Learning Log Unit 2

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/

Day 1 - 2/19/20
“Personal Literacy and Academic Learning” by Marlena Stafford
1. - ​Once we become aware of the various personal literacies we practice in our lives, we can
begin to see their connections to the academic literate practices we must develop to meet our
academic goals.
- When we learn to transfer our personal literate practices to formal school settings, we engage in
a process of contextualization. In other words, we make meaning of school content by
connecting our personal lives to our school lives.
2. Writing Timeline
2006- I Learned how to read and write!
2008- Started Writing in a journal.
2010- Wrote lots of letters to my friends and family.
2012- I wrote (what I thought was amazing) a story on the Titanic.
2013- Started taking english classes, and also the SAGE tests.
2014- Started writing papers and essays for classes.
2015- Took Honors english and eventually AP Classes.
2017- Started writing papers for myself and it got more interesting.
2018- Wrote tons of rhetorical analysis essays.
2019- Wrote 8 BYU application essays (which paid off & were very successful!)
2020- Wrote a personal essay that I felt really showed how I am.

Day 2 - 2/21/20
“You Will Never Believe What Happened; Stories We Tell” by Ron Christiansen
1. - Telling stories is one way we use language as a resource to create and build relationships.
When we use language to recount events in our life, we are deliberately utilizing strategies in
order to enact a particular type of response to our words.
- Stories are our attempts to make sense of the world. We narrate our experience in order to
connect with others and validate our own experience and self-worth. We shape our identity
through these stories.
2. When we are telling stories it is making us human, so in that instance, when we are reading
stories we are coming in touch with our humanity. We are reading our humanity and coming in
touch with it because if your story is you as a human, you are reading your own humanity when
you are reading stories. We should read stories to come in touch with our humanity.
Day 3 - 2/24/20
“Is That a True Story?” by Ron Christiansen
1. - “True stories, even when told through the genre of memoir, are about much more than
simply transcribing each fact. We may still have to do some research by talking with others and
looking up details. But this process, as we see above, is not about sticking to the facts. Instead, it
is about the overall emotional truth and getting, as best we can, at the experience of being
human.”
- “Writers, therefore, have to make deliberate choices about what kinds of truth their stories
contain and how they then choose to communicate these truths.”
2. Truth is complicated because we don’t know what the complete truth is, everyone can have
their own version of the story and we have no idea who is being truthful or who actually knows
what is true. Something could be emotionally truthful but not factually truthful. Writers can all
perceive truth in their own ways, and it is their choice on how they show that in their story.

Day 4 - 2/27/20
“Adding the Storyteller’s Tools to the Writer’s Toolbox” by Clint Johnson
1. The Power of Scene - “Writing stories requires that we write meaningful scenes: areas of
intense focus where we describe people, places, and actions in order to make a reader feel they
have witnessed something themselves.”
2. The Power of Experience - “When people make claims about what is good or bad, effective or
ineffective, or true or false, we automatically compare the claim to our lived experience.”
3. The Power of Sensory Detail - “As a storyteller, you know the importance of sensory
description. To describe something using the senses not only gives an additional texture of
reality to the subject, but it can help memory.”
4. The Power of Voice - “Their words—dialogue—have great power to establish unique,
distinctive voices separate from the author’s own voice as a story’s narrator. These character
voices seem so real it’s easy to forget that the author created them.”
5. The Power of Conflict - “You know that every good story is about conflict because conflict
means people care. Conflict is produced when different individuals or groups have competing
interests and take action trying to achieve their personal goals, often by overcoming resistance
from others.”

Day 5 - 3/2/20
“Memorability: 6 Keys for Success” by Nikki Mantyla
- Simple: “We can’t always be brief, but we can stay focused. Selecting and maintaining a simple
focus ties everything into one tidy, memorable package.”
- Unexpected: “It’s also important to know that comedy thrives on irony—or in other words, the
unexpected. The more unpredictable the punchline, the bigger the laughs. Without such surprise,
our chances of being memorable are low.”
- Concrete: “Masters of language also recognize that all external input comes in five tangible
forms: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The mind connects concrete input, such as a citrusy
scent, to previous knowledge, like Grandma’s grapefruit trees, while abstract ideas often
vaporize.”
- Credible: “Writers can also buy cred by touting their own expertise: experiences with the topic,
relevant places they’ve worked or volunteered, observations that sharpened their perspective,
surveys or interviews they’ve done, classes they’ve taken, even their age. Weigh possible
credentials against the writing situation and include ones that will give it the best boost.”
- Emotional: “Projecting emotion is important but tricky. Add colors, photos, or other visuals
that correspond, such as Seinfeld’s memorable amusing snapshot above—perfect for an article
about memorability via comedy.”
- Story-based: “Most crucially of all, tell a story. It’s one of the best ways to appeal to
emotion—and appeal to humans. Think how quickly a sad story can make the audience teary or a
silly one can make them laugh. Think how closely people listen when a story is told.”
- Conclusion: “That’s the power of language to do things, be things, and make things in the
world. That’s the power our writing can have when we master language/writing as a resource.”

Day 6 - 3/5/20
“Story as Rhetorical: We Can’t Escape the Story No Matter How Hard We Try” by Ron
Christiansen
1. - To confess is to tell a story about ourselves.
- To narrate our lives is to admit to a point of view and to ground our arguments in the lived
experience of who we are.
- Not only is storytelling rhetorical, from a broader perspective, story is the method by which we
understand the world and our place in it.
2. When you are making an argument, usually there is also a story behind it. Whenever you are
telling a story, you are trying to get a point across, so it can be like you are arguing something or
just making an argument as a writer from your own personal experiences. Just because it's not a
typically argumentative essay, a story can have a bigger purpose.

Day 7 - 3/9/20
“The Narrative Effect: Story as the Forward Frame” by Lisa Bickmore
1. A story is underlying all understanding because there are many things that make storytelling a
bigger story, and gives us a greater understanding of it. There are tons of factors that go into
understanding a story, and the meaning of the story in general.
- A narrative text puts story first; it frames the reader’s experience of the text by
forwarding, or emphasizing, story-telling strategies.
- But no matter how the writer manages the timeline, in a story, a reader expects to be
anchored explicitly in time, and to be able to orient him or herself in time.
 - Either the situation is clearly understood by all those who receive the piece of writing, or
the writer makes that situation clear.
- Writers create the worlds of their stories by using sensory detail, but also by evoking the
narrator’s or other character’s states of mind.
- As readers, we also hope for an opportunity to see into a vivid story-world that has a
sense of lived-in-ness, of detail and texture.
2. The narrative effect can be used within other types of texts, such as within a text that is more
informative or more persuasively oriented. That narrative effect, contained within a larger piece,
can be a tool for a more complex rhetorical appeal.

Day 8 - 3/11/20
“Punctuation, Memes, and Choice” by Nikki Mantyla
1. Take two or more sentences; switch the period between them to a semicolon; now you’ve
turned multiple sentences into one. That’s it. Semicolons emphasize a connection between the
statements.
2. It’s also good to understand that parentheses de-emphasize. You place them around
unimportant parts of the sentence that could be completely removed without changing the overall
meaning. Anything that is crucial to the sentence should stay outside the parentheses
3. I finally understand how to use semicolons and colons, or just learning more about what they
are. I am more comfortable using them and now really know what they are. I also now more
understand all of the punctuation marks and when to use them and what they do to the writing.

Day 9 - 3/13/20
“Peer Review” by Jim Beatty
Whenever I am doing a peer review, the easiest thing to fix in someone's paper is to
correct their grammar issues. I often find myself fixing grammar issues throughout the whole
thing. And many times when people peer review my essay, they just point out the grammar
issues as well. I have realized that that is the worst way to peer review. When I want feedback on
my essay, I want to know what I can fix and how I can make my essay better. I won’t get any of
that feedback from a bunch of “add a comma here”, and “capitalize this letter”. When teachers
are grading essays, yes they look at punctuation, but overall they are looking at the content of the
essay and what you have to say. I will try my best to not just pick out the punctuation and
grammar issues in someone's paper because I want to make my writing better and well and
constructively help theirs.
When you are just reviewing someone's paper by fixing the grammar issues, you aren’t
really putting in the effort. Real effort is when you are fixing their essay and giving them
feedback on how they can put more information in the essay. You can fix punctuation while you
are editing, but don’t let that override the content that you are reviewing in their essay. Many
times when I receive content criticism, I don't take it offensively, but I use it to just make my
writing better. Because that's what the teacher wants to see in your essay. We have to go above
and beyond for how we are editing and what help we can give to our peers.