Blog Four: Reflection

Blog Four

Discuss why research is important to human beings. Give specific examples.

Research is something that everyone does everyday. We learn about new things and fads, so people want to get more information on these things. Most people do research without even thinking about it. For example, if someone wants to buy a product offline, then they will go to different websites to find the one for the best price. It is necessary for people to do these types of things though because you want to know more about something if you are willing to pay for it. I conduct research in my everyday life by doing schoolwork and learning new tricks on my skateboard. I usually watch  videos to see how other people do the tricks, so I know where to put my feet to pop a trick. If we did not conduct research for these things, people would not be educated on them and people would be ignorant to all the other things about what they want to know. The internet, books, and magazines are prime examples where people research about popular stuff. For writing, research is very iimportant because you do not want to give people wrong information. Sources help you out by giving you ideas and topics for writing a paper. Without research, a persons paper would just be things that they think they know, but might not be totally correct. It fills in the loose ends of papers and gives a paper or reading more importance if you get research from someone who is qualified to write about hos particular topics.  



Blog Three

    The activity that we did on Wednesday in class was very interesting and helpful. You used making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as an example of integrating a source for an academic document. The bread was the actual identifying tag which lets you know why you use a source. The peanut butter was the actual source material which is like the protein because you need it to cite a source. The jelly was the parenthetical citation for the source and this is important, so you can give credit to the author and it shows which source you took the material from. The other piece of bread was the works cited page and this shows all the sources you used within that paper.
     The most confusing part about paraphrasing "The Corleone Chronicles" was choosing a piece of the information that actually dealt with originality. I know that this movie is talked about as an "original gangster movie", but most of the article just talked about how the trilogy played off of each other. I did not have any problems with reading or understanding the article and it was easy to grasp. I agree with the academic writing because it was very cut and dry. I think that debating and arguing with this article was helpful because it's easy for me to take other peoples words now and put them into my own words, so I can get my point across by using someone else's input.
    My process for paraphrasing "The Corleone Chronicles" was to go back and skim over the whole thing. After I found a passage that had to do with originality, I took her words and put them into mine and then used parenthetical citation to let the reader know that it was someone else's view. The passage that I chose from the reading related to my way of thinking about genre and originality because it basically said that the trilogy was distinctive from other gangster movies because it used violence, conspiracy, and organized crime which created and gave itself its own feeling of individuality. No, I do not think that it was hard to link genre and originality because most of the earlier movies that were made were considered originals to other movies made at later times and all movies are linked to a specific genre. I felt like including our paraphrases was difficult because I did not know where to put it. It felt like I was just plugging it somewhere rather than putting it in a part of the journal that would make more sense for paraphrasing. I did think about "The Godfather" as an example of originality because this movie for it's genre and time became an original compared to other gangster films such as "Public Enemy" and "Scarface."
    If I had to do the process again, I would do the same thing that I did the first time, but I would have incorporated the source better within my paper or journal. I think that in order to use a paraphrase towards a certain idea, it should flow nicely and should give more information behind what you already know, so the reader can be fully educated on it.

Blog Two

    Most research that I do in my daily life is about skateboarding. It is such a diverse sport and you can accomplish so many different things in the hobby. I usually look up videos on how to do a new trick, that way i have someone telling me how to do it first-hand. I can understand the pop, the motions, and the landing of different tricks by conducting research on ones that I have not learned. There are many similarities in doing research for academic and daily research. You find the best source that contains what you need to find out and you pick out key points from it. After you have selected some main elements, you look at it as a whole and try to understand the text. Doing this research on my own helps me to succeed in learning new tricks and when I do academic research, the research fills the holes in my draft that needs some background support with detail.

Blog One

    The question I had about genre was why are children and teenagers are so attracted and fascinated to horror movies. What makes newer horror movies different from "original" horror movies like Psycho. I think that teenagers are so appealed to horror movies because of the thrill. When everyone is growing up Im sure that you have tried something because you have never experienced it and want to try it on your own. I feel as if teens see trailers for horror movies today and their immediate reaction is, "Oh my god, I have to see that!" Another reason could be that horror movies incorporate things out of the norm and some teenagers and children might want to see something that they never have.