The supplemental reading I chose was the article titled "Deaf community outraged after interpreter signed gibberish before Irma." This article was written by Alex Mendoza, an associate digital reporter/producer for the New York Post. Three weeks ago, a category four hurricane Irma passed through Florida. Before the hurricane passed through, everyone in Florida was either getting ready to leave or making preparations to survive the hurricane. In the article, Mendoza describes a press conference where the leaders of Manatee county were giving crucial information regarding the hurricane. The problem as Mendoza points out is that the press conference needed an interpreter for the deaf and the leaders chose an amateur, Marshall Greene. Greene was very bad and would occasionally say words that did not relate with the press conference by accident.

Mendoza later talks about the different reactions people had to this incident. Charlene McCarthey, the owner of a company which provides interpreters, was upset with the whole situation and said she felt bad because she could have provided a much better qualified interpreter, however, the county leaders never asked her. Greene's family was quick to defend him and said that he was just doing his job that the county had asked him to do. Many people on social media were furious and criticized Greene. Others defended him. The deaf community wants an apology for this whole incident. Mendoza, Alex. “Deaf community outraged after interpreter signed gibberish before Irma.” New York Post, New York Post, 16 Sept. 2017, nypost.com/2017/09/16/deaf-community-outraged-after-interpreter-signed-gibberish-before-irma/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

Ambient- existing or present on all sides. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ambient

Each affordance is good in their unique situations. Mendoza chose to use linguistics and describe the video because that was the best affordance to use in his situation. An animation would not be the best and most precise way to describe the event that happened.

Gestural mode is another mode of communication. This one is not as important as the other modes of communication. An example is comparing a confident person to a person who is not confident. The confident person will be relaxed and look at people straight into the eyes. A person who is not confident will avoid eye contact with people and slouch. (Insecure person on the left, confident person on the right)

Aural mode is another mode of communication. Different styles of music also affect how people feel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4pcg7bXgmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5ncQ9_wGs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6tR78d0cmA Here are three movie scenes. What do they all have in common? They all use music to create suspense. The aural mode adds to the visual mode to make the scene better. Another aspect of aural mode is tone of voice and accent. A person who talks with a sophisticated manner will be perceived as more intelligent than a person who talks with slang.

Visual mode is another one of the modes of communication.One of the most important aspects of visual mode is color. Different colors make people feel a certain way. An example is the McDonald's logo. The colors red and yellow are said to make people hungrier so the founder of McDonald's chose those colors on purpose. https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/09/09/does-red-and-yellow-make-you-hungrier/ Another aspect of visual mode is layout. An organized article is easier to read and more professional than an unorganized article. Mendoza's article is very well organized making it more professional and easier to read than it would have been if it were not organized. His article starts with a video, followed by an explanation, followed by the reactions, and finished with the conclusion.

The linguistic mode is the most important mode of communication. The words a person chooses reflect who that person is. For example, if an author uses terrible grammar and uses slang words, the audience will ignore what the author has to say. If an author speaks with good grammar and uses more advanced words, the audience will believe the speaker is smart and listen to what they have to say. If Mendoza would have written his article with terrible grammar, I would not have read his article in the first place, but even if I would have I would still not believe anything he said. In his article, Mendoza does indeed write well so I can believe what he says.

Pretty much everything is multimodal. The difference, however, is the varying use of modes. A book may be multimodal because of its use of words and pictures, but the book is not the same as a tv show. The tv show would be multimodal because of its use of video, sound, words, etc.

This is a very important statement. People should be reading different types of texts differently. When people read textbooks, they expect to read everything as a fact. For example, I read this book trusting the author is only using facts and not expressing their opinions. On the other hand, when people read an article online, they must be able to read and see if the author of the article is trying to manipulate the entire truth to express their beliefs.

The best texts are made when an author can blend various modes together and when it is clear an author does things consciously. Mendoza's article is an example of a "successful text" because he intentionally has the first thing of the article be the video. The audience first has to watch the video and see what is going on. Mendoza then follows the video with his words to describe the video the audience just saw and to further discuss topics, such as the reactions, which are not present in the video but are related to the video. By describing the video, Mendoza is able to effectively blend the two modes.

This article and Mendoza's article are both multimodal. This article uses the combination of text and pictures. Mendoza's article uses the text and the video to fully describe what happened. The video was a primary source and his words he used to describe the video was a secondary source.

The Prownian analysis makes the students to be engaged more in their writing. This is something Maguire mentions in his article because he says that students nowadays are just not as engaged as before.

Any physical object can have meaning. Even the everyday items which we do not even think about still are a part of culture. For example, if we found a piece of clothing from a culture hundreds of years ago, to them the clothing would be something normal to them, but for us it could give us an idea of how the people dressed and what material they used to make the clothing. Another example is the AIDS memorial quilt. This quilt is no ordinary memorial. Memorials tend to be the same as other memorials. However, the AIDS quilt is more special than an ordinary memorial because by looking at it, you can see all the detail people put into making it. Also, keeping in mind that this quilt was made by millions of common people makes the quilt even more special.

definition: to give a clarifying explanation. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elucidate

Descriptions become better and more vivid as the words one uses to describe become better. This is because the more rich vocabulary tends to be more specific giving a more accurate description. Rich vocabulary can also give off more feelings because they are not as commonly used. However, like Maguire suggested in his article, it is not wise to use big words if you do not really know how to use them. Using a rich vocabulary without really knowing how to do it well can create the opposite of your intended goal and make a very bad essay.

The Prownian analysis works because of how easy it is to just describe everything that you see. This relates with Maguire that claims that students should describe abstract ideas with physical objects until you find the perfect words that fully represent your idea.

The more closely you look at an object, the more you understand the object and the more you learn about its history.

Having a lot of imagination is the key in understanding material culture. One has to open their mind and think freely to understand the cultural objects.

All of our senses help us get a unique feeling from the object we are identifying. Objects can be made of different textures and different textures elicit different feelings. For example, something smooth may give you good feeling, but something rough will give you bad feelings. The individual panels of the AIDS quilt all have different textures. This makes some people feel a response to a certain panel that another person might not get.

The author is saying the material culture begins with just objects but is then further expanded with descriptions. Describing everything you see in an object brings out things in the object which someone would normally look over and miss. Maguire, in his article, mentions something similar to this but he says instead that abstract ideas come from the physical objects.

The physical objects of culture are important in helping us, future historians, understand the culture better. These physical objects are easier to be preserved over generations compared to abstract forms of culture. With the physical objects, we can infer what the culture was like and how the people of that culture lived.

Taking the time to think freely and in the context of the object can lead to better conclusions. You have to remember to think like the people of the culture because your opinions on some issues, for example death, can be very different to the opinions of the culture. You may think death is terrible and scary, whereas the culture could see death as the way to another life.

The more time you spend looking at an object, the more you will discover about the object. You will not see everything an object has to offer by looking only for a few seconds. If you take the time and fully analyze the object for a few minutes or longer, you can start to really notice more subtle things which you would have missed had you not taken the time to see for a longer time.

In this article, the author John Maguire attempts to solve the problem of why current college students are bad writers. Maguire says the students of today are much worse than students from the past because modern day students are not being taught certain skills that would have been commonly taught in high school back in the day. He says that now some students do not even know how to use basic elementary words in sentences such as "although" and "despite" despite them being college students.

One of the skills Maguire claims students are missing is the skill of giving specific concrete examples. He says an easy way to become a better writer is to write physically because all abstract ideas come from objects. The other problem he mentions is that students nowadays write too abstract. His solution is to get the abstract idea but then find objects which relate to the idea. This method helps the students write better examples. According to Maguire, although you may not become the best writer in the world, mastering these two skills will make you a better writer than before.