TOW #4

The TOW I chose for this week is a non-fiction essay called "This Is The Life" by Annie Dillard. This essay is about how humans nowadays take their lives for granted and they don't realize that not everyone in the world can have such an easy life. The author, Annie Dillard, was born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and she is an american author who is best known for narrating non- fiction and fiction pieces. The audience of this overall piece is for everyone, considering that this text is about life and how you shouldn't take it for granted. I would also say that this text could be more towards those who are more mature because of the strong diction she uses. The context of this text is for people to appreciate their life more and for them to challenge them selves to look at the world more differently. An important rhetoric device that this author uses tone. In this text, Dillard uses a generous tone and she switches between a mocking tone and an annoyed tone to show that humans nowadays really do take their lives for granted as I said before and do not realize how others have it. She also describes how humans lived in the past and present and she was bringing up scenarios describing the “easy life” during a certain time. She also tries to get the reader to actually appreciate what they have in life and tries to open our mind more and look at the world a different way. The purpose for Dillard to write this text is simply just to show everyone that they have an easy life compared to other people around the world. The author did accomplish her purpose by using anecdotes of peoples lives to relate more to the reader. The author also draws the reader in during the beginning of the text by saying, "You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die."

TOW #3

The TOW I chose this week is this visual text by Yaser Ahmad. This visual text is all based on the overuse of technology. The maker of this visual text is Yaser Ahmad and he is a cartoonist mainly for political cartoons and he is from from Kamishli, Syria. The audience that this text was composed was mainly for adolescents. Just like what this visual text shows, they feed off of technology to the point that they think it's like food to them because they believe that we need it to survive. All the apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are used daily, for hours by teenagers which consumes their lives and it is taking over their brains. Their lives are based on their phones and its mind-eating apps. If adolescents don't have connection or wifi to access these apps, they go insane and think that there is no other way to communicate because their lives are based on a pixilated screen that just shows how "interesting" others lives are which is taking over the real view that is in front of them. A view that is actually worth watching. A rhetoric device that the cartoonist uses is a hyperbole. We can't actually open our phones and eat our apps with a fork literally but figuratively the picture is saying that it seems as if we need our phones and apps so much, that we feed on to it like food, we need it to survive as I said previously. The authors purpose in drawing this visual text is for teenagers to open their mind and to show them how others really view them. The maker of this visual text really accomplished his purpose because he exaggerated but did it visually so it is easier and more entertaining to understand.

IRB

The IRB that I'm reading right now is called The Rum Diary by Hunter Thompson. So far, a man named Paul Kemp is boarding in a plane that is leaving to Puerto Rico. He drinks so he can experience the plane ride better. While he's boarding, he sees a beautiful woman that he wants to meet during the plane ride.

TOW #2 (How to Say Nothing in 500 Words)

How to Say Nothing in 500 Words is a small informational excerpt that informs about the right and wrong methods of essay writing. The author guides the reader through the process of perfecting an essay that would otherwise be poorly written. Paul Roberts, is an American journalist that has an extensive collection of writing textbooks that help his readers have a better understanding of the English language. The audience of this excerpt are adolescents that are currently in high-school and those who are about to enter college. This group of people is the one that can relate to this the most since they are usually assigned essays on a regular basis. Adolescents and entering college students can relate to the student at the beginning of the excerpt who contemplated whether or not he should go out on the weekend or stay home and get his essay out of the way instead. The contents of this excerpt contain many suggestions on how to improve one's essay writing skills. For instance, there is a part in the text that teaches the readers how to convert a four word statement to a forty word statement by using "colored" words and details. This technique proves very effective when trying to extend the length of an essay to meet minimum requirements. To achieve his purpose, the author use anecdotes as his main rhetorical device. The author exemplifies the anecdote of the student who received a "D" on his essay in order to convey his point. The author's purpose in writing this text is to help teenagers and college students write better essays and to actually make a good use of it. The author does accomplish this purposes as his use of anecdotes is very successful in persuading his beliefs. Because every teenager relates to the student at the beginning of the excerpt, they know how it feels to want an improvement in their writing style while prioritizing their plans for the weekend. 

TOW #1

Go ask alice is a non-fiction book about a teenage girl that is fifteen years old that is just entering a new high-school for her freshman year. She moves a lot so it is nothing new or exciting for her. She beings to meet a couple people from her school that invite her to her first ever party but little did she know that this party influenced her life in a very rough way. This book is based on someones diary but the one who published this book is anonymous therefore, the credibility of the author as a primary source cannot be given. The audience of this piece is directed towards adolescents from the ages fifteen through eighteen based on the tone and the actual context of drugs which is sadly, a culture for adolescents now a days. The occasion of this text is in a suburban traditional high-school with her own group of friends that are a little older than she is and they are also a bad influence on her because of their excessive drug and alcohol use. The author uses anecdotes to make the reader feel the sentiment of the anonymous writer as if he/she was experiencing the same thing. The authors purpose in writing this text is not to vent feelings which diaries are mainly about, but it is a way to track how she is feeling in a subconscious way. Yes, the author accomplished their purpose because you do notice the changes she has been going through throughout the dates she writes. She goes from a calm, mellow teenage girl, to a depressed, suicidal girl who can't go through a day without taking drugs or having alcohol all because of hanging out with the wrong crowd she thought was innocent at the beginning and a party she thought wouldn't even have drugs or alcohol.