper articles also use short paragraphs, so readers feel like they're reading quicker, and progressing through the article.  The best way I can break up large amounts of text is by writing short paragraphs and using line breaks.
6. Is the visual-rhetorical tone of your project consistent?
• This project will be only text, written in a very standard way, so it will be extremely consistent with the tone and the medium it will be published in.

REFLECTION

After looking at Olivia and Bailey's posts, it made me wish that I could have more visual elements for my project as well.  Having images really adds a whole new layer, and gives the project more dimension.  However, because of the platform that I've chosen (Arizona Daily Star), it would make sense for me to add images and other visual elements because the Star provides only text for their opinion articles.  None of them, either online or in print, have any accompanying images.  So to stay true to my platform, I shouldn't spend time focusing on visual elements.  I can't change my platform either, because my topic is so narrow that this is the only one that really makes sense.  But overall it's okay, because I'll just focus on the text and making sure that's strong and speaks for itself.

Project 3 Outline

I've explored a lot about my issue and genre, so now I'm completing an outline to help me write my first draft for Project 3.  You can view my outline here.

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Analyzing My Genre

To help decide how to evaluate my project, I'm going to provide a more extensive background on the genre that I've picked, which is op-ed.  First off, here are some examples of my genre:

Example 1 "Is Eastern Europe Really More Racist Than the West?" (NY Times)
Example 2 "Thinks religion makes society less violent?  Think again." (LA Times)
Example 3 "The GOP's ridiculous debate demands should be rejected" (Washington Post)
Example 4 "Smarter copyright laws could stop the next VW scandal" (Wired)
Example 5 "Why Asian Americans Don't Vote Republican" (Newsweek)

Ossanna, Lia. "Screenshot of NY Times opinion page." 11/4/15 via
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html

Social Context

• This genre is typically set in newspapers and magazines.  The examples I have come from LA Times, NY Times, Washington Post, Wired, and Newsweek.  Op-ed sections are more common in newspapers.
• Op-eds can cover just about any topic.  Usually opinion pieces stem from an event that creates controversy or has multiple opinions and views to it.  These events are generally popular in the news, and generate passionate dialogue, some of which is expressed through op-eds.
• Op-eds are written by people who are not affiliated with the magazine or newspaper publishing them.  They are guest writers, and usually knowledgeable about the topic.  The examples I have come from prestigious and well-known newspapers and magazines, so the people writing the guests opinions are generally professors at distinguished universities.
• This genre is used to promote a certain viewpoint about an issue.  All of the examples I have are a reaction to an event or series of events.  The Newsweek op-ed attempts to describe why a trend in voting is occurring; some op-eds give opinions on why something is happening, while others debate the pros or cons of a viewpoint, idea, or policy.  These op-eds are used to reach a wide audience and influence the readers of that newspaper/magazine.

Rhetorical Patterns

• Op-eds generally must give some background on the subject, because the readers may not be experts, whereas the authors are more likely to have a wider knowledge of the topic.  This can be done by including direct quotes about the issue from other sources.  Since op-eds are relatively short, they must be deliberate and to the point; everything in the article must clearly have a purpose and serve to persuade the audience.  Some op-ed pieces are focused more on promoting their own ideas than refuting opposing ones, so thus leave out details about conflicting views or explanations.
• The types of rhetorical strategies used depends on the particular op-ed itself.  However, I did notice in my examples that pathos and logos seemed to be more prominent than ethos.  In the Newsweek op-ed, the author uses graphs and statistics to show how Asian Americans are becoming increasingly Democratic, which is a logos appeal.  The New York Times article opens with a powerful image of innocent refugees who are blocked from seeking shelter in Europe, an appeal to pathos.
• Op-eds generally have striking titles to grab the attention of readers.  The LA Times headline, "Think religion makes society less violent?  Think again" at once presents a very strong and controversial opinion.  Personally, this intrigued me, which is why I used it as an example.  The Washington Post headline is another example of inflammatory and charged language: "The GOP's ridiculous debate demands should be rejected."  The titles have to convey the message of the opinion in just one line.  Op-eds generally then begin with an opening powerful image, or some more background information on the issue.  After a distilled explanation is given, the author moves into giving his/her opinions.  The conclusion then leaves the reader thinking about the opinion given, such as with the NY Times article that stresses "demonizing Eastern Europeans" is not the solution.
• Like all good writing, op-eds must have varying sentence structures and types to keep the article interesting.  Some op-eds do use questions more than other genres, because questions engage the reader by asking them directly to think about certain things.  This is the main distinguishing trait in terms of sentence structure.
• Op-eds are written with a slightly informal tone.  The authors talk more directly to the reader.  The passionate tone of op-eds make them naturally more riveting and sometimes inflammatory.

Rhetorical Patterns and Social Context

• The genre includes people who read that newspaper or magazine, and who is interested in the topics those op-ed pieces explore.  This genre excludes people who don't read newspapers/magazines, or people who are offended or disagree with the opinion given.
• This genre encourages both the reader and writer to be extremely engaged in the text and the issue explored.  Writers want their readers to rethink an issue, or reflect upon a viewpoint or idea.  Writers strive not just to enlighten their readers and bring about awareness, but also to impose upon them a clear opinion.
• The values and beliefs presented in opinion pieces vary drastically depending on the piece and the author.  In general though, it is assumed that the reader is engaged and interested in the topic, and probably has beliefs similar to those presented in the article.  I read editorial pieces because I am interested in the topic, and usually because I agree with the position and want to see how by reading this article, I can strengthen my own argument about that topic.
• Editorials are concerned with controversial content.  What that content is specifically varies greatly.  Usually editorials revolve around current news and issues, due to where they are published.  Editorials are concerned with issues that already have somewhat of an established audience with different viewpoints.

REFLECTION

I read Olivia and Joki's blog posts.  Joki is doing a text-based argument, similar to me, but Olivia had the creative idea of doing a cooking video.  As I saw when many people shared in class today, lots of us want to take the chance to move away from making our arguments through text, and instead find another media.  It's going to be really cool, the kind of diversity that this project produces.  I however, am just sticking with text, because I enjoy writing and find it to be one of my strengths.  Even though it would be fun to try and make a video or something, I think I would have no idea where to start or how to create what I wanted to, and it would turn into way too much work.