ENGR 100W ENGINEERING REPORTS EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER W. BANKSTON, ED.D. LAST UPDATE: SPRING 2021 Reading Packet for ENGR 100W – Fall 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introductory Materials Page Key Terms and Concepts ------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 The Rhetorical Situation (from Purdue OWL) ------------------------------------------ 7 Example 1 – The Grocery List --------------------------------------------------- 12 Example 2 – Research Paper ------------------------------------------------------ 14 Framework for Analyzing Genres -------------------------------------------------------- 19 Seven Secrets to a Great Nap (Newsweek article) ----------------------------- 20 Restorative effect of naps (Scholarly Article) ---------------------------------- 22 Rhetorical Strategies for Idea Development---------------------------------------------- 27 The Rhetorical Triangle – Media and Advertising -------------------------------------- 30 II. Interviewing for Research (For Discipline Assignment) What Makes a Good Interview? ----------------------------------------------------------- 33 Interview Process and Questions for the Discipline Investigation-------------------- 38 III. University Writing Processes1 Advice for College Writing Processes ---------------------------------------------------- 40 Understanding College Writing Assignments -------------------------------------------- 41 1 Adapted from the Sacramento State Student Writing Handbook, Edition 1- pg. 36 - 57 INTRODUCTORY MATERIALS Discourse community: A discourse community is a group of people who share specialized uses of language that enable them to participate in working, playing, studying, or socializing for a common purpose. Discourse communities develop, use, and modify written and oral genres in response to rhetorical situations they face on a recurring basis. To become members of a discourse community, learners have to master not just the language but also the particular patterns of language use in the contexts valued by members of that community. Members of a discourse community may have face-to-face contact on a regular basis, or they may only communicate by phone or electronic media. Examples of discourse communities: • Students and instructor in this class • Professionals in a particular field, say medical professionals, electricians, K-12 teachers • Surfers, basketball players... • Gaming communities on-line • Jazz musicians and jazz lovers Related questions: 1. What discourse communities do you already participate in? 2. To what extent do you think you move from one discourse community to another when you move among different classes in college? Another way to ask this question: In your experience, which genres (forms of oral and written communication), are shared across different college classes, and which are unique to a certain field or discipline, or even a certain class? 3. How do you think a discourse community is different from or similar to a culture? Genres: According to Webster’s dictionary, a genre is simply a type or kind of artistic, musical, literary, or other creation that is “characterized by a particular style, form, or content.” It is actually borrowed from the French word, which is the same, and before that, it comes from Latin “genre” meaning “kind”. Many human cultural activities can be classified into different genres. For example, in music, we can speak of genres such as classical, folk, jazz, rhythm and blues, hip-hop, reggae, etc. In literature, we can classify works as novels, essays, poetry, drama, short stories, and so on. We can also speak of sub-genres – that is, smaller genres within larger ones. For example, poetry can include many specific types of poems, such as sonnets, villanelles, limericks, haikus, ghazals, etc. Cross-culturally, there are many genres that exist in one culture and not in others. Genres can also “travel” and become adopted in a different culture, as has happened with reggae (originating in Jamaica) in the US. In everyday life, we use many written genres such as shopping lists, “to do” lists, budgets, notes to our family members (sometimes people stick these on the refrigerator!), tax forms, advertisements, coupons, crossword puzzles, sudoku puzzles, etc. In academic life, we use annotated bibliographies, book reviews, journal articles, books, library research reports, empirical research reports, … what else? Why are genres important in education? As we become more focused on a particular field, we begin to write and read some of the genres of that discourse community. Future teachers have to learn to read and create lesson plans; future accountants have to learn to use and create spreadsheets, and so on. Genres are important in terms of becoming a professional because each professional discourse community expects its members to be familiar with and able to write in the genres used in that community. This familiarity helps you to become a full member of that community. However, the tricky part is that usually professional genres are not taught explicitly; you have to just acquire them by being around, similar to the way a child learns its first language. This is called implicit learning. In this implicit learning system, people who already have some knowledge of what’s expected have an advantage, and people who don’t are at a disadvantage. Developing knowledge of the genres used in your profession can be very helpful in speeding up your entry into that profession. Of course, you cannot know in advance every genre you will encounter in your professional life. And genres do change over time. But what you can do is develop genre awareness: the ability to recognize and analyze genres; you can acquire tools that will help you to figure them out, even when nobody is explicitly teaching them to you. Genre analysis is the process of identifying the components that make genres different from one another. Usually, genre analysis of written text considers audience, purpose, context, organization, style, format, and presentation. (see “Framework for Analyzing Genres”). Related questions: 1. Make a list of written genres you encounter regularly, either because you read and use them or because you produce them yourself. How many of them were taught to you explicitly? How many did you just pick up implicitly (i.e. without any instruction)? Which of the genres on your list were the hardest to learn, and why? 2. Think of a genre that you know well, but other people in the class might not know. How would you teach them to produce that genre? What would they have to know to be able to produce it well? Rhetoric and rhetorical situations, strategies, and moves What is rhetoric? It’s the study of how effective communication achieves its goals. Cicero, the ancient Roman orator and writer, described rhetoric as ‘the art by which discourse is adapted to its end’” (Richards, Platt, & Weber, 1985, p. 245). The word comes from ancient Greek –a rhetor was an orator or speaker. What are rhetorical situations? They are situations in which people are attempting to communicate to achieve their desired ends. Rhetorical situations involve the following basic components: • one or more authors (or speakers); • a purpose (it could be the author’s purpose, but it might also be partly or wholly the purpose of one or more people directing the author); • an audience; • a text (written or spoken or signed); and • a context, including the time and place in which communication is taking place, the larger discourse community and cultural context in which this communication is nested, the language that is used. What are rhetorical strategies? Usually, when people refer to rhetorical strategies they are referring to patterns of organization such as narration, description, argument, summary, analysis, classification, comparison-contrast, evaluation etc. These patterns are also sometimes called rhetorical modes. How are rhetorical strategies different from genres? A genre can be quite complex and can display many rhetorical strategies. For example, the genre “research report”, might contain an anecdote (which is a type of narration), a description of the population studied, a summary of previous research, an analysis, and so on. Some genres are much simpler. For example, a shopping list uses only one rhetorical strategy – listing – or at the most, two: It might classify the items according to where they are located in the store, or at which store they are to be bought. What are rhetorical moves? Sometimes when you analyze a genre, you may want to be very specific about the organization –the parts that make up the whole. Sometimes it is not enough to just say that a film review, for example, uses the rhetorical strategy of evaluation. What moves actually make up a film review, and which of these are obligatory and which are optional? Here is a list of moves in a film review. Which ones do you think are obligatory and which are optional? Þ give the title of the film Þ give a graphic image that summarizes your recommendation Þ compare the film to other related films Þ summarize the film (but not too much because you want to arouse interest in it) Þ evaluate the film’s overall quality Þ name the actors in the film Þ comment on the production Þ comment on the screenplay Þ indicate who the viewing audience is Þ give your name Related questions: 1. Look at 2-3 film reviews from different newspapers or websites and do a rhetorical move analysis of each. Which moves did you identify as common to all the reviews? 2. Some rhetorical strategies are easier than others. For instance, narration is generally considered easier to do than evaluation. What do you think makes evaluation harder to learn than narration? For more about the difficulty level, look up Bloom’s taxonomy on the web. What did you find out? 3. How many different rhetorical moves can you identify in this handout? What are they? 4. Think of a specific paper that is required for one of your classes. What is your purpose in writing the paper? How is your purpose different from (or the same as) the instructor’s purpose in assigning it to the class? Sources Consulted Johns, Ann (Ed.). (2002). Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives. Mahwah, NJ; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Richards, J., Platt, J., & Weber, H. (1985). Longman dictionary of applied linguistics. Essex: Longman. Skeat, Walter. (1963). A concise etymological dictionary of the English language. NY: Capricorn Books. Swales, J. & Feak, C. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Second Edition. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Welcome to the Purdue OWL2 This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/). When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice at bottom. Contributors:Ethan Sproat, Dana Lynn Driscoll, Allen Brizee. Summary: This presentation is designed to introduce your students to a variety of factors that contribute to strong, well-organized writing. This presentation is suitable for the beginning of a composition course or the assignment of a writing project in any class. The Rhetorical Situation Understanding the rhetorical situation can help contribute to strong, audience-focused, and organized writing. The PowerPoint presentation in the Media box above is suitable for any classroom and any writing task. The resources below explain in more detail the idea of the rhetorical situation and can be use along with the PowerPoint slides. The Rhetorical Situation Writing instructors, and other professionals who study rhetoric, use the phrase “rhetorical situation” to refer to any set of circumstances that involves at least one person using some sort of communication to modify the perspective of at least one other person. In this context, “rhetoric” means any communication used to modify the perspectives of others. Doesn’t “Rhetoric” Mean Something Like “Persuasion”? Yes and no. Throughout much of history, “rhetoric” used to have a narrower meaning like “the art of persuasion.” However, over the course of the 20th century, “rhetoric” came to be used as a descriptor for all use of communication (ancient Greeks known as the Sophists also had a broader view of the term "rhetoric"). The simplest explanation for this is that “rhetoric” in the persuasive sense implies an effort on the part of speakers to get what they want out of other people. 2 Copyright ©1995-2011 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use. The newer sense of “rhetoric” implies that whenever humans communicate with other humans, they seek to elicit any number of responses ranging from understanding to emotional reaction to agreement to enlightenment or any one of almost limitless reactions. At its most basic, communication is the set of methods whereby humans attempt to identify with each other. “The” Rhetorical Situation vs. “A” Rhetorical Situation There is no one singular rhetorical situation that applies to all communication. Rather, all human efforts to communicate occur within innumerable individual rhetorical situations that are particular to those specific moments of communication. Even so, each individual rhetorical situation shares common elements with all other rhetorical situations. Elements of a Rhetorical Situation Every rhetorical situation has four basic components: an author, an audience, a text of some sort, and a context in and through which each situation occurs. All of these terms (author, audience, text, and context) are fairly loose in their definitions and all of them affect each other. Also, all of these terms have specific qualities that affect they ways that they interact with the other term. Below, you’ll find basic definitions of each term, a brief discussion of the qualities of each term, and then finally, a series of examples which illustrate various rhetorical situations. Author “Author” is a fairly loose term used to refer to anyone who uses communication. An author could be one person or many people. An author could be someone who uses writing (like in a book), speech (like in a debate), visual elements (like in a TV commercial), audio elements (like in a radio broadcast), or even tactile elements (as is used in making Braille) to communicate. Whatever authors create, authors are unavoidably human beings whose particular activities are affected by these general constraints: authors have specific purposes that guide their actions in communicating, authors have specific attitudes which affect what and how they communicate, and authors have specific backgrounds that inform the nature of their communication. Author’s Purpose Authors’ purposes in communicating determines the basic rationale behind other decisions authors make (such as what to write or speak about, what medium to use, etc.). An author’s purpose in communicating could be to instruct, persuade, inform, entertain, educate, startle, excite, sadden, enlighten, punish, console . . . you get the idea. Authors’ purposes are only limited to what each author wants to accomplish in his or her communication. There are as many purposes for communicating as there are words to describe those purposes. Author’s Attitude Attitude is a much-overlooked element of rhetorical situations, but it affects a great deal of how a rhetorical situation unfolds. Consider if an author communicates with a flippant attitude as opposed to a serious attitude, or with drama as opposed to comedy, or calmly as opposed to excitedly. Depending on authors’ purposes, audiences’ specific qualities, the nature of the context, and other factors, any of these attitudes could either help or hinder authors in their efforts to communicate depending on the other factors in any given rhetorical situation. Author’s Background Many factors affect authors’ backgrounds. These can include age, personal experience, gender, location, ethnicity, political beliefs, parents, peers, level of education, and others. Authors’ backgrounds affect the things that authors assume about the world, their audiences, what and how they communicate, and the context in which they communicate. Contributors: Ethan Sproat, Dana Lynn Driscoll, Allen Brizee. Summary: This presentation is designed to introduce your students to a variety of factors that contribute to strong, well-organized writing. This presentation is suitable for the beginning of a composition course or the assignment of a writing project in any class. The Rhetorical Situation: Audience and Text Audience Like the term “author,” the term “audience” can also be loosely defined. “Audience” refers to any recipient of communication. Audiences can read, hear, see, or feel different kinds of communication through different kinds of media. Also, like authors, audiences are unavoidably human beings whose particular activities are also affected by specific purposes, specific attitudes, and specific backgrounds. Audience’s Purpose Like authors, audiences have varied purposes for reading, listening to, or otherwise appreciating pieces of communication. Audiences may seek to be instructed, persuaded, informed, entertained, educated, startled, excited, saddened, enlightened, punished, consoled. . . again, you get the idea. Audience’s Attitude Like authors, audiences bring diverse attitudes to how they appreciate different pieces of communication. Their attitude while reading, listening, observing, or whatnot affects how they receive and process the communication they receive. Audience’s Background And, also like authors, audiences’ individual backgrounds are affected by the same sorts of factors that affect authors’ backgrounds. Most importantly, these factors affect how audiences receive different pieces of communication, what they assume about the author, and the context in which they hear, read, or otherwise appreciate what the author communicates. Text The word “text” is probably the most fluid term in a rhetorical situation. Usually, the word “text” refers to a written or typed document. In terms of a rhetorical situation, however, “text” means any form of communication that humans create. Whenever humans engage in any act of communication, there is a text that serves as the vehicle for communication. Three basic factors affect the nature of each text: the medium of the text, the tools used to create the text, and the tools used to decipher the text. Medium of the Text Texts can appear in any kind of medium, or mechanism for communicating. The plural of medium in this sense is media. Various media affect the ways that authors and audiences communicate. Consider how these different types of media can affect how and what authors communicate to audiences in various rhetorical situations: hand-written, typed, computer-generated, audio, visual, spoken, verbal, non-verbal, graphic, pictorial, tactile, with words, or without words (there are many others, of course). Some varied specific examples of media could include a paper, a speech, a letter, an advertisement, a billboard, a presentation, a poster-board, a cartoon, a movie, a painting, a sculpture, an email, a Twitter tweet, a Facebook page or wall post, a conversation (face-to-face, on a cell phone, via text messages), graffiti. . . this list goes on and on and is nearly endless. Tools to Make the Text Every text is made with tools that affect the structure and content of a text. Such tools could be physical tools that range from very basic (such as the larynx, throat, teeth, lips, and tongue necessary for verbal communication) to very complex (such as a laptop computer with graphic- manipulating software). These tools could also be more conceptual tools that range from simple (such as implementing feedback from an instructor) to more complicated (such as implementing different kinds of library and primary research). The tools of communication often determine the kinds of communication that can happen in any given rhetorical situation. Tools to Decipher the Text Likewise, audiences have varied tools for reading, viewing, hearing, or otherwise appreciating various texts. These could be actual physical tools that would likewise range from very basic (like the eyes and reading glasses necessary to read) to very complex (like a digital projector and screen to view a PowerPoint presentation). Or they could be conceptual tools that could range from simple