Evaluation of Rhetorical Situations

In this post I will rhetorically evaluate three different pieces of opinionated writing in the medical field.

National Cancer Institute. "Doctor Talking with a Patient". 8/29/2006. Public Domain.

"Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession"

Author:
Sandeep Jauhar is an MD who got into the field after he saw his girlfriend get very ill. He is the author of two books, "Intern" and "Doctored" and actively writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Audience:
In this article the author is speaking mainly to anyone who is either thinking of getting into the medical field or people who believe that being a doctor is the best/easiest job there is. This is his audience because he wants you to reevaluate all that you know about being a doctor and give you an idea of what it it really like and why you may not want to pursue the profession.

Context:
The article was posted August 29, 2014 which means that it is current and relevant to the current time. This article was posted in The Wall Street Journal, a very well know and credible source. Included in the article are a couple links to other sites that relate to the topic.


"A Certified Medical Controversy"

Author:
Kurt Eichenwald is a contributing editor for the New York Times and the Vanity Fair as well as the author of four books. 

Audience:
The audience for this article is anyone who is frustrated with the medical system in the U.S. He talks about the struggles that the U.S. health care system has.

Context:
The article is recent. It was posted in April of 2015 making it relevant and current. It was posted in the Newsweek, a news site that is very well know and is known to be credible and reliable.


"Why Doctors Quit"

Author:
Charles Krauthammer is, according to Wikipedia, an American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, author, political commentator, and physician. He has written several articles for The Washington Post.

Audience:
The target audience for this article is anyone who is thinking about getting into the medical field. He wants to provide the reader with information about the field and expose it true colors to make you rethink your decision to become a doctor.

Context:
The article was posted very recently, May 28th 2015 so there it is considered current and relevant. It was posted in a well known, credible and reliable site, The Washington Post.

Developing a Research Question

In this blog I will ask three different questions that have to do with my medical discipline and why I wish to know more about them.

How far will technology take us in the medical field?

Reflection on Project 1

In the blog below I will discuss several questions about my first project, a Quick Reference Guide.

Cortega9. "Blog". 8/25/2008. Public Domain.

What challenges did you face during the Quick Reference Guide project and how did you deal with them?

I seemed to have a lot of trouble including all of the information into my QRG. My controversy is a very broad debate with mass amounts of research and information. To help include as much information into my QRG, I hyperlinked as many websites as I could. I still think that I fell short of including all of the articles and information into my QRG.

What successes did you experience on the project and how did they happen?

I think I was successful in organizing my QRG so that it is easy for the reader. I found there to be many aspects and subtopics of the debate. To include these aspects I created many subtitles that addressed the topic directly and was able to include information successfully into each topic. 

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find the most effective for your project? Why?

As I said in the question above I feel like using the subtitles was very effective. The design choice of using subtitles was very effective in my project. I found that it was very easy to separate out the information using subtitles, rather than trying to figure out how to present the information chronologically. 

What kinds of arguments, rhetorical strategies, design choices and writing practices did you find were not effective for your project? Why?

Earlier in my blog I wrote about my writing style. I talked about how I am a big procrastinator and therefore leave myself with little time to revise. Unfortunately, revision of my essay was not a very effective part of my project. 

How was the writing process for this project similar to other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

One thing that I think remains constant in all of the writing that I have done in the past is researching the field before you begin writing. Just like previous school writing experiences I was forced to do research before drafting my paper.

How was the writing process for this project different from other school writing experiences you’ve had in the past?

This writing process was different from a lot of other experiences that I have had because it required me to write in a completely different style and format than I am used to. I have never written a QRG before. Most of the writing I have done up to this level has been persuasive so it was very different writing a paper where I do not express my own opinions.

Would any of the skills you practiced for this project be useful in your other coursework? Why or why not?

I think that writing these blog posts and creating a QRG will help in the future in this class. There is a lot of blogging required in this class and I think that the experience that I gathered doing this project will help me moving forward in this class.

Reflection:
I looked at Savannah's "Reflection on Project 1" post and found that I can relate but also not relate to her findings. I feel like revision is my biggest downfall and is a very ineffective aspect of my writing, however Savannah feels that it is extremely helpful for her. I looked at Isabel's blog next and found that she had trouble finding information on her topic. I could not relate to this because there were many articles regarding my subject. I did agree with her in that it was different writing a paper without being able to express your own opinion.

Final Project

A link to my Final Project can be found here.

Clarity, Part 2

In this post I will be analyzing several my own writing based on several points presented in the "Clarity" section of the Rules for Writing textbook.

Jorgenson, Anders. "Boat on Clear water at island Solta". 7/12/2007. Public Domain.

1. Active Verbs

a.     The section talks about how verbs express meaning more than their counterparts. It explains how verbs in the passive tense lack strength and how the subject either receives the action or does the action based off of the verbs “voice”. It goes into detail explaining when it is appropriate to use the passive and active voice and it shows us examples of each.

Example:

            Original: ACL injury is unarguably one of the hardest injuries to withstand.

            Revised: There is no question that an ACL injury in one of the hardest injuries to withstand.

2. Shifts

a.     This section on shifts talks about how papers will shift in the point of view throughout a sentence or a paragraph. It explains that verb tense can be swayed as well as when someone is talking about (I, we, you, or our). This section also advises to not jump from indirect questions to direct questions. Shifts in papers or paragraphs can cause confusion and is ultimately not the correct way to write a paper.

Example:

            Original: Although there has been copious amounts of research done in the sports medicine field, there is no definitive answer to whether or not ACL surgery and OA are related.

            Revised: Although there have been copious amounts of research done in the sports medicine field, there is no definitive answer to whether or not ACL surgery and OA are related.

3. Needed Words

a.     This section talks about how some words are usually left out because while writing you will think that you are using too many words but in reality you are taking out words that will help that meaning of your paragraph. Some words are needed to make comparisons or simply help the reader understand what you are trying to say.

4. Emphasis

a.     The section on emphasis expresses that the ideas that you as a writer put more emphasis on will be the same ideas that gain the most of the reader’s attention. Another main idea is that when combining choppy sentences, it will help the paper because short sentences demand attention.

Identifying Basic Grammar Patterns

In this post below I will analyze my writing and discuss how it helped me improve. I will provide a copy of my "longest paragraph".

Silsor. "Pilcrow". 1/30/2006. Public Domain.

After revising my paragraph I noticed that I tend to use the same structure of sentences over and over.  For whatever reason I like to use compound sentences and do not use a lot of variety. I learned that I should start to use more variety in my writing so that the reader is not easily bored. In the future I will  keep sentence structure in mind while writing.

A link to my Longest Paragraph can be found here.

Paragraph Analysis

In this blog post I will go over what I have learned after doing my paragraph analysis on my QRG.

InverseHypercube. "Writing with a Pen". 5/26/2011

After looking at my QRG for paragraph analysis I have found several things that I am doing wrong and several things that I could do better. After my analysis I have found that I tend to jump straight into the topic instead of ease my way in. By jumping straight in and straight to the point I exclude valuable background information that could be very useful for the reader. Jumping straight to the point like I often do also causes a problem because I cannot expand on the material as much as I could if I gradually introduced the information. Another thing that I have found to be doing wrong is redundancy. I feel as if I am saying the same thing over and over again. It would be beneficial for me to go back and revise my work to fix these things.

A link to my QRG can be found here.

Clarity, Part 1

It is important to know be able to look at your own work in a critical way. The Clarity section of our textbook offers certain ways to improve our writing.

Berit. "The Clear Water, Kefalonia"6/21/2012. Public Domain.

Choosing Appropriate Language – I learned from this section that you should always keep the audience in mind when you are trying to communicate with them. The book advises that you avoid using slang and sexist language. By using appropriate language you can appeal to all audiences without offending them.

Wordy Sentences – Often times I will construct sentences in a way that is overly wordy. I do this to make my writing longer and to add the illusion of being more intelligent than I really am. All in all wordy sentences only dilutes your writing and makes your reader go through more to retain the same amount.

Variety – Often times when we are writing longer papers we tend to subconsciously repeat ourselves whether it be in the formatting of the sentences or stating the actual material. The book offers a fix to this by varying the way that you structure your sentences. They provide examples to different styles of sentences, such as compound, simple, complex, and compound-complex.

Mixed Construction -  This section was helpful to me because it helps me construct my sentences with proper syntax. The book shows you how to structure your sentences so that they make “sense”. The book also points out that starting a sentence with a long propositional phrase causes a “double subject”.