Day: May 14, 2021

Week 15: Full Circle (shafi khan)

shafi ahmmad khan

The bad idea herein is the assertion that digital communication, especially texting on social media, damages students’ grammar skills. The author claims it is a bad idea because it simply mirrors the history of lamenting about the diminishing language skills of the younger generations. Moreover, the author argues that the assertion is founded on unproven association between digital writing and other forms of writing. In other words, no empirical study has been conducted to establish a causal relationship between digital writing and other forms of writing. Additionally, the author opines that the definition of grammar in the context of digital writing is always untrue.

I chose the piece because of the need to put to rest the debate about the impact of digital writing on students’ writing skills. Social media communication has become the norm, particularly among the younger generations. There are no rules on social media communications. As a result, many young people mutilate grammar in their attempts to simplify communication. Although the author terms the assertion that texting ruins students’ skills a bad idea, it is important to note that over time, the unregulated and grammatically incorrect social media communication can compromise the students’ language proficiencies.

To counter this bad idea, a good idea would be to conduct a robust empirical study to establish the link between digital communication and other forms of writing. Essentially, the debate will be put to rest once there is unimpeachable evidence on the adverse effect of texting on students’ grammar skills.  Proving that social media communication ruins students’ language proficiencies would inform the implementation of measures to regulate social media participation among students. In summary, texting ruins students’ grammar skills.

Week 15: Full Circle

Jennifer Hasani

In the segment, Bad Ideas on What Good Writing Is, I chose Patricia Roberts Miller’s reading “Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech.” Rhetorical speech overcomplicates a sentence, which is a “bad idea.” Many people assume that “the simpler, plainer version of the sentence is not just a stylistic choice, it’s a moral choice,” as she describes. The inclusion of more difficult words distorts the sentence’s context. To them, rhetoric is something that conceals the facts. “Rhetoric is clothing on the thought,” Miller says, quoting an old adage. It’s just a matter of adding a layer of vocabulary to the proposition. This piece appealed to me because I enjoy the use of rhetoric in literature. It’s a beautiful way to dress up a sentence and give it more context, in my opinion. I believe that using rhetoric to catch a reader’s interest when communicating important ideas about the topic at hand is essential. We can’t avoid rhetoric, so we can choose what kind of rhetoric we use, so it should be up to the writer to decide how to use it. She claimed, quoting Aristotle: “What you learn from rhetoric is how to approach political, ethical, and legal problems, how to come up with an argument when you can’t be (or, at least, shouldn’t be) certain that you’re right. You also learn how to assess other people’s arguments “. Instead of equating rhetoric with hollow speech and lies to misrepresent the facts, the aim here was to enable us to investigate the many forms and uses of rhetoric.

 

Full Circle

Yeshi

A bad idea is a decision that  is not sensible and is incorrect. During our lives everyone has made a decision and had to live with that going through with lives but this is not a bad thing having made bad decisions can help us learn and prevent us from making more mistakes in the future. Making bad decision is a part of human nature no one in this world can say that they have never made a bad decision.The author says that “writing in general” is a bad idea because there is actually no such thing as just writing in general. When you write whether it a fan-fiction, horror, science, history, etc  every writer need to be educated about that specific topic and when writing you need to have information about what you are writing on and what the audience of the writing expects. One really good example is from the section “You can Learn to Write in General” by Elizabeth Wardle in page 31 where it talks about how” a student fresh out of college is asked to write a report for the CEO , the student might know what a report is in general but the student has never seen a report from that specific company so she will have trouble writing because she needs examples, some inside info, needs to know about the CEO and also needs to understand what they want in the report”. These are the reasons why thinking you can Write in general is a bad idea.I chose this piece because i used to believe in writing in general and how i had trouble with this idea. When i was in school i used to think i was writing in general but i was completely wrong because it doesn’t exist when writing a report, essay, stories etc you always need some background info and the writer needs to think about its audience. I do not  have a good idea to counter this bad idea but i agree with the author this is not bad news because it gives new writers permission to keep learning, to fail and learn from their past mistakes i think that being open minded might also help when you write.