Through this WRIT 1122 with Dr. Leake, I have learned
different ways of writing that can be used in real life. Blog posting is one of
them. It helped me to have a habit of writing often enough; I am not afraid when
I get writing assignments from classes. Also
I learned how to write for different audience, not just the teacher to submit
assignments, but also for variety of audience such as bloggers and newspaper readers.
I started reading more news articles and was able to catch up with new events
that are happening around me. The most helpful writing skill that I learned
through this course is rewriting. Now I can take other people’s ideas or words,
and use it in my text for my own purpose. It depends on how I approach those
sources. These new knowledge and habits I learned in class is going to help me
with writings outside of class for different purposes.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Unit 2-2 essay
This is my short essay that was not completely related to the prompt, but I thought it was still interesting.
On the left side, it is a advertisement of Maybelline’s “Moisture Extreme
Lipcolor” line (figure 1). This is a very obvious image of a cosmetic
advertisement. It has a picture of a lady who is wearing a rose red color
lipstick that is just as red as the red roses she is holding, and also there is
a lipstick on the right side that seems like the color of lipstick the lady
used. However, the part the makes this advertisement the most obvious is the
words. The name of the brand, Maybelline,
and the description of the product, “Moisture goes deep, color comes alive.
Moisture Extreme LipColor, moisturizes with 3x the power a lip balm.*… protects
with SPF 15…” are what definitely makes it a cosmetic advertisement. It
explains what the picture is trying to promote, and makes it believable. 
On the left side, there is a picture of a cow on a
trampoline (figure 2, I purposely removed the logo and caption at the bottom,
because I believe that people do not look at the description first before they
even look at the picture). What is this picture trying to tell? At first I
thought it was a trampoline advertisement saying how strong the trampoline is
by showing that it will not break even with a huge cow on it. However, my
thought was completely wrong. Look at this picture on right bottom (figure 3). There
are a McDonalds logo at the bottom and a statement saying “The Real Milkshake”.
They thought about bouncing a cow on a trampoline to shake the milk in the cow.
It is a very funny and clever way to promote their milkshake. It draws people’s
attention; make them to think about it for a long time, because they will not
understand it first time just by looking at the picture. Though, it is not
completely lost because it gives people a hint at the bottom of the
advertisement. It still needs some words for the people to understand it
completely. 
In advertisements, they try to speak as many words as possible through the
picture. In a clever, funny and interesting way to arouse people’s curiosity,
so the advertisements are in people’s mind for longer and remain stronger. While
the picture can be thought provoking and draws people’s attention, it can also
be confusing and undefined without a caption. Picture can be add a great vivid
color to an idea, but words complete the picture.
Eunha
So
02.24.2013
Dr.
Leake
Images in Advertisements
"A picture is worth a thousand words." This
idea was “invented by an advertising executive, Fred R. Barnard. To promote his
agency's ads he took out an ad in Printer's Ink in 1921 with the headline
"One Look Is Worth a Thousand Words" and attributed it to an ancient
Japanese philosopher” (Dictionary.com).
As it an advertising agency executive brought this idea, it seems to be
appear the most in advertisements. In order for an advertising agency to use
images to deliver their thoughts, they need to make sure that the images to say
a thousand words, or perhaps sometimes, they need something more than just an
image.
There are two types of advertisement I want to mention in
this essay: an advertisement image that displays purpose so clearly that people
can notice what it is trying to convey, and one that that does not present the
purpose on the surface, but underlines it to make people to think about what it
is actually trying to speak.
Sources.
2. Maybelline
3. McDonalds
Extended essay 2 rough draft
Eunha
So
3/2/13
Dr.
Leake
Rewriting
According to
Joseph Harris, rewriting can be explained “as drawing from, commenting on,
adding to – the work of others”, and “using [others’] texts for [one’s]
purposes” (Harris 2). This can be done
by reading the work of other people, and writers can take some parts from the
text to support their opinion in their work. Harris explains two ways of doing
this: forwarding and countering.
He states “a
writer forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting
them to use in new contexts” (Harris 37). Forwarding is an way efficient way to
support a writer’s purpose, because it is generally easier to accept or believe when there are more people speaking than one person
trying to convince the other with her/his idea, and it provides more
details for the audience to understand the writer’s ideas. Harris also points out that a writer does not only observe
thoughts from a text to simply add more explanations to his/her ideas, but also
customize it to suggest a new
concept or thoughts.
Countering is
another way that Harris presents a way of writing. He indicates that the
purpose of countering is “to develop a new line of thinking in response to the
limits of other texts”. It is required to analyze others’ texts, find flaws in
them, and then respond in opposition to it to support one’s idea. Harris
explains the three ways to use countering in writing: “Arguing the other side,
uncovering values, [and] dissenting”. Arguing the other side is when one thinks
what a writer is arguing about is actually correct, and defends the other side
of the writer. Uncovering values is when one finds an important missing value
in a text, and he/she can uncover the important value, and the last, Dissenting
is to figure out flaws in text due to its “limit” to a certain point.
Countering might take more time than forwarding, yet it is a great method to
prove your points effectively. A writer can take an approach of these two ways
of rewriting in their writing for his/her “audience, genre, and purpose” (Leake
1). Here is an example to show the way ‘rewriting’ can be done.
On
January 10th of 2013, the New York Times posted an article, Jeanne Manford, 92, Who Stood Up for Her Gay
Son, Inspiring Others, Dies to announce Jeanne Manford’s death on Tuesday, in Daly City, Calif. She was 92.
They also referred to her life, and achievements while she
was live. She was born in Flushing in December 4th 1920, went to
Queens College, and graduated in 1964. She was a fifth and sixth grade math
teacher. After her gay son was beat up “for protesting news coverage of the gay
rights movement” in April 1972, it caused her to join “a gay liberation march”,
and be apart of the first
founding of a national organization, Parents,
Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
This story was taken to a Korean news web
page that features international news stories. It takes the
original article from the New York Times, and rewrites it for a different
audience – Koreans. The title of the article is “Gay son… no one can trample on
his right”, and written by Won-Sik Kim. Just from comparing the titles of those
two articles, it is obvious that Kim has different purpose in his writing than
Dunlap’s. Dunlap writes the news to honor Jeanne’s death, but Kim took his
article further by mentioning how gay rights are viewed in the society nowadays.
There are a few examples. First, Obama claimed to support gay rights on the March
9th 2012, and it lead him to be re-elected. Second, a part of
Obama’s speech after his second re-election was about gay rights. He believes
that they should be treated as same as others; they have the right to get
married. Kim started his article with the death of Jeanne, but the essential
point is not relied on the death. He statement is to the audience to know that the
view of gay rights has been changed.
It was very interesting that this
was on the Korean news web page, because this category – gay rights – is not
usually dealt with in Korean news. Even the article opens up its story with
mentioning “Last January 9th, US news press featured on an obituary
that is not generally known in Korea” (Kim). This indicates that Korean people
do acknowledge the situation or have not heard about it, because their society
does not reach out to gay rights as much as the US does or it might be because
it did not happen in their country so they do not feel like they have to know
this type of international news. However, the author found it necessary for the
Koreans to know this ‘obituary’ and furthermore the importance of gay right
issues in the society.
Kim approaches the forward technique by taking some of the parts from the
original article, such as how Jeanne’s son Morty attended the Gay Activist
Alliance demonstrators’ event at the New York Hilton, and later was found beat
up in the elevator. Jeanne “wrote a letter to The Post” to defend his son, and
remonstrate for not protecting her son (Dunlap), and that is why she began to
work for the gay rights and attended New York City Gay Pride Parade. In addition, he inserts a source from an
article Fewer Americans Believe
Homosexuality Is a Sin to show the decrease in percentage of people who
believe that homosexuality is a sin from 44% to 37% in a year. He also
indicates the fact that more US states are allowing gay marriages, and new French
president, who made an election pledge supporting the gay rights during his
campaign, is going to introduce a bill before congress for legalizing gay
marriage. At the end Kim forewarns and concludes that “gay rights will still be
a hot issue between the group of people who think they need to suppress a
revolt who are trying to go against the natural order and the other group of
people who think they need to protect minority rights and make an advanced
historical change for the equality”. (Kim). As Harris states “a writer
forwards a text by taking words, images, or ideas from it and putting them to
use in new contexts”, Kim applied Dunlap’s news in his article to open up the
“new [context]” – gay rights and its effects on politics,
community, religion and so on.
Kim uses countering in his writing along with the forwarding. He brings up the
point there are still many people who are against the gay rights, and it is
causing problems, for instance Pastor Louie Giglio was “[Withdrew] From Obama’s Inauguration Over Anti-Gay Remarks” (Politi).
This happened because, “he had delivered an anti-gay sermon in the 1990s. In
the sermon, Giglio not only advocated for reparative therapy, he also said
Christians must ‘firmly respond to the aggressive agenda of not all, but of
many in the homosexual community’ in order to prevent ‘the homosexual
lifestyle’ from becoming ‘accepted as a norm in our society.’ He also said ‘it
is very clear’ that ‘homosexuality is sin.’” (Politi). There are some people
who agree that this perfectly stand to reason to withdraw him, but apparently
there are also some people like Albert Mohler – “an American theologian and the
ninth president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,
Kentucky” (Wikipedia) - who does not think it is fair. This
makes the audience consider that not every one’s view of homosexuality is
positive. It might seem ironic, because it appears that Kim is trying to be on
the both side of the perspective of the gay rights. However, Kim is being ambilateral
with a purpose. He is providing the opposite point of view to the positive
perspective to support his real purpose, which is to let the audience know that
gay rights are still a big issue in the society because people continuously fight
over this subject and consider it as a problem to solve.
Kim rewrites Dunlap’s article for a new purpose and
audience. He took an approach of the relationship between Jeanne Manford’s
death and the way gay rights to state gay rights issues from the community. He
wants to deliver this news to Korean people to know gay rights has been a issue
for a while, and now more people and countries are handling it more seriously,
and he realizes the importance of announcing it. He wants the Koreans to open
up their minds to it and widen their global intellectual horizon to the outside
other than what is happening in Korea. Kim’s article significantly implies
Harris’s way of rewriting, - “as drawing from, commenting on, adding to
– the work of others”, and “using [others’] texts for [one’s] purposes” (Harris
2).
Sources
1.
Life way
2.
Korean Article
http://blog.ohmynews.com/tongtii/492021#recentTrackback
3.
New York times
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
2-8
"Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire", written by Errol Morris's from the New York Times, is telling us how pictures can not tell the truth or false without any captions. Morris exemplified a picture of "the Lusitania", the ship that was "off the coast of Ireland en route to Liverpool from New York when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat and sank on the evening of May 7th, 1915. About 1,200 of the nearly 2,000 passengers and crew aboard drowned, including more than 100 Americans.*" Before I read the story behind the picture, I thought it was just an old picture of a ship. I did not even think there could be a tragic story behind it. Like this pictures, picture itself may say thousand words, but it cannot tell the truth to the viewers, because the viewers have no background information that they can use to understand what the picture is about. That is why most of the news articles' pictures have captions. Even on Facebook, it always helps me to understand a picture when people describe what it's about. One of my friends posted a picture of a dog. If she did not mention that it is her new dog, Basie, I would not have known that it was her dog. I could have guess that it is her dog, but I would not have unless I talked to her about it. As Morris states, "Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but there are two words that you can never apply to them: 'true' and 'false.'".
Sunday, February 17, 2013
2-7 Taking an approach
In chapter 4, Taking An Approach Harris talks about how a writer can use another writers' ideas to enrich his writing. I think the concept of this chapter is a combination of chapter 3 and chapter 4, Forwarding and Countering, but taking it further. He explains the two ways of "taking an approach". First one is to follow other writer's work very similar. Harris does not like this method because this can show a writer's idea and thought, but does not have much difference than other writings. Second one which he prefers more, is to take other writers ideas and take it further. The way he talks about this is, "the original does not go away but is remade into something new. He states there are three ways of "positioning your own work in relation of that of writers and intellectuals who have shaped your approach": Acknowledging influences, Turning an approach on itself and Reflexivity. A writer should acknowledge the influences by using similar examples, "asking the same questions", and look back at your work. Harris states that "situating your own approach as a writer you can begin to rewrite not simply a specific text or idea but a broader style of thinking and working. This is really helpful information to know, because when I think about writing, I usually tend to think about academic writings like an essay I have to write for my english class or music tech, learning "taking an approach" opened up my view of writing.
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