8. Research Plan

My statement of purpose is that I am going to identify who actually understands the term "summary" and the different forms of it.  When one hears the statement from a professor, "Give me a summary", most would think to give a plot summary, which is a description of what the piece of work is about and what genre it belongs to.  But little do many know that there are different types of summary's. 

The information I need to gather is information about all the different types of summary's and how people identify them.  Then I will go to English majors, preferably ones in my classes and interview them while recording.  The questions I will ask them are
   1.  Are you aware of what a summary is and in their own words can they describe a summary?
   2.  What is the purpose of a summary?

I am still trying to figure out where I will go from there and have started researching further.

         

7. Valentine's Day Interview Recording

I had worked with Dr. Chandler when doing my interview on Valentine's Day because when I worked with someone else my interview was too short and Dr. Chandler wanted me to really get the concept of giving an interview.  When the interview was conducted, it seemed that the room was quiet enough, there was another group in there with us but they were farther away, and I had been holding the recorder (my iPhone) between Dr. Chandler and I.  While I'll admit I am difficult to get talking in an interview, I answered the open ended questions as best to my memory.

When reviewing the recording I could hear the conversation of the other group in the room in the background.  It wasn't just even background noise, I could of possibly followed their conversation if I had really tried. I also noticed that it was easier to hear my voice and what I am saying on the recording more than you could hear Dr. Chandlers.  I found this odd because I thought I had held it in between us enough so that it would pick up our voices evenly, but I suppose it doesn't always work that way. 

What I also learned is how to get more information out of the person you're interviewing.  You keep going with questions to questions and it will, or should, help to get more information.  I definitely learned more about interviewing the correct way than I had before.

6. Project

I have not yet met with Dr. Chandler to go over my research topic, so my whole idea could possible change.  But what I was hoping to do for a topic is focus on genres and how to determine with a piece of work what genre it belongs to.  My research question needs to be worked on but I think it will refer to how to determine the classification of the genre.  I am currently researching the study of genres to figure out where I specifically want to focus my study because I think I should probably focus more on one specific genre so that it does not get outside of the guidelines for my paper. 

5. Awkward Class Interaction...

When we walked around in class to start our field notes, it was noticeable that everyone felt awkward that they had to start talking to people they normally do not interact with during class, so it was really easy to feel the tension in the room.  As we started to walk around, I personally started off talking to people I knew but didn't really speak to, but as I was examining everyone in the room it was noticeable that everyone felt uncomfortable talking to people they didn't know because they were forced to do so, but if we weren't forced to we probably would of been fine interacting with the people we don't usually interact with.

But besides seeing that nobody wanted to move around at first, what was seen was that people found it difficult to start the conversation right off the bat with people they didn't know, and also the body language was awkward, a lot of people had their arms close to their bodies. I noticed there was eye contact being made but many only kept their eye contact very focused with people they knew better then others they didn't. 

When we were unsure what else to speak about the room became awkwardly quiet when you finish the conversation, and then soon everyone started migrating back to where they sat or to the people they were comfortable speaking to.  While I made mental notes of what I saw between everyone, there were a lot of phones being used to take down information about what was going on. In the end when we were discussing our experience it was brought forward that the teacher played a role in dynamics with the class and was helping everyone to converse with the ones we had not converse with. 

4. Groupwork in Class on Discourse

During the class we discussed if we use discourse as a community.  We decided yes, that we do use discourse as community because we have in class discussions, debates, and also collaborate on work being done in class.  We also agreed that we are all using discourse as a community because we will be doing some type of research but in different ways, so whether it be for our research paper or for our in class group work, there is some thinking and research being done and comparing it to other forms of literature.  We also discussed the tools for discourse that we use are the blogs and class discussions which ultimately are our main contributions to discourse.  For the last question it asks about genres, and we all agreed that professors have their own genres and students have their own genres.  It is like that because professors do not speak to students how they speak to their colleagues, and the same goes for students and the way they speak to their friends is totally different then the way they speak to their professors.  So we do live in a discourse community but it is just practiced in different ways.

3. Group Analysis of the Shaggy Dog Stories

On Thursday, when my group and I went over what the significance of the Shaggy Dog Stories of the string walking into a bar was that there is a comparison to the other stories, specifically Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs, because there is a continuous use of the number three.  Goldilocks tries things three times before finding the perfect choice, the wolf tries to blow down all three of the pigs home down, and the string goes up to the bar three times to try to get a drink.

For these stories you need background information, because of the fact that there is always a punch line and unless you have background knowledge you will not find the punchline funny at the very end.  For instance, since during class we had specifically focused on the string walking into a bar story, the punch line at the end is the string saying "I'm a frayed knot" which if you read the story out loud is suppose to sound like "I'm afraid not", but what is important is that you know that a string will become a frayed knot.

The last thing my group and I had realized with our analysis is most of the time you have to read these stories out loud to hear the punch line and understand the joke.  I did not understand two of the stories at first because I had read them to myself, but once I said out loud I knew perfectly what the author was trying to say for the majority of them.

Some questions I may ask are "Where is the author getting the pun for the stories from?" or "Was it easy to understand where the author was going with the story?".  The features for our analysis were that there was a significance with the number three, and that you needed background knowledge to understand the jokes, I wonder what other people will pick up as they read The Shaggy Dog Stories?