3 Personal Goals for English 1A

1. Understand and enjoy the the different types of writing inside and out of class.

2. Learn the correct way to write and essay, short essay, review, etc...

3. Enjoy Writing!!

E-Portfilio 5/19/14

E-Portfolio

Visual #2 (Banksy)

Visual (YouTube video)

Group Project Review 5/2/14

Should College Athletes be Paid

        After having seen this presentation, I believe they did a good job. Some of the strengths that they  had in their presentation were that they all were well informed about their topic. The video they had was very interesting because it was an actual big time basketball player that had the same opinion as them. Another strength that they had in their presentation was their counter argument and using title nine to explain why some might not want to pay student athletes. One of the weaknesses that I did notice in their presentation was that they would pause a lot or have a lot of "ums" while presenting. Overall they had a really solid presentation and information.

Violets Video Games

     After having seen their presentation on violent video games, I think they had good information but  had trouble putting it together. Something that I found as a weakness right from the start was beginning the presentation with a video. It would hav been a little more clear if they started with a problem and question and then the video. Throughout the presentation the information provided seemed a little scrambled and unorganized. Some of the strengths that they did have wrre that they did a good job citing and using examples when presenting their information. Overall they had good material but just didnt structure it properly.  

Group Project Review (4/30/14)

Effects of Dieting

     After having seen their presentation they had a lot of strengths and weaknesses. To start of with their strengths were that they were well informed about their topic and they chose a topic that is an issue in today's society. With them being well informed they were able to give us, the audience, a lot of information on the topic. Another thing that I found as a strength in their presentation was that they put the citation at the bottom of each slide. Some things that I found as weaknesses were that they would read a lot off of the PowerPoint and their notecards. Another issue was having too much text information on the actual slides. Other than that I think they did a good job.

Space Exploration 

     To start off, I think this group did a good job on choosing their topic. At first I wasn't really sure what space exploration was about or if it was even interesting. They chose a topic that they seemed passionate about and something that people may not know a lot about. Some strengths in their presentation were that they were really well informed and passionate about their information. The tone of voice and enthusiasm actually captured my attention and made it a bit more interesting. Some weaknesses of the presentation were that one student did a lot more talking than the others and also at the end, I couldn't really feel what side they were on, as in government or private space companies.

Hypocrisy is a Whore

     After having seen their presentation I was kind of confused but informed at the same time. I think that some of their strengths were that they were well informed about their topic. They were able to grab the viewers attention with a bit of comedy as well. One of the weaknesses was that at times the presentation felt a bit scattered. Another one was that I couldn't really interpret what their presentation was about or the side they were taking. I know it was about prostitution, but I couldn't really tell what else it was about, as in their argument. Overall I think it was an interesting presentation. 

Group Project Review 4/28/14

Group Project Review

Reflection Paper (group project)

Jose Ramirez

English1A

27 April 2014

Reflection Paper

    After having worked on this project my group and I did encounter some problems, but we were able to work on them. To start off my role in the group was a little bit of everything. Each of us was responsible for our own annotated bibliographies and creating slides that would cover the information. As for the other slides we all put in group effort to work on them together. As for the interviews we split them up as evenly as possible so one of us wouldnt have to do more work than the other.

    As we worked on our project we did encounter some problems. To start off with, our biggest problem was narrowing our problem down to establish a solid question. After having figured out our question, creating the powerpoint and finding information was simple. Another problem that i expected was not being able to meet up together and work on the project together. Luckily that was not a problem and we were all able to meet up together and work on it.

     After having seen our finished product, as of now, I believe that i deserve a B on this project. Throughout the project i would say that i put my fair share of work in and the information that I did provide was good. After the presentation it may change depending on how good we did on our presentation. As for our group grade i believe we deserve a solid B because we covered all of the information required. We were all able to meet up and work on the project together and gather interesting information about our argument.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1baqOYlWeFX03wvjObKVHBO5LXo1ebPIrWTX7IETvgLo/edit?usp=sharing

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography 2

SWA: Slanting

    After having read the article on slanting and charged language it really made me think about how the message behind our writing can be changed due to the position of our writing and structure. I didn't really know that charged writing meant kind of including opinion in the writing. I would say that I don't use charged writing tool often in my writing.

SWA "The Everyday Writer" p.175-210

    After having read this section that was about preparing for a research paper, I didn't learn anything new but it did refresh my memory on some things I had forgotten about. I usually follow all of the different steps that were mentioned such as creating a hypothesis and doing research but I do it in a different order. One thing that I I found interesting that I normally do not do is to create a research log and keep track of all of your sources. I found this to be very helpful because there was a time in high school where I was just keeping tabs open to keep track of my resources and one of my cousins used my computer and closed them all. I also found evaluating the sources useful because some authors may not be credible or they might be biased.

Response Paper #2 (Las Vegas)

Response Paper 2

3-D Visual

Visual Rhetoric Paper (Final Draft)

Visual Rhetoric Paper

Visual Rhetoric Description

For the visual piece of my project I had planned to make a display out of an empty spray paint can and other objects. To start off I planned on using the empty can as the focal point of the visual. The can will be painted with different colors to show the variety that graffiti artists use to express emotion. I also have planned to cut out a piece of the can to make it like a view inside of it with a political cartoon in it. Besides that I plan on tracing and cutting out words on cardboard such as:message, emotion,etc... to show that graffiti isn't always about vandalism. From there I plan on using some type of wire to make it seem as if those words are spraying out of the tip.

Genre Analysis (Final Draft)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_jFmm_Wz7IMaURoallBaGhjRDA/edit?usp=sharing

Graffiti in America (Draft:2)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_jFmm_Wz7IMV2N2X3RyWlNzYkk/edit?usp=sharing

(SWA) Movie Analysis 3/5

    After watching each portion of the movies, it was obvious that the different technologies of the time, in which they were created, affected the "horror" behind it. In "Nosferatu" the lighting, music, and costumes all played a role in making this movie scary. Although some of us found this movie to be somewhat funny and corny, I believe that the lighting, which had shades of blue and pink, was some of the technology used in it. As for the music, it would build up to a so called scary or suspenseful part of the movie with its high pitched tones and sudden increase in volume. As for "The Shining", the music, better video quality, and special effects shaped how suspenseful this movie was. Better video quality enabled the movie to have better graphics and a faster paced feel through certain scenes. Special effects, such as blood, made the movie more visual and frightening. In the movie "The Conjuring" had all of the same technologies listed in the other movies and they are possibly newer, but they just executed them better throughout the movie. For example, the special effects such as the scary ghost on the ceiling and the boy in the jack in the box reflection added a lot more horror to this movie. The sound effects, like the thumping and creaking in certain section portions of the movie, and the suspenseful and dramatic music made this movie more scary. Overall, I believe that the scariest movie out of them all was "The Conjuring" due to its modern use of special effects and dramatic music.

SWA: Task

After having read my peers evaluation on my paper, I learned that my weaknesses throughout my paper are small sentence errors and that I need to add just a little bit more information to make it better. Some suggestions made by my peers include adding more examples to some of my paragraphs and really specifying some parts of my paper. Another is to fix my conclusion to really make it a solid conclusion. For the most part I do agree with their comments. I really do find peer revisions helpful because it has the opinions and corrections from some one else's view. For my paper I definately will use some of their revisions to fix my paper, but there are some "corrections" that I do not find to be necessary. The main one being to add more information to sentences that I do not believe need it.

Response Paper 1

Jose Ramirez
3/2/14
English 1A

 
   After reading the article " Colorado Stash" by Aaron Smith, I have an even better explanation on why marijuana is good for the economy. In this article, Smith reports that by January of next year Colorado will have generated an estimated 184 million in tax revenue due to the sale of recreational marijuana. The article doesn't reall choose a side on wether it is the right thing to do or not, but it does cover more numbers and the positive impact that the money will have. I personally believe that marijuana should be legalized for the exact reason stated in the article, and that it also benefits people with certain medical needs. I have no personal experience with the drug but I believe that it has many positive effects on society. The thing I found odd about the state of Colorado and the article is that, it plans on using the majority of the money to fight the prevention of marijuana use in children and many other health classes.  I personally believe that this money could be used for schools and veteran assistance. Overall I do like staying up to date on where the legalization of marijuana stands because it is something that I believe will benefit this country.

SW "Shitty First Drafts"

   After having read this article I can relate to the kind of mentality that this writer has. He mentions that while writing he often experiences a lot of pressure and pretty much writers block. Something that I often find myself doing. Sometimes walking around or even watching tv until an idea comes to mind. He also includes that a good start is to have a shitty first draft. He bases the final draft off of that shitty first draft. I kind of use the same method, except I try to actually make it sound good on that first draft, and then I just make it flow from then on.

Draft 3

Jose Ramirez

20 February 2014

English 1A

Literacy Narrative

            My name is Jose Julio Ramirez and I was born in Mexico, but moved to the states as an infant and have been raised here in Sacramento. Throughout the majority of my life, my family and I have lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods here in Sacramento. Since the neighborhoods that I have lived in were so infested by crime and violence, my parents found school to be my brother and I's safe haven. With that being said, my parents made school our number one priority and made sure we gave 100% effort academically. From that point on my parents and I placed high standards on my education and made it a goal to go to college. That is how I ended up here; now pursuing my dream of graduating college.

            Throughout my short lived life, reading, writing, and I have had a love-hate relationship. From the time I was in the fourth grade to present day, teachers, different academic standards, and being a minority have impacted my interest in reading and writing. What I mean by “being a minority” is that social and cultural issues have shaped my understanding and view on reading and writing. All of these different events and people have shaped my view on literacy throughout my life.

            Being Mexican, and having almost every single family member be Mexican, was the main reason that the first language I learned how to speak was Spanish. Spanish was my primary language that I used to communicate with my family. As I grew up my brother, uncle, and cousin were the main people that helped me learn how to speak English. Time went on and once I started going to school, I learned how to read, write, and speak English properly. I never found writing or reading in Spanish useful so I never bothered to learn how to do either. English, to me, seemed a lot easier when it came to writing and reading, so I took more interest in that than in Spanish. To this day I mainly use Spanish when talking with my parents or when I talk with other family members, but there are times when I do regret not taking the time to properly learn how to read and write in Spanish. Before kindergarten started, I was fortunate enough to know both Spanish and English.

           In the fourth grade I read this book called Danger in the Desert by Terri Fields, that would change my opinion about books for a while. This book fascinated me and really became the gateway for my interest in books. After reading this book I no longer felt that reading books was only used to learn. I looked beyond that and realized that some books were created for pure entertainment. From then to about the eighth grade reading was mostly a requirement but I actually enjoyed it. As for writing, I didn’t really have interest for it at the time.

            Once I became a freshman in high school my feelings and interest for reading and writing changed once again. At this point, outside reading was no longer a requirement but an option or so called hobby. The only required reading was assigned books or text books. Being primarily focused on reading those books I didn’t pick up reading out of school. My joy for reading slowly started to fade until my junior year of high school, when our assigned reading was to read The Great Gatsby. I found the book to be really interesting and even thought about starting to read out of class more often. Unfortunately, this book couldn't spark up my interest for reading and I no longer found reading to be fun. As for writing, I gained a bit more interest in it, but still despised it. Since most of my writing at the time was research papers or reflections of the assigned reading I found it to be just as boring. The one thing that made me gain more interest in writing was that I was good at it, often getting A’s and B’s on major writing assignments. This portion of my life really influenced how I felt about reading and writing. I think that if teachers would have chosen more interesting books to read I would have actually enjoyed reading and the writing assignments that came after.

            As I have mentioned, I don’t really like reading and writing for the reasons stated above. Although I may not like them I do find them to be very important in our everyday lives. My parents have always told me to never forget how to speak Spanish or to never forget my roots. But, they also could not stress enough on how important English is for a minority like myself. They have always wanted me to be successful and in a way they wanted me to prove to the world that minorities are just as capable of going to college or finding a good job. With that in mind I always found reading and writing to be important and essential even if I did not enjoy them. Besides my parents I felt pressured by society to be more dominant in the English language rather than Spanish. This pressure has also given me that extra push to continue to learn to read and write properly.

            Last but not least, there have been times where I felt as if I had been discriminated against due to my ethnicity. For example, there have been instances where I would be having a conversation with someone and at the end they would say something along the lines of “oh, I didn’t think you would know what that meant” or also “wow for being Mexican you don’t have an accent”. Some may think that was a compliment, but I took it more of an insult. Just because I’m Mexican it doesn’t mean that I can’t comprehend what others say. Personal experiences like this have given me the will and desire to keep on learning and better myself in writing and being able to comprehend some reading easier. I found this to be an opportunity where I could better myself in English and Spanish literacy and be capable of showing that I can master two languages and not just one.

            Since my academic journey will continue for who knows how many more years, reading and writing will always play a vital role in my life. As I keep on expanding my knowledge on reading and writing, I will use it daily in and out of school and I will also help my family better their literacy problems as well. Once I graduate, literacy is going to be a must since I am going to be required to read and analyze paperwork, write reports on it, and even discuss, whatever the topic may be, with my colleagues.                  

All in all, at this point in my life I have mixed emotions and views about reading and writing. I don’t like it for simple reasons; such as it’s too time consuming and I never gained interest in it. But, I do find it to be important because it is something that will always help me learn and better myself academically.

Virtual Peer Review Script

1.       What I like most about your paper is your personal experience on how social media and interaction over the internet have affected your literacy. Reading your experience made me reflect and realize that the use of internet has impacted the way I write as well.
   2.      Based off of the thesis I am able to tell that the paper is going to be about your personal experiences and how they have influenced your literacy.  After having read your paper your thesis is very clear and it creates a layout for the paragraphs that you used in your paper. You fulfill all of the requirements, except for two which I will explain next.
   3.      Some things to add to your paper to fulfill the requirements would be to add an introductory paragraph that tells us a little about yourself and a paragraph at the end that will tell us how you plan to use literacy after school.
   4.      Each of your paragraphs discusses only one idea, and everything in the paragraph is related to that specific idea.
   5.      Overall I like the personal experiences that you chose to put in your thesis. Your paper is structured well based off of your thesis and the paragraphs are clear. As I had mentioned above, just include an introductory paragraph and a paragraph at the end. Besides that it would be good to add where you stand right now on literacy; for example whether you enjoy reading and writing.

Personal Literacy Narrative

Jose Ramirez

16 February 2014

English 1A

Literacy Narrative

            My name is Jose Julio Ramirez and I was born in Mexico, but moved to the states as an infant and have been raised here in Sacramento. Throughout the majority of my life, my family and I have lived in some pretty rough neighborhoods here in Sacramento. Since the neighborhoods that I have lived in were so infested by crime and violence, my parents found school to be my brother and I's safe haven. With that being said, my parents made school our number one priority and made sure we gave 100% effort academically. From that point on my parents and I placed high standards on my education and made it a goal to go to college. That is how I ended up here; now pursuing my dream of graduating college.

            Throughout my short lived life, reading, writing, and I have had a love-hate relationship. From the time I was in the fourth grade to present day, teachers, different academic standards, and being a minority have impacted my interest in reading and writing. What I mean by “being a minority” is that social and cultural issues have shaped my understanding and view on reading and writing. With that being said, I’m going to take you back all the way to when I was a kid and was barley learning how to speak English.

            Being Mexican and having almost every single family member be Mexican was the main reason that the first language I learned how to speak was Spanish. Spanish was my primary language that I used to communicate with my family. As I grew up my brother, uncle, and cousin were the main people that helped me learn how to speak English. As time went on and once I started going to school, I learned how to read, write, and speak English properly. I never found writing or reading in Spanish useful so I never bothered to learn how to do either. English, to me, seemed a lot easier when it came to writing and reading, so I took more interest in that than in Spanish. To this day I mainly use Spanish when talking with my parents or when I talk with other family members, but there are times when I do regret not taking the time to properly learn how to read and write in Spanish. Before I started kindergarten I was able to speak both languages.

            Once I reached the fourth grade I read a book that would change my opinion about reading and books for a while. The book was called Danger in the Desert by Terri Fields. This book fascinated me and really became the gateway for my interest in books. After reading this book I no longer felt that reading books was only used to learn. I looked beyond that and realized that some books were created for pure entertainment. From then to about the eighth grade reading was mostly a requirement but I actually enjoyed it. As for writing, I didn’t really have interest for it at the time.

            Once I became a freshman in high school my feelings and interest for reading and writing changed once again. At this point outside reading was no longer a requirement but an option or so called hobby. The only required reading was assigned books or text books. Being primarily focused on reading those books I didn’t pick up reading out of school. My joy for reading slowly started to fade until my junior year of high school, when our assigned reading was to read The Great Gatsby. I found the book to be really interesting and even thought about starting to read out of class more often. I tried reading as a hobby but it didn’t really stick with me. As for writing, I gained a bit more interest in it, but still despised it. Since most of my writing at the time was research papers or reflections of the assigned reading I found it to be just as boring. The one thing that made me gain more interest in writing was that I was good at it, often getting A’s and B’s on major writing assignments. This portion of my life really influenced how I felt about reading and writing. I think that if teachers would have chosen more interesting books to read I would have actually enjoyed reading and the writing assignments that came after.

            As I have mentioned, I don’t really like reading and writing for the reasons stated above. Although I may not like them I do find them to be very important in our everyday lives. My parents have always told me to never forget how to speak Spanish or to never forget my roots. But, they also could not stress enough on how important English is for a minority like myself. They have always wanted me to be successful and in a way they wanted me to prove to the world that minorities are just as capable of going to college or finding a good job. With that in mind I always found reading and writing to be important and essential even if I did not enjoy them. Besides my parents I felt pressured by society to be more dominant in the English language rather than Spanish. This pressure has also given me that extra push to continue to learn to read and write properly.

            Last but not least, there have been times where I felt as if I had been discriminated against due to my ethnicity. For example, there have been instances where I would be having a conversation with someone and at the end they would say something along the lines of “oh I didn’t think you would know what that meant” or also “wow for being Mexican you don’t have an accent”. Some may think that was a compliment, but I took it more of an insult. Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean that I can’t comprehend what others say. Personal experiences like this have given me the will and desire to keep on learning and better myself in writing and being able to comprehend some reading easier.

            Since my academic journey will continue for who knows how many more years, reading and writing will always play a vital role in my life. As I keep on expanding my knowledge on reading and writing, I will use it daily in and out of school and I will also help my family better their literacy problems as well. Once I graduate, literacy is going to be a must since I am going to be required to read and analyze paperwork, write reports on it, and even discuss, whatever the topic may be, with my colleagues.                  

All in all, at this point in my life I have mixed emotions and views about reading and writing. I don’t like it for simple reasons; such as it’s too time consuming and I never gained interest in it. But, I do find it to be important because it is something that will always help me learn and better myself academically.

Straub Response SWA

   After reading Straub's article on how to read and respond to other peoples writing, I have a more clear understanding of what should be included. He made it clear that you should respond to a peers paper almost if they were friend. But, he mentioned that just becaushe you think of that person as a friend, do not let them slide on errors. Another thing that I found useful was take into consideration what level of draft they were in and how much one should respond to a paper. My favorite was to keep in mind that we are the reader and they are the writer. I found that one to be the most interesting because there are times when a peer reviewing may want to add or correct more than in necessary; almost making it their paper. Overall I found this article interesting because it really helped me understand what should be included in a peer review.