Nolan W Brown

 Miscellaneous Work throughout the semester (Fall 2013): 

Annotated Bibliography First & Second: 

 Inquiry Project Proposal:

 Here are my forums that were performed and completed outside of class. I have chosen five random wants from all the ones we completed, but they are in chronological order.  

 Forum #2

What do you think defines a text?

Well before we had class last Wednesday I can tell you what I thought a text was. I thought a text was a story or using words to tell a story. When I think of text my mind automatically thinks or only one thing words. But the only thing that made me doubt myself is how a math book is also considered a textbook. So maybe words are not the only part of text. Now that we have had class I understand it much better. It is anything that has meaning, which is truly and pretty much everything in the world. You can describe an object by its purpose and what it looks like or even its background and all these are things you would use to “read the object”. This also can work the same with people, materials, and like I said anything. Just as an example you could use a picture of you and someone. Originally, I would say that it is not a text because of the lack of words but now I see that It is one because of the story it tells the person looking at it and what can be “read” off of it. 

 Forum #3

If a reader misunderstands the purpose of a text, is its meaning still intact?

 This is certainly a hard one to think about. The only way I could put my response is using an example like the Bible. My opinion is that if someone could not grasp the meaning of the Bible then the meaning is lost to them and so not intact; but if one man does not understand the meaning of the Bible that does not affect the meaning for someone else. That other person could very well understand and in that case the meaning does stay intact. And this could be used with any text. Like a picture, for another example, someone could look at a picture and see one meaning and another one see another. I could not honestly say which meaning would be intact and which would not. Though there is also the possibility that I have no idea what this question is trying to ask. It reminds me of that old mind blowing question “If a tree falls in the middle of the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?”. Well it is all about your point of view. The sound (meaning) would obviously be there but whether or not its heard (intact) is what befuddles the mind.

 Forum #4

Pick a text to analyze. Explain why you chose it.

I am going to assume for this forum we write about the text we are using for the Rhetorical Analysis, and in that case the text I have decided to use is actually a single story out of the Bible. First off the reason I chose one story instead of the whole thing or even a single chapter is because of the amount of time it would take to analyze it. (Plus it would probably help to have read the whole thing). No, for my Rhetorical Analysis assignment I have chosen to pick one story. And that story happens to be one of my favorites, the story of David and Goliath. Many of you have most likely heard the story and never read it.  I chose it not only because it is one of my top favorites, but because it has many points to it in which to be examined. Since the story is a part of something much larger and because the Bible itself it criticized around the world I believe that when it comes down to analyzing this story I will be able to come up with a great deal of topics to discuss and also because it is close to me (The Bible and the story), I will be able to do one of the most important parts of this assignment and that is think critically. 

 Forum #8

Conduct a self-study. Who has sponsored your literacy - people and/or institutions? Did your sponsors value certain types of reading and writing?

As I have noticed since I was young is there is no ‘one’ sponsor in a person’s literacy development. For me personally I believe I have learned and pulled literacy from everything around me. Such as my friends, my schools, my life experiences and of course my family. I know that, that may be rather broad so I will say the most influential sponsor of my literacy today is my parents. Since I was little they have worked with me to develop my skills in reading and writing and learning how to interpret all I see. I honestly can’t see someone’s parents not being their number one source of education in literacy. As for the certain specific types I would have to say that my parents focused on the literacy you would use in the real world, where schools would teach me the things that are more like the ‘arts’ of literacy; such as poetry and different story writings. In class we discussed how knowing the rules and how to play basketball made you “literate” in basketball, so in that sense everything we know how to do and interpret are things we’re literate in and I doubt (and I say this for myself at least) that anyone has learned all their literate in by one sponsor. For myself I know I have learned from infinite sponsors all I’m literate in.

 Forum #9

What ideas did your peer readers give you in regards to your assignment? How can you use what you discussed during the workshop in your writing? 

After doing the peer workshop, I walked away thinking much more critically about this paper. A lot of their diverse ideas towards the assignment gave me ideas for mine. For example, looking at the area that the person was raised from and how that, plus that mixed with their gender could have influenced their literacy. Not only were we able to swap really good generic questions to help the others in the group but my peers were able to help change the questions they came up with that were more suited towards their individual interviewee, and make it relate-able for the other’s interviewees. I was also able to do the same for them with my questions. The peer workshop worked well for my group because we looked at each other’s needs. Since this assignment is so long, the more questions we were able to share with one another will help with the meat of the paper. Not to mention the many questions we came up with while just doing the workshop itself. Once we started the peer workshop we came up with not only just idea, but we were able to come up with certain ways to look at the interviewee and where they got their literacy from