How to Write a Persuasive Essay

     For my project proposal I am supposed to do a literature review in the form of a persuasive essay and I have been struggling with that, so for this learning journal I decided to read up on how to write persuasively. With a persuasive essay, the writer is trying to convince the reader to reach the same conclusion as the writer did...this means the basis for the conclusion has to be considered. Translation - I am trying to show why my project is important, legitimate, or necessary, so I have to go through the reasons why I think it is those things. Things to look at: assumptions, don't assume the audience agrees with you, play devil's advocate with myself, support all conclusions with evidence, especially outside evidence - don't just use personal experience. That won't be hard for my paper, all of it is from outside articles.

     Organization is often a problem with persuasive essays - I think that is where mine went especially wrong. So, I need to make sure I have: thesis, introduction, conclusions, transitions between paragraphs. In the introduction make sure to state why the issue is an issue - why is it important for me to be studying the relationship between keeper and animal? Clearly state position on issue. Clearly state reasons supporting your position - use topic sentences with because clauses, shows the reader that you are connecting back to the thesis and making an argument. So some topic sentences for me would be "The relationship between animals and keepers is important because it can affect animal welfare." Then I would have a paragraph looking at how it affects animal welfare. The conclusion should summarize the opposition's views, relate issue to larger issue...in the conclusion is where moral or emotional appeals can be made. So with those things in mind, I am going to go back through and come up with a better, more logical outline and try the literature review again!

Source:
http://www1.english.montana.edu/~engweb/wc/Information/PersuasiveWriting.pdf

East London in the News

      In Wednesday's class we talked some more about ethics and how to treat people and how to handle being in a different culture. Since I've already written about those things, I thought I would try to find some current events for East London, or South Africa in general. Here are some of the news articles I read:

At least eights roads have been shut down in East London because of heavy rain this past month. I also found a bunch of pictures taken when they had some major flooding this last summer. I hope something like that doesn't happen while we are there, because it would definitely make doing research a little difficult.

A bigger South African headline is that Julius Malema has been expelled from the ANC, or African National Congress, and also from the ANC Youth League. He was expelled because he portrayed the ANC and the president under a negative light. He has been accused of hate speech before. I read up a little about Malema's life - he has had an interesting one. He got involved with politics at a very young age, nine or ten. He has not done very well in school and is still working on a Bachelor's Degree. Many of his actions have been frowned on by members of the public and the government.

A group of college students from Walter Sisulu University had to climb out of a burning bus on the interchange between East London and King William's Town. Everyone got out okay, but the bus is completely burnt out inside. The fire was apparently the result of an electrical fault.

Nelson Mandela was discharged from the hospital earlier this week. He went in for a check-up because of on-going discomfort, but it sounds like he is okay. He really seems like a big celebrity in South Africa. The article mentioned a neighbor across the street who did not want to comment on his health. Apparently she got in trouble earlier this year when news agencies mounted cameras on her fence to watch Mandela's house, so she is being very cautious now about anything to do with him.

The Daily Dispatch Felt Cycle Tour just took place in East London - a two day event which featured a couple 100 km cycling races for men and women. There were about 700 cyclists! And a 46 km fun ride for anyone who wanted to bike. I need to figure out how to convert miles to kilometers and Fahrenheit to Celsius.

       This was fun! I think I'll try to do this periodically, it is a good way to learn about things that are important in East London and South Africa. It was kind of hard to find a good website with news of East London - is this a cultural thing or do they just not do as much online? Most of the things that come up when you search East London are tourist information for EL or stories from East London in England....

Good Enough for Grandma

   Monday's class was all about ethics and how the IRB developed in the U.S. Ashley shared several examples with us of unethical studies done in the past that led to the development of a Review Board that would make sure things were being done in an ethical way. She gave us a list of concerns in research ethics - you want to minimize harm or risk to the subjects, you want your subjects to have both privacy and confidentiality, you want their consent in what you are doing and do not want to deceive them. The thing that stuck out the most to me was reciprocity. What will I be doing to give back to the people who will be helping me this summer? Ashley said she tells facilitators to look for people they would be comfortable sending to live with their own grandmother for three months. What kind of person would I send to live with my grandmother? They would have to be honest, decent, trustworthy, respectful, helpful, kind - the list goes on.
        This definitely gave me a new perspective on my host family and our relationship. They are going to be doing a lot for us BYU students - taking us into their homes and into the private moments of their lives, to a certain extent. And I really had not thought about what I can do to repay this. Of course we have talked a little about helping with dishes and helping clean up...but how do I avoid making the Thomases, and other people I meet and befriend, from feeling like they are just being used, a means to the end of completing my field project and my course contracts? I am going to have so many questions to ask, interviews to complete, and customs to observe and participate in, but I do not want to get into such a hurry to complete these tasks that I forget relationships and the feelings of the people around me. Ashley warned us to always be aware of how your actions and words affect other people. While some of my motivation in meeting people might be to get something from them, whether it be a contact, invitation, or interview, I can never let that be my sole motivation in getting to know people.
         In thinking about some of my relationships now and in the past, I can see that in many cases I am motivated because I want to get something from someone. Maybe this isn't awful all the time, but I can certainly do better on befriending people just for their sake, and not mine. This is something I can work on with roommates, ward members, professors, family. If I start working on it now, hopefully this summer it will be no problem to make friends with others out of genuine interest and regard. One way that we can give back to the communities in East London is by helping with Mama Yoyo's daycare. I am not sure what other opportunities there will be...in my own project I am completely willing to help out around the zoo, I just do not know if that help will be wanted or needed.

Course Contracts and IRBs

       In Friday's class we got the low-down on course contracts. The first issue is finding a faculty mentor. I have already browsed through several professors and their interests and I do not think there is anyone who is specifically interested in the topic of my field study - human-animal relationships. But there are a few professors who have done some research with behavioral ecology, so I am going to go and talk to them about this project. So possible course contracts...my major does have a special topics class, and a research course and a seminar course. I think special topics will be the best fit though. For the second course, there is really only one course that would work well with my project. Wildlife Behavioral Ecology is an elective credit. I think it would perfectly for this summer because a big part of my study is animal behavior and how it is affected by human relationships. But this is a 500 level class and I am not sure exactly what I would do in the field to meet the requirements of the class. The description on the Undergraduate Catalog says that field trips are required...hopefully being around animals every day will be sufficient : ) I will go and talk to the professor about it. If that does not work out though, I am really not sure what I will do. Ashley said we should develop a course that will work well with our project and that will get us out the door and interacting with the world. None of the other courses required for my major really meet those requirements...they would be read and write courses, which we want to avoid. Hopefully it will work out.

     We also started talk just a little about IRBs. We had to read a couple for class and annotate them. I was surprised at how many gaps I found with the sample protocols - were they purposefully bad, or is it really just that hard to cover everything that needs to be covered? I am sure I will learn all about IRBs and how to write them; we have to take a tutorial, make several drafts, and will be discussing them a lot in class. So that's good.

Inquiry Conference

     For my second hour of conference attendance, I went to presentations given by Sarah, Averyl and Nick, who are all in the prep class currently. It was great to hear some presentations given by people who have experienced a field study. Nick talked about his time in Tonga, which sounds like a really lovely place. One thing that he talked about that could be applicable to my field study was an issue he had with an interview question. He would ask people why they designed their yards the way they did and would always get one answer - "for the beauty." He changed his questioning method a little and was able to get better responses. It is important for me to remember that in South Africa the way people understand or express things might be different then how I understand or express myself. So interview questions might take some tweaking.

      Sarah talked about her time in Rome studying the Pantheon. The take home message for me from her presentation was that some things cannot be understood in just three months. Regardless even of how much preparation before being in the field, three months is not that long. And that is OKAY! It sounded like Sarah did not really feel that she reached any concrete conclusions about the Pantheon and how Romans view it, but she still had a valuable experience and learned things. Averyl talked about the value of doing a field study versus library research. This is slightly more obvious for my project then it was for hers. I loved that she changed her opinion on "whiney" Queen Elizabeth after visiting some of the places talked about in the play about her life. Anyway, my project kind of requires being in the field. I guess I could do it in the library but it would be boring and it would be harder then being in the field, with the zoo keepers and the zoo animals. And I do not think I would learn nearly as much in the library as in the field. A field study educates in many ways other then academically - Holly and I were just talking about how we are going to come home from this summer completely fearless. We will have spent all summer dealing with people, learning how to talk to, approach, and befriend many different people. I am looking forward to it!

Rose Colored Glasses

      This week we only have Friday class because of Inquiry Conference. Instead of going to the other classes, we are supposed to go to two hours of the Inquiry Conference. Today I went and listened to the Keynote Speaker - Dr. Brown. I didn't realize it before I went, but I heard him speak before at an Honors dinner given for Freshman last year. I really liked what he had to say then and was glad to hear him speak today, particularly because he was talking about the value of getting out in the world, which I will be doing in just 2 and 1/2 months! One of the titles that he threw out for his address was "Exposing Yourself". He talked a lot about context and perception and how leaving the country you are used to can help you gain new perceptions. He also talked a lot about the lenses that people have, which reminded me of that phrase 'rose colored glasses'. This refers to when you look at something in a way that makes it more pleasant or nice than it actually is. It is a little naive. The lenses Dr. Brown was talking about were the different ways that people see things depending on their upbringing, who they are, the contexts that they are used to. Some of my lenses will come from the fact that I am a 20 year old, American, LDS, female who has not been out of the country since she was a little girl - 10 years ago.

       I am trying to think of specific ways that this will affect my time in South Africa...it would be easy to be afraid, I think, using those lenses I listed. A young, white female in an unknown country surrounded by poor people desparate for money. But right there I am doing two things that Dr. Brown warned against. One of them is stereo-typing people. A big problem Americans have is that we stereo-type a huge group of people based on just a small group of radicals. The example he used was Muslims, and that is the one that immediately comes to mind. I have been listening to This American Life a bunch lately, and today I listened to a story about a Muslim family living on the East Coast during and after September 11th. There was a 4th grader in this family and she was picked on mercilessly at school after her teacher taught a lesson about 9-11 and blamed radical Muslims, majorly stereo-typing this huge, diverse group. The family was eventually forced to move because all of the children were treated so badly. Listening to this really made me feel sick to my stomach. So, I need to work on not stereo-typing South Africans. The second thing Dr. Brown warned against was fear. People are afraid of the unknown, of foreign countries, languages, customs. The world is viewed as this awful, dangerous place. And yes, there are horrible things going on, but the world cannot be all that bad! But here come the rose-colored glass - I do not want to be naive about the dangers that do exist. That means being smart and aware, wherever I might travel. One thing I am hoping to gain from this field study experience is some street smarts; an awareness of my surroundings and the ability to deal with whatever comes up. I am so excited to "expose myself" to the world, to gain new perceptions and be able to encourage other people to go visit the wider world, the glorious world.

"Can you tell me some more about that...."

     In Friday's class we continued our discussion on interviews. Ashley gave us some ideas for getting more out of interviews. The first was writing things down verbatim - write down exactly what the person says, in the context that they said it. This helps you pick up some vocabulary and be able to put that new word in the correct context. The second thing was language identification - identify how they are speaking, what type of speech they are using. For example, are they using very technical language used to describe a specific field, like physics or car mechanics. Doing these things allows the interviewer to pick out what the vocabulary is and then use that vocabulary in their questions. This helps things get more in-depth.
   
       We had a reading quiz in Friday and one of the questions asked about using descriptive questions and how we did with those in our interview. I feel like I am pretty good at asking broad, grand tour questions. It is harder to pick out little details and ask questions about uber specific things. I am worried that it might be annoying to the interviewee to keep going over something, or asking questions about something that really does not go much deeper. I mean something that is simple and superficial....not bad superficial, just not that complicated, if that makes sense....So that is something that I can definitely work on before going to the field. Also paying enough attention to realize there might be something more to a superficial answer. I have to remember  that I am going to be asking questions about things that might be an every day event, a mundane, boring thing for the interviewee. So it might take a little more digging. This reminds me of the example in the reading, where the author interviewed the cocktail waitress and at the end she said something like "Wow, I didn't even realize all that stuff was going on!"

       We also talked about preparing to conduct interviews. I think that a main reason for reading all these articles is so we can figure out what questions we need to be asking. What research has been done already? Where are the holes? What is the correct vocabulary for "blank" field? But I also need to remember that it is okay to ask what questions to ask.