Week 2 Day 1 (short week)
Happy Wednesday to you (THOUGH THIS IS A MONDAY POST). We will continue the focus on how to read scientific and science literature. You can go back to week one and skim a bit. Here I am reposting the Friday resources I asked you to focus on as prep for this week's work-->
- Short slide set (Google) on Audience?Context/Purpose.
- Task for you! Introduction slides by Wednesday AM
- Preview of next week: Reading Strategies (Google Doc), one-paer with links that are optional)
- Question: Do you think of hypertext links as a citation and trust building strategy? I do.
Here are a few ways to relate these resources with other content from last week. First, think on the essential quality of writing for an audience, rather than for you. Week 1's "texts" for skimming included this Adam Kucharski. Substack* short piece of advice. Look at his audience-friendly format of bullet items (13). Note his concise presentation of these strategies. He also folds in the advice of George Orwell, also. I place two of Kucharski's ideas here:
Make your reader care about what they’re reading. Like a good story, that typically means outlining a clear problem, with the promise of a later resolution.
The analysis wasn’t done by some anonymous entity. You did the analysis. So avoid the passive voice if possible. (See also: ‘a decision was made’ rather than ‘we made the decision’ when it comes to responsibility-dodging in leadership messages.)
Gaven Yamey gives the same advice concerning voice (Brits tend to say tense) in a tweet I screen-capped for you in the same entry last week. BTW, Yamey was commenting on AK's recent article, including a link. Using hypertext contains a rhetorical move of ethos. Choosing links in our communication is a clear case of audience accommodation and courtesy.
Today (or when you read this), then, you have a first lesson or tip at the sentence-level for audience-centered writing.
Kucharski notes also the centrality of reading to writing. As you read articles in your field for other classes, try to see these pieces as not only essential knowledge vehicles but as mentoring texts for you to improve your scientific writing skills. I want you to achieve efficiencies between all your classes. Why? Professional writing classes are a place of synthesis of technical knowledge with communication skills.
Next up: OPTIONAL READING (listening, really) that will help you read more effectively the science articles you are studying now. We will look at this Peter Attia podcast The Drive "How to Read Scientific Literature" later in this class but many of you may want this practical knowledge know. In class, we will talk about how to "skim" podcasts, which usually requires a podcast aggregator like Apple or Spotify or the now-defunct Stitcher. I also have a Google doc guide about the special statistics terms you need to understand and apply as you read IMRAD scientific literatures. More on IMRAD on Wednesday.
Thom Haller, veteran writing teaching at UMD.
Marybeth Shea
WEDNESDAY, for real! One way I teach is borrowed from Aristotle and others. People can remember things when we cluster or chunk them in small numbers like three. You will see this pattern in my teaching. For example, I gave you three resources last week to skim, linked above in this week's readings as a courtesy to you, busy readers (my primary audience all semester in this class).
This pattern of three is borrowed from Aristotle (in Western systems), especially like the three proofs or qualities of information:
- logos, pathos, ethos
- (now, by me) audience, context, purpose
- (strategy for reading) linked above)
- (pre-read, means three+ or nearly four strategies)
- Skim
- Parse
- Read, Review, Cross-reference (Petter Attia's piece linked above guides you)
- Parse
I stacked these verbs (note that they are action commands to you) with document design to emphasize that this action pattern is a hierarchy. This stacking and indent is a document design pattern that is visual. Visual strategies help people learn and recall information.
If you want more guidance on how this class works, you can look at this "helper" link (from my website) to useful web sources I gathered for you. We really do not need a text as the world is truly available to us!
Dutch illustrator Thjis Geritz
Bonus culture video about three. This may help you remember how important counting out is to cognition and memory. The Wikipedia entry about this series is informative. Wow. She linked to Wikipedia. What kind of source is that?
Next up: Three slide set resources about Aristotle's logos, pathos, and ethos.
Set 1: Aristotle's LPE (you have seen this!)
Set 2: Relationships and Audience
Set 3: Booth's Two Rhetorical Triangles for Audience Analysis
Visual communication hint: triangles are a good symbol to work with ideas that have three elements.
MbS comment TBD briefly in class:
- strategic redundancy
- looping (preview, view, review)
- curate links to support level of reading
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday! Let me knit up from a few ideas already discussed (looping and strategic redundancy).
First, how to skim-read podcasts (a type of text). Most podcast platforms have a speed option so you can listen at time and one-half. Helps. You can also fast forward in 15 second chunks. Not all podcasts and YourTube videos include time stamps with content "chunks" but increasingly, you will have this options. I love podcasts for walking and biking. Two birds with one stone, as the old saying goes.
The next idea concerns another set of recommendations about writing. Raul Pacheco-Vega (international scholar about waste streams and human social systems) praises the approach of William Zinsser. Pachego-Vega is a deeply generous scholar and professor who shares his critical thinking and the related writing process. We will look at some of his exhibits today. I time this mini-presentation now because most of you carry heavy reading burdens. You can be more efficient about this work. Reading and writing are related!
I mentioned the strategy of mentor texts. Think of your reading as opportunities to collect sample texts that you can model from. You can also seek chunks of texts at the level of a section or even paragraphs to support your writing practice. You can keep a digital folder of these items in Google docs. Recommend!
For physics students, I offer up this classic technical article as a mentor text. You will see also that the format reflects a practice standard of using two columns in tiny font. Oh my eyes! We will talk briefly about this 1975 piece in class. This APS link presents the article. One hallmark of most physics, math, and related disciplines is the strategic use of concision in scientific writing.
Be sure to know about Willard, one of the co authors. We will talk briefly about the ethos of Willard's Wikepedia entry compared to this 2023 entry hosted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federal science research entity.
For next week, skim these resources. Happy weekend to you. Be sure to rest amid the studying. East some good food, too.
- Set 4: Pentad or Burke's audience analysis (with Shakespeare!)
- Active-passive voice definition slides with examples
Skim this html discussion of active v. passive/third person v first person discussion about laboratory write-ups. This resource is from a 2023 workshop held by Norfolk State University Writing Center. Bet you have some of these to do this semester. You will learn more about writing if I situate the learning within document types you are working with now.
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Friday typically means a quick lesson on visual communication. We have two:
First, this clip of "We are Siamese" from Lady and the Tramp.*
Second, this August. 29, 2023 404 very scary "creation" of a generative AI using both text and visuals and the "ethos" of a long dead scientist, in one case.. Another "scientist" is totally made up (a hallucination, in AI parlance) Here is a clip-->
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