I am an online student in an English 101 course. This is my reflective project for the class. I am going to discuss the two essays that wrote during this course. That is “Death of a Funeral Business” Written by Sandy Hingston and “Time Aint Money” written by Douglas Rushkoff. I will elaborate on my controlling purpose for each essay. I am going to explain how I achieved my controlling purpose and what my writing strategy was and how I got to the interpretation that I did with both essays. By the term controlling purpose I mean the main idea that I think the author is trying to get across to their audience. I learned what the a controlling purpose is in the beginning of the course during the first couple of weeks. Things that I struggled with in this semester with are that connecting how the author’s main purpose mattered to me, and getting a good understanding of the text at first reading. One thing that really helped me achieved a better understanding of the text and developing a good understanding of the main purpose was the close reading lesson by Gallop. This helped me by slowing down and digesting the reading of what is actually on the page instead of what my mind thinks should be on the page. I overcame this by taking advice from my teacher and my sessions from the Writing Center online. This helped me expand my thoughts based my own values that I have in life and used them to connect the authors purpose in each of the articles. My instructor really pushed my
In the article “Driving to the Funeral” the author Anna Quindlen addresses the issue of the age to begin driving. She believes that the age 16 is far too young teenagers to begin driving. Driving at a too young of an age is one big reason that the way majority of teenagers die is because of automobile accidents. There isn’t enough limitations on young drivers, causing safety concerns. Parents shouldn’t allow their children to drive at such a young age, just because they want their kids to have “freedom and responsibility”.
Audience and purpose is important steps, because they allow college students write focused essays. Audience and purpose is important because both steps require students to be specific when they are writing. According to Dan Melzer, researcher and author of “The Rhetorical Situation”, students write “for a specific purpose and audience” (1). More simply, students are able to write focused essays, because they have to choose a specific audience and purpose. Without choosing the audience and purpose students will have a hard time completing all the steps that are in the rhetorical situation. In addition, students’ knowing their audience is important, because they will know how much information they need to provide. In other words, students have to know if their audience needs background information or not. Therefore, college students can write focused essays by remembering that audience and purpose is important step.
The article, “10 Burdens Funeral Directors Carry”, written by Caleb Wilde expresses the unique struggles of those working the funeral business. They face numerous challenges through trying to aid and support those mourning a loved one. This often over looked and underappreciated field offers a salient as well as specific service desperately needed by each community. By encountering: depression, psychosis, isolation, stress, workaholism and death itself funeral directors make numerous personal sacrifices to continue to provide honor and respect to the dead.
Criticisms of American funeral practices have been made publicly aware since the 1920’s, and actually go back to ancient times in the scope of human’s ceremonies for the dead. Since the first published argument against modern funerals various authors joined the movement publishing their disparagements of customs for the deceased; that in essence contend the grandiosity and lavish displays are merely a social and psychological representation of the monetary opportunity of funerals (DeSpelder & Strickland, 2015, p. 306-307). Even further, regarding the encompassing funeral industry as exploiting grieving loved ones for their financial gains, while disregarding the actual needs of modern society (DeSpelder & Strickland, 2015, p. 307).
Applying the writing skills learned in English 101, which includes determining audience and purpose, organization, and grammar and mechanic usage, is also a major goal for students in their second semester of freshman English. The ability for a writer to determine their audience and purpose is essential for all writing. In my proposal essay advocating a plan to stop texting and driving I said “As the number of collisions from cell phone related distractions rises, something must be done to significantly reduce the regularity of this event. This problem affects all age groups, sexes, and ethnicities and it is in our hands as drivers to create safer, more responsible roadways.” In these two sentences, I stated the purpose of my argument which
The article “Driving to The Funeral” by Anna Quindlen discusses the rite of passage when it comes to driving at sixteen and the risks that come with young drivers. The beginning of the article gives you a reminder of the major high school milestones that everyone hits, even the unfortunate ones. This is where the author jumps right into statistics of teen accident rates; (“…car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among 15-to-20-year old’s in this country”). The purpose of the article is to take teen driving seriously as an accident can be lifechanging.
The short story “Driving to the Funeral” by Anna Quindlen discusses about the appropriate age to start driving. The author starts out by stating that “car crashes are the No. 1 cause of death among 15 to 20-year-olds in this country.” Many teenagers start driving at 16 and that is the reason why the number of car crashes continue to go up for their age group. Quindlen questions why parents of 16-year-olds allow their kids to start driving right away without giving it much thought. Their recklessness only leads to missing countless high school memories that last a lifetime. Teenagers who start driving early are known to break protocols, which is one of the reasons of fatal car crashes. One protocol is that they are not allowed to carry more
We, as humans, often get involved only with the issues that affect us or our environment. Furthermore, sometimes we do not see what is happening around us that affects the rest of the society. The article “Drugs are killing so many people in West Virginia that the state can’t keep up with the funerals” by Christopher Ingraham discusses the fact that in West Virginia, the amount of deaths caused (mostly) by overdose has increased so much in recent years that their indigent burial program has ran out of funds to cover funerals for people that do not have the funds to pay for
Wilson-Orwosky funeral home was the location chosen for my visitation because my parents and I would like for the visitation to take place in my hometown. Our options were limited because Wilson-Orwosky is the only funeral home in Emory. Thursday evening at 6:00 pm -8:00 pm was chosen after my dad suggested picking an evening towards the end of the week. This time will hopefully allow more people to attend since it is after a normal work day. Friday at 2:00 pm was selected for the funeral service because a mid-day service will allow people to travel to and from Emory if needed, and Emory Baptist Church was selected as the location because of the sentimental value it holds for me. White mixed florals were chosen my mom and myself. I enjoy the color white because I perceive it as uplifting and a clean color. My mother liked the
In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction because it was about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. All those things make effective writing because you have to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail of my experiences with reading and writing through my life. In the narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second grade class got the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts (Writing is Good).
Initially my writing lacked structure and a controlling purpose which caused my ideas to be incoherent and hard for the reader to understand. These difficulties could be attributed to the fact that I am an art student plagued with the disorganization and non-verbal method of an artist’s brain. Being this way, interpreting and conveying my thoughts accurately and eloquently into the assigned writings was fairly tough. However, during the course of English 101 I was able to identify my weaknesses through the aid of writing communities such as peer review sessions and conferences with my professor. With the help from these resources and the writing process I learned to better organize my essays and maintain a controlling purpose in order to help my audience
As I looked over my old writing, one noticeable difference popped out. Something you always emphasize is the importance of being specific. I realize now that this was something I struggled with at the beginning of English class. I examined my essays about True Diary and Mango Street, and came to understand, how much had changed. In “Junior’s Battle For Hope” I discussed huge themes of the book rather than choosing a focus. I had a paragraph about the alcoholism on the reservation and how it affected Junior, as well as a paragraph on Junior’s identity. Each of these could have a whole essay written about them, and I wasn’t able to do the subjects justice in such a short analysis. The next essay I wrote was “Sally, Control, and Female Perspective”
Throughout my educational years, I had only done writings that involves in small research papers, MLA style essays, and summary essays. However, English 101 has given me a new way to look at my writing skills. Most of the writings I have been doing so far in this course were interpretative essays where we interpreted and reflected on other’s writing and then reflecting back to ours own writing. This class also has given me the opportunity to work with my classmates and a chance to discuss about the writing strategy they made in their papers versus the strategy I made in my papers. In addition, I find the in-class activity to be very useful because it allows me to see other’s perspectives and feedbacks. The in-class activities were class discussions, group works, and conference with the instructor. At the end of the semester, the class objective was to pick out two best interpretative essays that we have been working on with a final reflective essay to include in our final portfolio. So for the rest of this essay, I would like to talk about my two best interpretive essays that I have decided to include in my final portfolio: “Death of a Funeral Business”, and “No Time to think” and “Time Ain’t Money”.
Today was funeral day. My mom’s funeral. It was a dark October thursday, the clouds were brewing a storm. A slight breeze disturbed my neck. My uncomfortable suit sleeves bellowed in the cold breeze.. I hadn’t felt any emotions since the day of her death, which was weeks ago, almost as if my emotion is grey. It was warm then, as my mind was too. Nowadays, up until today, my mind has been a dark fog, as if my mind was released into the sky, darkening everyone’s day, arriving at my mom’s funeral or just to cuddle up with their friends and family in front of a warm crackling fire, telling the stories of their childhood and how times were better. Not me, my dad usually ignored me and he only worked on managing my mom’s fortune. Yeah. My mom’s
now. The only thing I can do now is pray and hope. To pray that I will