Blog 14

Some of the writings...

 

Short Analysis Draft

 

 

            A discourse community can become the kind of structure as a group organization

or a political party. What they all have in common is each individual is free to give their
own opinions about something as well as appeal some disagreeable statements. The
media, social networks, and technology has a lot to do with sharing opinions and
communicating with other communities. Through observations how can a discourse
community be formed through the media or through ethnographic notes of observations.
Can the notes have an effect on different languages or body language, or through
responses.

The students blogs are all different in their own way, through their responses. For
example, some blogs mentioned some events from their personal experience that relates
to some of the class discussions and how they agreed to it. The story about the young girl
chatting online with a guy that she eventually found out that it was someone she already
knew. I could relate to my childhood and chatting online with different people also. This
became a unity between most of the females in the class mentioning that they remember
incidents of them being involved in chat rooms or social network sites. Other differences
of the blogs is some are really descriptive and give a little more detail I what their
response is, and some are short and simple but well briefly explained.

 The similarities of the blogs were that they all mostly had positive responses to

most of their discussions. I noticed that there are more females than males but it didn’t
effect the opinions that each gender group had. Some of the males equally agreed with the
same responses as the females. With that I learned that with having a discourse
community it doesn’t have to be of the same gender. There is no judgment or debate
comparing female responses to male responses, it’s all one opinion. I also observe
that in the beginning of a new class topic or class discussion. Most of the time the
students have a hard time understanding most of the readings until they have a full
discussion in class. Then as they begin to be more involved and understand more their
reactions change. So when they have to write their blog responses about what was
discussed they have more to say and their responses changes from the beginning to the
end.

 The different languages I observed between the blogs was mostly usage of “my

opinion is, or I can agree with, and so on. Most of the languages were about agreeing to a
discussion  or stating their opinions or reasons to backup their blogs. Also, as I mention I
noticed the languages changed between the class from the beginning of a class discussion
about a reading and not fully understanding it, to later on after a full class discussion of
understanding. The blogs tend to become more detailed, the students explained their
responses more better.

            The languages between the students communicating is really positive, as each of

he students may share the same opinions, and agreeing on the same thoughts in their
group assignments. Their form of communicating is a form of a discourse community
with a start of less people to a larger group. The language can be an attraction of other
students wanting to be  involved or state their own opinions also.

Blog 13

Blog 13.

 As I looked through most of the blogs I did notice some similar activities and some different from one another. I found different languages from some of the students as well.

 Research Question: How can the media or social media form a discourse community?

 My focus will be on examining the comments/ responses from each students. I will find the difference in some responses than others and also how the responses changes from the beginning to the end. 

 Some writings for my short analysis draft project…..

 What’s different? Most of the responses from students either aggressed with the next student or disagreed and if the thoughts were the same then they had different reasons of why they thought that. For example, some of the shaggy dog experience of reading the stories were a bit confusing and most students felt the same way, but some students understood it right away. As the other students continued to read more of the shaggy dog stories they started to analysis how it was structured and they all begin to understand. Now we’ve formed a discoursed community through the understanding of the shaggy dog stories.

 What’s the same? The similarities of the students blogs were that each student gave explanations about their reason of opinions. They always are positive about their responses and negotiable with agreeing or disagree. The students are really specific about what the want and what they know. Their knowledge of the work is all explained I the blogs response. 

 What I noticed? I noticed that there is a minimum amount of males than females in the class and with that the same genders never agreed as a gender separation. If some students  agreed with the same it didn’t matter if they were male or female. They came to an agreement based on their own opinions.

 

Think of observations throughout the class where there students…..all the students were focused on writing their notes for the ethnographic to make sure they have exactly what they observed.

 

Find out the language and show evidence?  One language I did notice was, and I can use myself as an example was from the ethnographic notes. My thoughts of this activity was not so sure of the outcome it supposed to have at the end. It was sort of fun and weird to have to write and look at other students expressions or body language and write down notes at the same time. The key language use from students when I was looking at…. Or when I observed…. Or while I was writing I noticed…and so on.

Blog 12 Data Set #2

I will be doing my analysis on the ethnographic notes discussion we had in class. I chose the ethnographic notes because in my research it discusses about forming a discousre community. It wil help me give example to some questions I will ask like .....

-How can a discourse community be form if everyone has a different oppinion?

- Can the community come together on an agreement? If not, how can we make it become that way?

- What are ways to comunicate with each other at any time someone feels as if they have urgent response to something effecting their community?

- What's the effect of the responses from the people? How did it make them feel before they resonded? In what way did they get ton that point?

- Can a community force be better than a single person's opinion on things?

-How can a goup be considered a discourse community? ..........those are just a few of some questions I might add in for analysis paper and I will possibly change things around as I do more research.

Blog 10

During our class discussion on the writing option major survey brought out some major facts. The most difficult thing is that putting together a survey is very difficult. There are so many different aspects to consider like when to give it out, as freshmen or juniors. Another thing is the language which Gee speaks about. It seems that those who came up with the surveys assume that those taking the survey understand the language that is on the survey and that is not always true. Students might take the survey thinking they understand it but actually have no idea what rhetoric and discourse mean. The English Department uses a language in this survey that fits their discourse, and although students in the English department are expected to learn the language, they might not have complete understanding of it, or have not even been taught it yet. As a class we came to the conclusion that data from surveys in general may not always be accurate because of all the factors that have to go into it.

 

My thoughts as a english major and also a transfer student was that I wasn't aware of most of the questions being asked becauase the school I came from never taught us meanings of certain terms being used in the survey. My same response was for other transfer student as well. So that makes the surveys more difficult to understand and most of the response are not accurate enough to make an equal judgement from.  

We agreed that the questions are so straight forward, there isn't enough information to understand what is going on in the students’ mind. With surveys you can collect generalized non-specific information. Although surveys are intended to collect specific data, most of the time that isn't the outcome. You can also collect information that deals with numbers of people depending on the people that fill out the survey. For example, you can collect the number of people who buy fast food rather than cook food from home. Surveys collect numbers rather than detail. Surveys can also collect demographics.

Challenges include the fact that people may not be truthful on surveys. Because the options are few, students will feel forced to pick an answer which is on a survey but might not actually be their true answer. It is very difficult to put a survey together because you can only see your own views and you own opinions. Those putting together a survey are limited to their own minds; they cannot enter into the minds of all the other people whom they are surveying, which contain various kinds of details that will be helpful for the surveys. Therefore if they cannot get on others’ minds, they cannot know the right questions to ask or the right ways to ask questions. Language is also another great challenge that people making surveys have to be careful of. It can be difficult to simplify language and still get the answers that you desire. Some surveys might still need to use the language of that discourse even though it means that they might get responses that are inaccurate.