The basis of the reading is how writing has transformed over the years. It has formed a kind of trickle down literacy from the schools to the professional literate world. what used to be taught in school was the five-paragraph essay but now English teachers are starting to use different methods and procedures in teaching students. They then move on to talk about the power of home language and dialect. This is where a child will learn the most about how to talk, what is right what is wrong, and this knowledge can bleed into what they learn at school. The teachers then have the difficulty of having to inspire and show the importance of traditions in literacy and must also abide by the school board on what they can teach. This gives the teacher not much mobility in how to teach and inspire young students about the language we speak. The good teachers with the right resources and training will be able to follow the guidelines that the board have set yet they will still be able to inspire their students and have academic success. Now that we have moved to the era of digital writing and literacy “the book report” the “research paper” and “the five-paragraph essay” can all be enhanced and have spice with extra material that could help other students learn instead of just simply writing an essay. With technology moving forward so quickly people will now be able to learn information faster and express or showcase the information they learned in many manors. This allows for a wider understanding and caters to people who learn different ways other than reading and writing. I find this writing very interesting because it was written in 2011. It is now 2017 and they could see the technology growing in 2011 well its grown a lot more since then and not many people have talked about it like the author did in this writing. Technology affects everything in our world today and it is about time someone talked about how technology can affect the learning of students, and how students can use technology so that it can be a beneficial part of how and what they learn. Back in the day if you wanted to learn something you had to go to the library and do research but in today’s world you can just hop of google and the information is there in seconds. I also believe this has made students lazy but for the students who are not lazy this is a powerful tool that can be used to help get more work done in less time and can cater to the needs of other people who seem to learn differently then others.

After reading How to Tame a Wild Tongue I think it brings people back to the roots of their own culture. All humans are prideful people and hold honor in their heritage. In the piece of writing its talking about Spanish people learning to speak English. In one part of the reading there was a part that said “cultural traitor, you’re speaking the oppressor’s language. By speaking English you’re ruining the Spanish language.” I believe race and heritage to be on both sides of the table. You can be proud of your culture but people should be willing to embrace other peoples. Like in the reading people shouldn’t be forced to practice someone else’s culture. They should just be accepted for who they are and all cultures should be practiced with tolerance and no discrimination should take place. I then like when they begin to talk about someone who does not identify with any language. They are called fork tongued people. People who do not speak Spanish or English so what do they do? They create their own language. Something that themselves can now identify with. For example, “patois” is a forked tongued variation of two languages. Then they begin to talk about music and how important music is to the heritage and culture of someone a how proud they are to have their own culture. I love when the author then starts to talk about how they remember how the hot, sultry evening when they would play both songs about love and death on the Texas and Mexican border and the music just came through the window. I love the way in which this is described and how I can put myself in the authors bedroom and imagine the music come through the window. For culture, what can be culture without food. Food music and language are the 3 things that are the most important part for human interaction and human bonding. This is a common thing that brings people with the same culture together. To be I still find it shameful that we can look at someone’s race of heritage and hate on them because of where they came from. No one can pick their race but anyone can be proud of where they come from and they should just be accepted for who they are now what they look like. My question would be why are people so intolerant of other people’s race or heritage and why is it so difficult to accept someone for who they are?

As Janet Boyd said in her article of Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking), she explains that the definition of rhetoric as it is what allows you to write (and speak) appropriately for a given situation, one that is determined by the expectations of your audience, implied or acknowledged, whether you are texting, writing a love letter, or bleeding a term paper. My belief is that a rhetorical situation will often come up in a situation when you are speaking and offering an unordinary amount of information that does not justify an answer. The answer for the question has already been implied in the way the question was phrased and asked. When a rhetorical statement is made, it is often detected by the tone the person is speaking. The genre or topic that the statement is being talked about.  Generally, this implies that that the answer is given in the statement and that the there is no need for an answer to be given. The answer is implied and the is a degree of sarcasm that is used when making a rhetorical statement or writing a rhetorical piece. Rhetorical tool can be shown and even learning by the act of reading, participating in conversation and acting in social culture, and even watching movies. When you are talking in rhetorical terms you are talking to an implied audience. The implied audience is that they understand the nature in which you are speaking and they understand when a statement is implied rather than when it begs a question and or a dignified response. I have questions about this article. For example, when is it appropriate to be rhetorical. Do you need to have the specific audience in front of you to be rhetorical or is it required or implied that the audience should already understand the difference between a rhetorical statement rather than a statement that begs a question? My other question is how do you write or text to show a rhetorical statement. Most rhetorical statements are implied and are shown through the tone of the person making the statement. It is difficult to express tone in writing. Sometimes in writing you can was to convey a certain message but the tone is often shown through the emotions of the reading, which then makes the rhetorical statement that the writer was trying to convey not even relevant anymore and the point of the state is now void or completely ignored.

In the excerpt from the book Genre Analysis by John Swales, he talks about discourse community. A discourse community is a group of people wo share a set of ideas that are understood as basic values and assumptions for ways of communication. In other words, it is a community or group of people that have a common goal or purpose, and use different forms of communication to achieve those goals. In a discourse community, a common functionality needs to be in place with a set form of communication so that the intended audience understands the topic that is being discussed. There are many forms of discourse communities. First are the ones in which you inherit a native way of communication. For example, people from Boston have a unique way of communication and for people outside that community it could be difficult to understand the nature of a conversation. In a discourse community, it’s not just about communication its about how information is received and how feedback on that information can be vital to the common goal. Another definition of discourse community is that there has already been agreed upon a common set of goals that the community wants to achieve. This reminds me of the founding fathers and the free masons. I believe they had their own form of a discourse community. Within that community, a common goal was set and they used specific language to achieve the common goal, but only in the nature that people in their community would understand. I found this reading to be particularly confusing. I had to read it many times and I still do not believe I fully grasp the concept of what a discourse community is. I find it interesting though that within a group of people that there can be a separate sect of people who are speaking in a form in which only the ones involved in the community can understand. To me it seems like a discourse community could disband at any time because communication is the key the holds it together. If communication fails, then the community will disband and anarchy could ensue within the community. This impacts me as a writer because it shows me how important communication is. Communication is important to maintain order in society. It is also vital to express ideas, goals and to show expression of one’s self. This also shows how important it is in the way in which someone communicates. If one is vague it would be difficult to understand all the concepts the individual is trying to express. It’s important to be concise and to the point.

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