I don’t know yet on which subject I want to do my rhetorical analysis. I was thinking about doing it based on an article of the New York Times, but then I remembered the article we had to read last friday; Amy’s Mother Tongue and I figured out that I can do a rhetorical analysis based on a more ” familiar ” article or text than what I usually read in the newspapers. For instance, Amy’s Mother Tongue is an argumentation based on a true story. It was easier to read than what I usually read on the news and more interesting. I want to do my rhetorical analysis based on a text like that. However, I don’t know if the Professor will agree because the text didn’t seem very  ” formal ” to me. it was pretty sentimental. I guess I’ll have to ask him. But thinking about it while writing, Amy’s Mother Tongue was actually a great text. I’ll ask to do my rhetorical analysis based on that specific text. And finger-crossed he will agree.

 

Outline:

If Professor Lamsal vet Amy’s Mother Tongue, here would be the scheme:

Introduction: A summary of the text as well as informations about the author.

Body: The big part of the essay. Provide a critical analysis of the argumentation based especially on the sample essay I read in Everything is an argument.

Conclusion: Include a takeaway message and review the overall of the argumentation.

Hang&Alisha

Question 1

1.Pets are not allowed in Mr. Taylor’s building, but he owns several cats and a parrot.

2.New legislation prevents drivers from sending or reading text messages while driving. However, many people continue to use their phones illegally.

3.The coroner concluded that the young man had taken a lethal concoction of drugs because by the time his relatives found him, nothing could be done.

4.Amphibians are vertebrates that live on land and in the water. Instead, Flatworms are invertebrates that live only in water.

5.Ashley carefully fed and watered her tomato plants all summer. Consequently, the tomatoes grew juicy and ripe.

6. When he lost his car key, Simon attempted to open the door with a wire hanger, a credit card, and a paper clip. Finally, he called the manufacturer for advice.

Question 2

1. Jake is going to Mexico because there are beautiful beaches in Mexico.
2. A snowstorm disrupted traffic all over the east coast, so there will be long delivery delays this week.
3. My neighbor had his television volume turned up too high, so I banged on his door and asked him to keep the noise down.
4. Jessica prepared the potato salad and the sautéed vegetables while Ashley marinated the chicken.
5. Romeo poisons himself before  Juliet awakes to find Romeo dead and stabs herself with a dagger.

Cross-cultural differences in argumentation may be explained by the use of different standards ways of reasoning. These norms varies and differ from one person to another, despite the facts that the world is trying to make them universal. As Karaslaan, H., Hohenberger, A., Demir, H., Hall, S., & Oaksford, M. (2017). Cross-cultural differences in informal argumentation: norms, inductive biases and evidentiality. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 18(3-4)358. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321462518_Cross-Cultural_Differences_in_Informal_Argumentation_Norms_Inductive_Biases_and_Evidentiality says ” This inconsistency can be resolved, by considering that some norms of argumentation, like Bayes theorem, are mathematical functions. ” Therefore, using certains norms as mathematics functions we can infer that they are correct.

Jasper, Zhiheng and Alisha

Passage 1:

A man from the city came to visit a small farm, he saw a farmer feeding pigs in a very strange way. The farmer would lift a pig up to a nearby apple tree ; the pig would eat the apples directly off the tree. The farmer would move the pig from one apple to another until the pig was full, then he would start again with another pig.

The man from the city was pretty puzzled, he watched for quiet a while and finally said, “What a strange way to feed pigs! It’s a waist of time! You could save a whole lot of time if you just shook the apples off the tree, and let the pigs eat them from the ground!” The farmer looked puzzled and replied, “What’s time to a pig?”

Passage 2:

A young man, waiting in line at the bank, developed a loud case of hiccups and got worse and worse. By the time he got to the teller’s window, he couldn’t hardly talk and handing the teller his check to cash.

The teller tapping numbers into the computer, in a moment looking up and frowning, “I can’t cash your check,” she said.

The man was shocked, “Why not?” he asked.

“The computer indicates you do not have sufficient funds to cover this amount,” she said, “In fact our records show that your account is overdrawn by more than $5000.00.”

“It can’t be!” , cried the man, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“Your right. I am,” she smiled; She started counting out his cash. “You will notice that your hiccups are gone, though!”

 

My first draft is not complete at all and I still have a lot of things to add and improve such as the activities we did in Morocco, my experiences, how this trip changed me etc. It is just the beginning.

What comes across my mind right now is that I am excited to go outside of the city this weekend. Indeed I’m going to the Zongo falls with my friends and we will sleep there. I need to submit some assignments before Friday, I already submitted my math assignment today and I’ll submit the others during the week. It is my priority before thinking of Zongo. I don’t know what to write anymore. I want to travel for the Thanksgiving break, maybe Spain ? or Croatia ? An Island in the Mediterranean sounds good. I kinda miss my mom, she’s in Goma because my grandfather is dying, she is supposed to come back at the end of the month. I could’t go with her because the connexion there is very unstable and I would surely have missed classes. Which I didn’t want. I am taking my online classes very seriously and I like them. I really don’t know what to write now. I hope I’ll get more comfortable with the English language and writing with time and that I would be able to use it as well as my mother tongue. Sometimes it frustrates me when I still have to use Google Translate to find my words. I need more vocabulary, I think that if I start to read in English, not only for school but for instance; English novels, I’ll improve myself. I’ll use that for the audio essay ! How I learned English and how I am still learning.

 

 

Outline: My literacy narrative is the journey of my English learning. I’ll start the presentation with explaining when I started to learn ( as a child ), at school, the extra help I received ( my Kenyan nannies helped me improve my English and my swahili ), I’ll then talk about how English was taught in my high school, how I would always watch movies in English listen to music in English and especially talk to Natives English speakers to improve myself. After I’d have covered that, I will talk about the struggles I am still facing today and how I manage to fix them.