Jessica's Blog

Part A

• Describe your relationship to writing.
  • Writing is something that I love doing. Whether it be writing an essay for class or just writing a poem or story for fun, I love writing and the creative process along with it.
• What did you learn about writing in First-year seminar?
  • I learned that writing doesn’t always have to involve large or fancy words in order to get a point across. In high school, I was always taught to use my most impressive vocabulary in order to prove that I was credible as writer. First Year Seminar, however, taught me that large vocabulary doesn’t necessarily mean I’m any more credible or any better of a writer.
• What do you hope to learn in C&C?
  • In C&C, I hope I learn how to become a more effective speaker and how writing skills can translate into speaking skills. I also hope to learn more about the influence of popular culture in our modern society, as well as more about the perspectives of my peers on pop culture.

Part B

• Glosses
  • Ads are everywhere.
  • We deal with ads by becoming more aware of them and thus influencing their messages, just as advertisers influence our actions and the purchases we make.
  • Weasel words are no longer as effective because more people are aware of their existence.
  • An emotional appeal is the new way to reach consumers.
  • Charitable causes are one of the most effective and prevalent ways to emotionally appeal to audiences.
  • The Dove Ad is one way that advertisers and consumers have listened to each other in the form of an advertisement.
  • A similar emotional appeal that also proves that both consumers and advertisers listen to each other is the Aussie ad.
  • Aussie specifically shows its product, Dove does not.
  • Dove and Aussie use similar messages that are often ironic to appeal to the needs and wants of their customers while still trying to sell their product.
  • Dove and Aussie have been received by the media and intended audiences differently.
• Question 4:
  • The glosses seem to the most part progress logically. One way that this essay could be structured more effectively is tying the weasel words section more concretely into the essay. Just looking at the glosses of my essay, it seems out of place.
• Question 5:
  • The arrangement of the ideas is a very important part of an effective essay. Arranging ideas differently can emphasize different things and can also affect the way that the reader remembers an essay. For example, starting the essay with your strongest argument may grab the reader’s attention but also may do so too prematurely and cause them to lose interest early. Similarly, if you position your strongest argument at the very end of your essay, you may lose your reader’s interest at the beginning and they may never make it to the end of your essay.
• Question 6:
  • Based on what I’ve seen so far, I think that I would like to make the first half of my essay even stronger so that readers are more inclined to continue reading to the end of my essay (where my argument is the strongest, in my opinion). I need to work on re-integrating the idea of weasel words later on in the essay, perhaps, so that section of my essay doesn’t seem so randomly placed.