Week 7- Multimodal Memoir: What is my Message and audience?

Starting my Multimodal Memoir related to home, family, and self concerning my own identity, language, and ethnicity. The overall theme that I want to capture is my emotion on the aspect of my communities culture roots, it’s value to my identity and its importance, prior to drifting myself away from my community. I will talk about my thought process as a teen by going back to past experiences and giving a realistic adventure through my choice of words to reveal my message. By initiating how I felt, dressed, and acted with the use of the five senses to give a realistic experience to my audience, in order for them to engage within my piece of writing. I will explicitly state that as I grew older, I felt disconnected with my latin community because I felt that it lacked class due to it being located in the center of poverty with people that signified my own race, instead of having more diversity in a richer neighborhood. I wanted to fit in with the stereotypes of America due to what I saw in movies and other people’s videos across all social media platforms. I will include the “experienced/ innocent voice” by giving an example about events that led up to distancing myself within the community for wanting better by fitting in with American society. While also showing a development among my character that follows my reflection as an adult rather than when I was a teen.

Examples to state in my essay

• People from Mexico expect a different way of living in America by having nice cars, a huge house, having money and huts living a lifestyle of riches. ( My cousins envied me for living in a country that they always known as “rich”. Me knowing that I didn’t have the style, made me want to have it. Drifting me away from my community/roots because I was blind to the true value that it holds.

• Wanted to fit in the American Society. Seeing blonde girls with bright blue eyes and a completion that was lighter than me. ( Younger me has a darker complexity) I wanted to look like them and live the way they did. This drifted me away from embracing my culture and ethnicity.

While also showing a development among my character that follows my reflection as an adult rather than when I was a teen.As I grew older, my grandma would tell me stories about how her and my grandfather crossed the border so my mom could live a better life(vivid imagery, making it so detailed). I later reflected and understood the obstacles to living in this country. Feeling both blessed and honored for the lifestyle that my Mexican parents gave me and the vakueh that my community has. . Her stories helped me realize the importance of my cultural background and how I should be proud of the courage that took my family to get to the United States. In addition, the audience (teens) stand to gain the message of not letting America’s society influence the way you feel about your race and identity, in order to fit in with America’s stereotypes. Therefore, I hope to motivate teens to embrace their cultural background without wanting to create a better version of themselves that is more American than their actual ethnicity.

Obstacles about writing a memoir

• I feel like my ideas are all over the place and have different significant messages that can confuse the audience.

• I feel both confident and unsure of my overall theme and message of choice.

• Questioning if my topic is a good discussion related to home, family, and self concerning my own identity, language, and ethnicity. Where I learned and reflected on past experiences.

• Does this show my “experienced and innocent voice”

Week 6- Revision Strategy

Coming to the final weeks of conducting my GA essay among my final 3rd draft which should be the ultimate writing piece thats demonstrates all criterias that I’ve developed through the first few weeks of utilizing both connect and pursell assignments while also connecting it to the metacognitive reading annotations. These assignments have helped me develop critical thinking and self improvement among the work I complete since each activity follows within an order of importance that result in a connections between the overall learning. Revision strategy that helped me evaluate my writing piece and it’s sections of error was the “Power of Process: Self Review of Full-Length Essay Draft” were it showed the progress among the revision strategy circle, as it gave an organized structure among each step needed to complete the final GA paper. With a in depth evaluation among my own work using analysis to examine the elements and structure of my writing with the Introduction paragraph, thesis statement, topic sentences (use of transitional words/sentences) , body paragraphs (quote analysis) and conclusion paragraph that states the audiences understatement and lesson learned upon the message conveyed through the use of genres and it’s conventions. Since reading and critiquing the two student sample GA essays, I’m more aware of the structure of a genre-based rhetorical analysis where it includes genres and conventions to address a discourse community among analyzing rhetorical elements. As it overall purpose is to connect the intended audience with the message that the author is trying to convey, as a learning experience for both the readers and intended audience.

The picture shown above is a visual representaion of the "Process Circle. It helped me revise my own GA essay draft #2 by analyzing and evaluating each section of my writing.

What I learned from giving and receiving feedback from peer review and Professor Delany-Ullman's: Revision Strategy to correct my point of errors

• I need to focus on revising the title of my essay because I seem to connect it more to Anzaldua's message.

So inorder not to do that, I must connect it to the theme of my essay while including the use of genres and their conventions I utilized, in order to demonstrate that specific message that’s for the intended audience.

• Throughout my essay, I included “experienced voice” as a convention pertaining to academic discourse when it should be utilized among the writing of a memoir.

Instead, I can use Academic discourse for the 2 languages that Anzaldua breaks between the conventions (Spanish and English) . I can demonstrate the tone expected from the languages she chooses, such a formal tone and slang.

• I don’t seem to explain the use of metaphor and its purpose to the convention (being more specific).

When using metaphor as a convention among Literacy narratives: Demonstrate her message using metaphor by the use of thematic conventions. Personal experiences with language to express metaphor.

• I don’t include the audience prior to the quote analysis in my body paragraph to make further connections.

How does it affect the audience and how do they feel about the conventions demonstrating the development among Anzaldua’s message. Does it provoke anger to the white males (anglo).

Excerpt: (Evidence)

In the beginning of the text, Anzaldua uses metaphorical language to imply that her mothers tongue is being controlled by linguistic borders brought upon Americans, with the injustices of pushing racism on languages from different ethnicity that aren’t English by stating, “ We’re going to have to control your tongue, the dentist says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits plop and tinkle into bassin. My mouth is a motherlode. The dentist is cleaning out my roots” (Anzaldua, 33). The dentist represents the racial oppression that Americans Society puts on native speakers since it shows the dentist eagerness, for wanting to drift her cultural roots away and the language that signifies her identity, by taking her native language away. “Pulling out the metal from my tongue (Anzaldua 33)”. Metal refers as something strong as steel to indicate the strong cultural roots that Anzalda has and the difficulties to taking her native language away with the power of voice she beholds as “My tongue is a motherlode” (Anzaldua 33). Furthermore, the dentist cleans out the root indicating that her cultural beliefs are diminished upon American society, limiting her tongue (native language). As a result of this, it can disconnect the relationship between the persons cultural roots, making them feel unworthy of the language they use for everyday interaction.

This specifically shows a development among my writing skills by incorporating rhetorical elements, where I utilized a convention (metaphorical language) to show how it’s specific genre correlates to the authors message and its impact on the intended audience, with initiating a quote analysis for a source of evidence.

Thank you for reading all my blog post!

Week 5- Thesis Comparison

Prior to developing and structuring my first thesis that includes the genres of literacy narrative and academic discourse with it’s conventions. I got feedback from both the peer review and class instructor to make it clear and obvious what conventions I’m utilizes, inorder to connect the message to the intended audience. This constructive criticism was helpful because my first draft demonstrated incomplete and unfocused main points and wasn’t arguable to show prior knowledge or evidence to back up my initial claim in my body paragraphs. I took it step by step and analyzed each sentence separately to carefully evaluate my thoughts so it can be more well constructed. By doing this, I first got rid of the title since it’s a repetition that’s followed through my introduction pagraph and it’s not needed. In addition, I included the conventions that im going to utilize in order to support the genres I’m using by stating “metaphor” and “experienced voice” which falls within symbolic representation and the use of bilingual language. I also included a broader more detailed description of who are the audience that Anzaldúa is writing for since in the first draft I state “ Americans” but I never included what gender was significant to this overall text. In my new version I stated that the Anericans are scholars who are primarily males. Here I’m giving a stronger specific statement on who are the Americans .

Down below is a reference from the different structures of thesis I've constructed, with the first draft being the original and the second draft being the new version upon my constructed criticism.

First Draft Thesis: (original)

Second Draft Thesis: (revision)

My new revised thesis meets the characteristic of a good thesis statement because it includes : the author's name, two genres which are literacy narrative and academic discourse , two genre conventions which are metaphors and the experienced voice , and the author's main message upon the cultural differences and racism that separates a person and their native language, due to feeling ashamed and embarrassed. It's Arguable because it takes a position, asserting my stance on how the text utilizes genre and it conventions to convey its message to the audience where the audience can possibly come out with conclusions of their own. My thesis statement is specific since it clearly states what genre and conventions I’m utilizing, making it sophisticated as I stated the use of the rector's message and it’s purpose to the text. I structured it off based on the rubric and how the sentence structure and information connects to another with organization. These points line up with my reasoning because its a step by step format on how specific ideas lead up to the overall claim and message. For example, it’s like baking a cake, you have a recipe to follow inorder to bake a well tasteful cake and if you don’t follow at least one step of the recipe, it’s going to ruin the development and structure of the cake leading to something that’s completely awful and undone.

From doing a side-by-side comparison among my thesis statements, I was able to identify what’s needed inorder to conduct a well written thesis statement and how to structure( organize) one in an accurate way following the GA essay rubric criteria. It was helpful to see the difference of an unfocused/incomplete thesis prior to one that follows the rubric. As the rubric followed the criteria of including that the thesis is should be arguable and insightful about the text and overall message with developing a credible interpretation about how key genre conventions to make it relevant to what you are discussing. The overall thesis should have reasoning, inorder to back up the claim to make a good detailed outline of a thesis.

From this assignment, I learned that inorder to make a claim arguable, you must include a sentence that provoke the audience to make own connections and possibly indicate their different view points. As a writer you must require evidence and critical thinking that extends beyond an opinion and the obvious. Thinking outside the box is important to convince the readers. A learning course objective would be the learning of analyzing relationships between , genre, purpose, audience, and context in appropriate genre models as for explaining and showing prior knowledge. This demonstrates that I’m strengthening a key skill in my critical writing by being able to develop an essay with a good thesis statement and show analysis upon my body paragraphs to further my claim. This is important because writing an essay is requirement used among every academic subject to structure a well written piece. Mastering this skill is important to my academic ethos with meeting the requirements for WR 39C. This learning is meaningful to become an academic writer and member of an academic discourse since it formulates the language used among how you interact meaning within your writing.

Stay tuned for next weeks blog!

work cited

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Easy-Ways-to-Write-a-Thesis-Statement-for-an-Essay

https://www.pinterest.com/hjhjhj/writing-thesis-statements/