4 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2017
    1. Based on Ong’s perspective of oral communication, I believe that this form of communication plays a different but comparably important role in our society compared to written communication. For one, the majority of the population back in the days were illiterate and being able to read was either a luxury or a part of life in church. This made the story readily available to a large population. Second, that whoever listened to this epic could have their own ideas and interpretation based on the previous storyteller’s voice, something written stories lack. Ong’s text proves that a single story could have many versions with different ideas and interpretation. These are the characteristics that helps keep Sundiata’s epic alive to this day.

      You provide an interesting, thoughtful general discussion of issues raised by Ong. But the homework asked you to apply Ong's concepts to the Sundiata text and show where they apply. For example, Ong suggests oral texts contain a lot of repetition, formulas/sayings, paratactic language, language that is close to the human lifeworld, etc. You could point to examples of these from the Sundiata text and discuss how they fit Ong's framework.

    1. I was interested in the facts that rhetorics nowadays is more often used as a tool to convince of even control what people think. And this claim is certainly true with politics where certain politicians would use a specific term to gain points with a certain audience. Take for example Obama or Trump during their campaign speeches, both used different rhetorics to fit the audience’s appeal. There is thus pros and cons to having an audience. One could simply adjust his or her writing based on who the audience is only to make ends means.

      This contains interesting material, some good writing, and some connections to your experiences that were illuminating. But this could do more to answer the homework questions, and focus more on the details of the text. These are things to consider in future responses and homework.

  2. Sep 2017
    1. In this text, Thompson claims that although we are writing more words every day, the words that do come out are more often bad or grammatically incorrect. He also points out the fact that students cannot write properly

      I think he argues against this idea. See the section where he cites the Stanford writing project.

    1. Hi, my name is Augustin but you can call me Auggie. I am a senior and this would be my last semester before I graduate. I will have a major in IS3D or known as the Inter-Disciplinary program which includes French, History and RWS. I like reading other people’s blogs but this is my first time typing my own personal blog so bear with me if I’m still new at this. Blogging used to be huge in the early 2000’s but I believe we are all transitioning towards vlogs as it is a much faster way to express something. I still don’t really know what to do after graduating but I’d like to start becoming a flight attendant and explore all my possibilities.  

      Thanks for sharing Auggie. Look forward to reading your posts.