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Learning Outcome 3: Employ techniques of active reading, critical reading, and informal reading responses for inquiry, learning, and thinking.

Annotating helps allow you to see what the issues and ideas present are. Susan Gilroy explains in her text, Interrogating Texts, how in a way it is sort of like a recording of what your encounter was like with the piece you are working with. Annotating has allowed me to write my thoughts and ideas down while being present in the material. It allows you to ask yourself questions as you go. In the text I annotated, Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, I was able to pinpoint the main concerns. I showed this in his piece by asking myself why he was so focused on the idea of the lobster. By doing so I was able to ask myself “what does this really mean?”. I was able to ask myself why he really wanted us to reconsider the lobster. Pointing out these main ideas enables us to see the bigger picture, the main argument. It allows for us to make connections that we may not of even thought of if we didn’t take time to mark up the text. Annotating allows us to see the authors point of view, make it more clear. After reading Wallace’s piece for the first time, without annotating, I was completely lost. I have no clue really where Wallace stood. There is so much information in that text that without annotating it’s harder to interpret. Re-reading and annoating the text I was able to understand what Wallace was really saying. In Wallace’s piece I focused on highlighting the main points, which were hidden deep within the text, they were unique and interesting. These points were pinpointed out so that I could reference them later. I highlighted these points because I think they are support further discussion and  help support an argument. Comparing journal 14 to journal 1, there are significant differences. Coming back to the piece with a fresh mind allowed me to interpret it in a whole other way. Journal 14 was more in-depth and had stronger, concrete ideas. Whereas journal 1 was very basic and not very conversation striking. Gilroy mentions how it is important to ask yourself how your thinking was altered by the text present. After thinking about Wallace’s peice again I was really able to comprehend the whole concept which allowed me to go into greater depth. Re-reading it changed the way of how I truly thought about about lobsters. Gilroy also raises the question of how it may have affected your overall responses. Has your thinking been altered by the reading? After reading Wallace’s piece the way I thought was altered. I never really took time to consider the lobsters life, it’s often a thing that is over looked.

Text annotations sample:

Journal comparisons:

Journal 1

Journal 14

Essay 3, Final Draft

For the revision process on essay three I encountered multiple problems. The main places I really needed to focus revising on were my thesis, body paragraphs, and as well as my conclusion. My thesis was very unclear, as my peers agreed. We agreed that I needed to really work on it and make it stand out. After I figured out how to make my thesis more clear I realized that I had failed to connect to it throughout my entire essay. So I really needed to focus on connecting my points with my thesis. This is important because it would not only make my points stronger but also to make it so the reader would not forget what my thesis was. On the other hand my body paragraphs needed some help connecting with one another. I felt like the transitions were not really all that there. In order for this paper to flow properly that needed to be fixed. Lastly for my conclusion I felt like this paragraph was lacking, it didn’t have much there. I really needed to expand on what I had stated in all of my points above in order for it to tie all together. I just needed to focus on summing it all up and restating my thesis. I think acknowledging all of these errors allowed me to focus on making this final draft the best version of this essay.

Peer Review Comments: Steven Rife

Peer Review Comments: Veronica Lecko 

In this chapter of They Say, I Say – “Planting a Naysayer in Your Text”, they are mostly talking about ways to introduce objections as a so called naysayer. Answering objections on a convincing way can give you more voice and therefore persuade your critics, which is what you want. Bringing in counterarguments shows that you have respect for readers as well as for the objection. Counterarguments allow for open mindedness, where as if you dont you can come across as close minded. You are leaving your reader with questions and concerned left unanswered. You have to embrace the voice of others when representing an objection, you need to answer the objection persuasively. By introducing this objection into a paragraph you’re taking a chance of your readers to find their objections more interesting than your own. So it is important that you continue on with this for more than several sentences or even for a paragraph. It is also important that you don’t totally refute the objection, as its important to say “yes” to some parts of it or even give a “yes but no” answer. You want to be able to agree with them to some point but then continue on with why you think they are wrong. For example in the book they gave an example of “Although I grant that the book is poorly organized, I still maintain that it raises an important issue”. Here they are acknowledging that even though the book wasn’t properly structured they can still agree that the book holds some valid and significant issues. This is really important for allowing that connection between you and the objection, its showing that you have respect for them. Although you’re trying to make an objection against the critic it’s okay to add some sort of agreement in there, for it makes the argument even stronger.

 

Essay 3, Draft 3

Essay 3, Draft 2

Essay 3, Draft 1

Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Against Meat, helps us understand what it means to be literally against meat. He helps uncoil what is lost as well as what is gained by doing so.

Fore claims that most occasions just “simply wouldn’t have been the same without those foods – and that is important”. I have to agree with him one hundred percent, he’s right imagine one of the biggest holidays, Thanksgiving, and not having turkey. Turkey is the main food we think of when we think of thanksgiving. If that were taken away from us would create a loss in the American culture. It truly just wouldn’t be the same. However in order to really understand the values of this certain foods and memories that go along with it, you need to lose it. By doing so you gain more ways to appreciate the memories that you had with that food.

 

Foer questions “Why doesn’t a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to confining, killing and eating it?”  There are different boundaries being crossed here. Killing animals is not the nicest thing on the planet but this is taking it a step too far. This question is truthfully out of line, because why would anyone consider doing that. I think for the most part when were eating meat everyday were not thinking about how the animal had to die, i’m not at least. It’s a thought that sort of flies past our heads. Sure this could be a bad thing. Maybe we don’t understand to the fullest what goes into the preparation of the meat you just picked up at the store. I think we value animals for food. Like we grow up eating meat (most of us at least). So in a way it’s part of us, it’s what we know.

After rereading David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, I found the point of where he stands more prominent. Wallace is one of few who raises the concern of killing lobsters. If Wallace were to be invited to our class for a discussion I would probably ask him some of the same questions that I stated in my journal 1. One of the main and most basic questions I would ask him is why he chose such an uncommon topic for his essay? Did he choose this smaller, unusual topic as a segway into a much larger, more complex issue? Was he trying to get at a deeper moral question that we all may not think about.

I think one of the main things that Wallace is trying to get at here is our logic of killing animals (or any sort of living creature). To be honest our logic doesn’t really make sense. We find it okay to kill an insect, rodents, and in this case lobsters but yet we find problems with killing large animals such as cows, pigs, or animals we are closer to such as pet dogs or cats. I think a part of this is because we can hold emotional attachments with those things whereas with a lobster we can’t. We don’t share that bond that we do with dogs, cats, or even farm animals. Thus making us less emotionally attached and easier to kill. We sort of think of it as “not being the same”, we find excuses to make it “okay”. However killing something is still killing, there’s no getting around it.