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Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!


--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100

Thursday, February 17, 2011

A quick look at reading a video text

Sell, sell, sell, that seems to be the motive behind so many things we come into contact with today and as put by Author Robert Scholes in his recent article "On Reading a video text" "the moments of surrender proposed to us by video text comes in many forms" (1),  in his article Scholes speaks of many techniques used in TV advertising to make you the viewer respond emotionally. He describes a Budweiser commercial where in a 28 second bite they are able to get the viewer to picture in there own minds eye the life story of a black man who has always wanted to be a pro baseball umpire and in this short little clip doing things as Scholes says like close ups to put you right in the scene or playing a certain type of music in the background "lending a balletic grace to ordinary forms of locomotion" brings your subconscious mind to a state of receptive emotion and as you watch it becomes quite obvious that by the end of this commercial after seeing this new umpire overcome obstacles, and his accomplishments being given a cheers gesture with a Budweiser from accross the bar  by the coach he was arguing with at the game that as he sat with the team drinking a beer he had gained acceptance, and is that not what we all want?

    IT gets you to thinking about just how far a company will go to plant a subliminal message that may sell their product and the answer is, As far as the can. using things like visual fascination or as put by Scholes  "filters and other devices cause us to see the world through jaundiced or rose colored optics" So question is is this a bad thing? My answer, no, it is simply a way of life and we as people need to make ourselves aware. This is no different than the techniques that have been used throughout the ages, every thing from milk to religion has been sold in this way so for me, while I enjoy reading the skill level at which Scholes conveys his message I can't help wanting to say, thank you captain obvious for reading so much into this 28 seconds.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 18, 2011 at 11:50 AM

    Sell, Sell, Sell, and Sell some more. Kind of a pathetic mantra to any societies. I agree what easy pray we have allowed ourselves to become. What do we value in America that isn’t inspired through commercialism?

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  2. AnonymousFebruary 22, 2011 at 4:17 PM

    You helped me better understand the fact that we can't change the "selling" part of commercials but that we need to accept them and be aware of the tricks that they pull to get us to purchase their product. It's also very apparent to me that Scholes is disturbed by that commercial when most of us wouldn't think twice about it. There are alot of commercials that play everyday that are controversial but many of us allow them to soak into our brains without contemplating what the commercials are really conveying.

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