About that Survey...

To be honest I haven't done my survey yet. I have been having a hard time to decide what I'm going to ask to get my point across. I have still been working on getting my survey together. So I guess I will reflect on how trying to make a survey has been so far.

With all of the information I have found so far I've been getting a better idea of what I want to survey people on. I think my survey will be focused on figuring out how much people know about the Civil War. I might include photos in my survey (depending on if I can or not). In hopes with adding the photos I hope people can gather more information from the narration of the photos. Because the Civil War was the first war to have photography. So it did have a narration that the other wars did not. I hope my results will provide me with the information I need to support my thesis.

I have learned a great deal of trying to create the survey even without results yet. I didn't think it would be this difficult and it's definitely something that I did not expect.

chapter eleven

This chapter starts out with how to organize an argument. It goes into how to cluster some more to help the paper flow a lot better. This is one thing that I think I need to try to do more often. I always get discouraged when doing it because I tend to draw blanks while doing it. I feel that it would help more argument flow a lot better than it is now though.They then go into different patterns that arguments can follow; such as the Cause and Effect pattern. This is more of this happened and so as a result, that happened. I do not think that I could use this too much in my paper, but I can think f some ways that I might be able to incorporate it in. On thing that I really need to work on is my introduction to grab my audiences attention to make them want to continue reading on. I also need to work on making people think about the topic and motivate them to want to be able to do something about it. This chapter is making me think more in-depth about the structure of my paper, which is a really good thing. I feel that one of my biggest weakness when writing is my structure. I am planning on going to the writing center to see what advice they have for my paper in order to make it the best that I can.

Where does it go

Chapter 11 is about organization and being able to share what you know in the best way you can. they start by saying there are many tools to help you organize you paper. The one way they show is a web map. I myself find this hard to do sometimes,because I find that I have things the could go together and things that support more then one thing. The most important of your paper the opening and closing. This is in anything you read about writing a paper because this makes or breaks a paper. I find it is easier said then done. Sometimes I am lucky and I find a great opening but other times I find myself wondering if this is what the read will enjoy. I read this how to have a good opener or closer and don't know how to apply it to my paper. Coming to the closer you don't want to mess it up you have worked so hard. ( NO presser right !) The best idea I have read not waiting till you are done with paper to write the conclusion.I like this idea of last first I think it would help keep me on track making sure I don't forget what I want to write. So when I come to the end again I don't miss recapping on something I said.

Interview

I have sent my interview through an email, but have not gotten a reply back from it yet. I am sending a friendly reminder out tomorrow morning to them just to make sure that they have not forgotten about it. The questions that I asked were: What years did you spend in Kazakhstan? What was your primary role while there? What changes did you notice happening while you were in the country? Do you feel that these changes were a good move for the country? If yes or no, please explain why? What changes, if any, do you think that Kazakhstan as a country should look into next? I am hoping for some good discussion and thoughts to come from these questions. It is really different to do this through an email because I do not get the ability to catch some of the tones in their voice or get more discussion out of them other than what I asked them. I originally wanted to do it in person, but with both of our schedules it was proving impossible to do.

No Interview Yet

For my interview I had originally planned on interviewing a friend of mine from Germany, possibly even his parents. In my paper I wanted to answer the question of whether or not there is a psychological border between West and East Germany. My friend and his parents were all born on the East side of the Berlin Wall. I was hoping to get some good perspectives on what life was like living in the Communist East. However, I haven't received a response from them so I'm not sure if it will be possible. When I visited them in 2008 I heard some stories about what life was like, especially from the father. He really loves music and told me stories about having to smuggle certain albums across the border. Since I most likely won't be able to receive any interview from them, I plan on interviewing one of my professors. He was born in Poland and he is a geography professor. He didn't move to America until he was 25, so he spent some time experiencing the division. I haven't asked him yet if he is willing to do this for me, but I'm almost positive he won't mind.

Ch. 11

Chapter 11 is really one of my stronger parts of my papers. When it comes to writing I must say the best part of my papes are the Introduction and the conclusion. I do really well in grabbing my readers attention and keeping them interested. Although, introduction and conclusions are my strong points I got a lotof helpful tips for writing my papers. I didn't block out any new information from chapter 11 because i thought i do well in introductions. Instead i actually went back to my paper and changed some things from points in chapter 11. Overall ch.11 was really useful to me!

I asked you questions and you answered! Survey Results

I created a survey on the website Survey Monkey. I was surprised at how easy it was to create this survey and found the process problem free. I sent a mass E-mail out to my this English 104 class and was very pleased that I got 9 responses back in only one and a half days. The results of my survey will be very helpful in writing my paper, especially since my audience is my English 104 class and they will get to hear some, if not all of the results of my survey in my paper. It will be geared specifically to my audience. In my survey I asked a five questions that related to my topic of exercise and a healthy diet. When asked "Why do you exercise?" my classmates responded with 1 "health reasons", 2 "It makes me feel better.", 0 "appearance" and 6 "a mixture of all". I found this to be the result I expected because this is my personal take on why I exercise. My second question asked "Do you enjoy exercise?" I got 6 yeses and 3 nos. It surprised me that two-thirds of of the people that answered the survey exercised. I suppose that if they saw my topic and it interested them, they will be more likely to take the survey. My third question asked "What type of exercise do you do?" The options were Cardiovascular, lifting, and cardiovascular and lifting. I got 5 cardiovascular, 0 lifting, and 4 cardiovascular and lifting. My fourth question was "How many days do you exercise per week?" I got 2 zeros, 0 1-2, five 2-3, and two 3-5. This surprised me, but again, i factored in the people who saw my topic and would be more likely to take it because they had interest in it. My last question had the most surprising results. I asked "Do you think that you have a healthy and balanced diet?" I got 7 yeses and 2 nos. I assume that a lot of people in my class are juniors and seniors, and this could account for the healthier diet because they aren't having to live in the dorms, eating at the dining halls, which don't have the healthiest selection of foods. I assume that the 2 nos are from the people that don't exercise. I will reference the results I got from the survey I gave. They go along with my research question very well.