I think the message of "After The Storm" is to cherish what you have because it can all be taken away in the blink of an eye. I also think it is to give back to your community. What makes me think this is because through out the whole story he was talking about what he has lost. This made me feel grateful for what I have. I think the intended audience is anyone going through struggles in their life that they think they can't overcome. The author starts off the video showing the gloomy sky with some background music. This sets the sad and gloomy tone. Also the way the author speaks is in a low sad sounding voice to appeal to the audience's emotion. When reading this story I felt a lot of sympathy for the author. The scenery, sounds, and tone of voice made me feel for the speaker. I think the video was more effective at persuading the reader than the story because you can really see how bad it was. It was very effective use of ethos when he put in all the news broadcasts at the bottom of the screen because you can see how big this event was not just in Alabama, but in America as a whole.
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The podcast I watched is by Tana Mongeau. It is called "My Psychotic Sugar Daddy Story. You Aren't Ready." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCznjpc0c4
This podcast is about the time Tana got a sugar daddy and he ended up being Michael Jackson's manager. The intended audience of this podcast is young adults. The purpose of this discussion is for entertainment. This is a crazy and interesting podcast. One of the intended messages could be to not take advantage of someone who is nice and caring to you. Don't lead people on because in the end they may end up hurt. Tana uses background music in certain parts and silent moments. She also builds up the anticipation of what she is about to say by prolonging it before she finally says it. It was very interesting because I felt as if I'm her friend and she is telling me a story. The speaker I think did a great job at describing everything and appealing to the senses. I could picture everything she was saying perfectly. My trip to Mexico was a time a can really remember all the details and senses really well so that's why I chose to write about this. I didn't really know what my message was going to be at first but as I started writing it came to me. I didn't do any planning. I just started writing my first draft from scratch. I really enjoyed writing this essay because I got to reminisce about my trip to Mexico and really go back and think about it in detail. I started off the essay with a hook describing the setting. I kept the intro the same through my writing process. I set the intro with some background info in my first draft. I took out some sentences that were unnecessary and didn't go with the message of my story. I also added the message in the end of the intro to make it more clear. In my first draft I didn't have transitions, so I added transitions to each paragraph to make sure it flows. I also added some more details to the imagery of the essay. I went back and put some of my feelings and thoughts in the essay mostly my thoughts on how I felt about the border and how the Mexicans were being treated. I added some similes in there and replaced some words with more descriptive words. What really helped me was the feedback from the conference. It helped me organize my work much better and use the right tenses. I also added more detail to the climax after the conference. The peer review also helped me think of better words to replace my original words with to add more flavor and imagery. In the end, I wrapped up my essay by restating my message in a different way.
How can I organize my essay better?
What can I do to make my intro more catchy? How can I make my essay longer? My essay is going to be about the first time I went to Ensenada, Mexico. The dramatic difference in the living conditions was a big shock to me.
Sight- poverty, destruction, trash, old buildings, many homeless and poor people, traffic on the boarder Touch- sand in between my toes, soft Smell- sewer, dirty, not clean air or water, Mexican food Taste- couldn't put water in your mouth because the water is contaminated and will make you sick. Sound- Mexican music, waves crashing In the story "The Storm, In Fragments" the author's message is that not everything has a happy ending. What makes me think this is because in the end he talks about how we always expect the hero to win in the end, but it doesn't always end up that way. He ended up crying in his car, devastated. The tone of this story is sad. The author feels like he doesn't belong where he lives. He is not proud of his bloodline and how his family treats black people. He feels detached, like a fragment. The author seems like a good person. He talked about how he would give food to the poor black people and how he looked at them different than most white people in the south. The author seems to hate the south. there is always some type of devastation, like the tornados that ruined his neighborhood and killed his classmates. Throughout the story he didn't have anything good to say about Tuscaloosa out of his 27 years living there. He also mentioned that he was happy to leave. When reading this story I felt sad for the author because he didn't have a choice in being born where he was. He was stuck feeling detached and living with devastation for most of his life, not knowing much about the outside world.
I am reviewing Chris' ePortfolio. His theme seems to be nature and animals. The pages are easy to find except I don't think he made a rhetorical analysis page just yet. All the pages are located under the menu tab in the left corner of the home page. All the pages should drop down after you click the menu button. The website doesn't have clear visual cues to help audiences see and understand the text. The website needs to be cleaned up a little bit more. There are still pictures and text from the original layout of the website. The website also doesn't have any captions to explain the visual elements of the website. There aren't any links or pictures with his blogs. It is very easy to navigate through his website. I like how the blog page is set up with each blog in order and easy to access. Each blog post has it's own page when clicked. I think the tone of the page could be worked on a little more to draw in attention from the readers. Overall, the website is very easy to use but just needs some more decorating and cleaning up.
I started off the essay by including a catchy hook. The hook I chose was a question to get the reader thinking a little bit. I crafted my thesis statement by listening to good examples of thesis’ in class. That helped me know what I should include in my thesis statement. I didn’t really do any type of planning. I took the feedback from the conferences from our first draft to compose my second draft. The conference helped me understand what I needed to include throughout the whole essay. Some changes I made was to the intro paragraph, the body paragraphs , and I added a conclusion. I didn’t really know how to do the conclusion without repeating myself. When I met with my professor, she helped me realize the importance of the different appeals and told me I should add something like that into the conclusion to leave the reader thinking about something. I added to the length of my body paragraphs and went more into detail about my topics. I added a hook to my intro and took some stuff out because my summary was too long. Comments from my peers helped me a lot as well. I got to fix small mistakes that I probably wouldn’t have caught myself. I reworded some sentences to make them flow better. What I learned about myself as a writer is that it takes me a long time to get my thoughts out and put together to fit the prompt. Next time I am going to make an outline of what I want to say in my essay. This will help me organize my thoughts. I also like to do this so that I don’t forget any good ideas I had in mind that I wanted to include in my essay. Some advice I would give myself two weeks ago when I first started this essay is to always include a hook and make sure my body paragraphs support my thesis.
How can I improve my intro to make it more catchy?
How can I improve and add to my body paragraphs? What should my conclusion include? Writing has always been a difficult subject for me. I find it hard to get my exact thoughts out on paper how I want them to. How I deal with this is by writing an outline to gather all my thoughts and any other information I need to incorporate into my essay. I organize my outline with bullet points of my topics and ideas for each paragraph. I like to write in my room, alone, with music playing. Listening to music lets my mind relax and helps me focus on what I want to say and open my mind to creative ideas. I sometimes even catch myself learning new vocabulary words. I know it sounds hard to believe that rap music could teach you something lol. After I write my essay I like to read my writing out loud to see how it sounds. My AP composition teacher always told us that this is an important part in proof reading you work. It allows you to hear your writing. Often times, you catch more mistakes by doing this than if you were to skim read your work in your head. I also am the type of person that likes to get my work done ahead of time so that I don't have to worry about it at the last minute. This way I can relax and not stress about cramming my work in at the last second. I have procrastinated a few times in the past, but not nearly as bad as my friend, Cody, who waits until 3 A.M. to do a months work of homework that's due at 8 smh. This semester I hope to improve my writing skills by obtaining my own writing style and expanding my vocabulary. |
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