Material literacy and visual design

Well, obviously this article is outdated, but it has some good points that web users nowadays will agree. The article deals with criticism that the internet received when it was getting popular; that the web is threatening to drain contemporary prose of its rhetorical possibilities witch has to do with multi-media aspects of the web. However, Faigley is defending the web, that literacy has always been a material, multimedia construct but we only now are becoming aware of this multidimensionality and materiality because computer technologies have made it possible for many people to produce and publish multimedia presentations.

The web definitely stimulated the rapid change literacy went through, and as the technology evolved, people's attitude towards literacy and the web also changed. Just because it is incorporated with other medias more often, doesn't mean literacy is being threatened. In some ways, literacy is being more accessible; now that more people are writing online through various ways.

Sondra Perl, Understanding Composing

In her article, Sondra Perl talks about the patterns of composing. She focuses on the recognition of recursiveness in writing that ultimately helps the writer go forward. This goes beyond looking back at previous phrases or sentences, or some key words and phrases. Felt sense, "which encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time", is what writers must keep on going back to in order to compose their writings. The process of putting the felt sense into right words is called retrospective structuring, and the ability to craft what one intends to say

so that it is intelligible to others is called projective structuring. By going through these cycles, writers compose powerful writing with a strong sense of what they are trying to say.

Sondra's article explained the recursive pattern of writing. It was easy to understand and relate to, and by recognizing a pattern that I was not sure of will make me more patient and learn to wait to feel the felt sense and put it in the right words.

"Keywords in Composition Studies" by Peter Vandenberg

In this piece of wonderful prose, Vandenberg is elaborating upon the various aspects one inherently abides by when relating to Rhetorical analysis and its various functions. He begins with Audience, a very important aspect of Rhetoric, and discusses how one can run into problems if their understanding of an audience is that they (they being the audience in this instance) are a fixed variable within the Rhetorical scenario, thus limiting oneself in further discourse; and eventually goes on to describe other very important aspects when forming Rhetoric such as Coherence, Form and structure, process, and inevitably, Rhetoric itself. These definitions and examples are much more in depth, understandable, and approachable to the audience, and thus serve to clearly explain what one needs to do in order to properly form Rhetorical thoughts and conduct productive reasoning in situations in which Rhetoric is needed. Vandenberg is not only keeping a nice, balanced structure while writing this piece, but lays out his discussion very easily and everything in the piece seems to blend and coincide rather nicely throughout its length.

"What is Rhetoric" and "Glossary of Major Concepts..." by Covino and Jolliffe

Rhetoric, along with the other ancient arts of discourse, plays an integral part in shaping our modern understanding of language and how we use it to appeal to various situations and stances among a variety of different communication situations. While the article does quite a bit to level out the playing field so to speak, Covino and Jolliffe do not go as in depth as Yancey did in our previous studies; but of course, this is more so a definition and series of subordinate definitions pertaining to the greater subject, which is, of course, Rhetoric and its foundations. Some of the words and ideas discussed and defined in the piece are of course of great importance, but it seems that they are merely grazed upon in various aspects, and I would prefer for more explanation when it comes to things such as Pathos (other then the basis of Aristotelian thought), and in some instances, the explanations were somewhat unclear, but regardless the piece gives the reader a clear and relatively concise understanding of what Rhetoric is, where it's come from, and what we can use from it to better our communication skills with one another

Yancey - Writing in the twenty first century

In this article, Yancey describes the shift in the way we in the 21st century have convoluted conventional writing structures, and goes on to further explain what ways we can enhance, and progress our writing, as well as describing the various nuances created through means of text and social networking sites, and how we can work to correct these issues before they further corrupt the English language and it's composition.

Yancey makes plenty of valid points as to where composition began and where it's purposes have been misconstrued, and continues to explain how we can benefit from new technologies such as text messaging, social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace, and how they have both enhanced and subsequently hindered our means of communicating, all the while remaining objective, showing where the idea of writing has come and in some ways, gone. Her topic of the web 2.0 culture is almost too true; as we see these examples all around us with people holed up in their bedrooms writing for some of the worlds most famous blog sites, which have in turn, become news media outlets, and the internet's inherent usage as a instantaneous means of communication, and the formation of what has come to be known as an 'internet celebrity'.

Yancey's perspective on writing is true to life, as we see examples explained in totality on an almost daily basis. Blogs, Social networking sites, and instant messaging have blurred the boundaries of conventional communication and made it such that anyone can speak their mind, do it in any manner they please, and of course, at the mere push of a button.