unit 8

CRITICAL LITERACY

Unit 8

For this week, we continued to learn the part 2 for the topic title ‘Producing and Evaluating Critical Writing’. This unit continues to focus on developing our skills to produce and evaluate critical thinking. This topic also prepare us for the last assignment, assignment three .For this last assignment, we have the opportunity to comment on our fellow classmate writing and our own writing critiqued.

For the writing practice, the article is ‘Drug or Guns’ from Time Magazine
(2001, 10 December), pages 54-55 by Peter Hawthorne.
The first problem that I encountered was I cannot understand about what is the article is about. However after Madam explain to the class I understand a little bit. So we have to do group presentation. Our group has been criticized by Madam. Actually the article covers about the corruption that happens in
For the each element that is Topic, Content, Source, Audience, Rhetorical Function, Purpose, Perspective, Positioning, Impact and Visual Literacy, we have to check it wisely. This is important to make us know how to critics our partner’s review for the last assignment. For the presentation, I think it is fun and I enjoy it and at the same time, I learnt. :)

unit 7

CRITICAL LITERACY

Unit 7

Assalamualaikum w.b.t. For Unit 7, we learn topic title ‘Producing and Evaluating Critical Writing’ Part 1.For this Unit, the format of the units changes. The length of this unit is increased and it requires greater autonomy and the text are more academic.

For reading practice text reading, we analyze an article title ‘Dieting: a waist is a terrible thing to mind’ in what you can change and what you cannot’ Sydney: Random House .pages 174-197 by Martin Seligman.

The length of the article is long. After we read, discuss, we have to present it in the class. This text is about dieting. It covers about the phenomenon that relating to dieting. Surprisingly, the author is man and he really provides up-to-date information based on his experience and include the recent research for this topic.

Seligman informs about the dangers of weight loss programs, the waste of using expensive weight loss products; give a wide range of recent studies and appeals to the reader’s own intuitions about the weight loss problem. The writer really know how to draw the readers attention by using many examples such as Oprah case, statistics, words from experts and tell us about his own failed attempts to loss weight. This article is really giving a lot of information about dieting. I learn about the myths about overweight, what is yo-yo dieting, bulimia and natural weight.


After we finished reading and discussing it, Madam teaches us about commentary on “Critical Review of Dieting.” Overall, this article is interesting and worth to read. It gives impact to me as a reader.

unit 6

CRITICAL LITERACY

UNIT 6

The next two weeks are really challenging for me because I really have many assignments. I feel quite depressed and feel worried.
This week we are focusing to do many exercises to improve our understanding and to make us practice with the several of articles .Each day, I feel that the articles are become difficult to understand and we have to analyze, be more critical. Before I learn this subject, I just read an article without realized whether the article are critised someone or any organization or whether the article have a hidden agenda or not. Now, I not only read a news in a newspaper but I can see who is the article are written for and can see whether the writer’s stance is negative or positive .I believe that some article can make the point view of the readers change.

For the writing practice, Madam gave us an exercise based on the article title ‘Invasion of the Baby Snatchers’. The title and the picture of the article draw my attention. After Madam give this exercise, I eager to read and to analyze it. The article comes from the ‘TIME’ magazine on 26 August 2002 by Walter Kirn. The article focuses on too much coverage by the media on cases of child abduction and neglected the cases of children being abandoned by irresponsible parents.
For me, this article is quite easy to understand but it appears that it is hard to analyze the perspective and positioning. We discuss the topic with Madam. To do the perspective and positioning, we have to be more critical and do not just believe what are the writer’s stances. This week I also learn that the readers also take part in positioning elements. The writer describes the readers as a judge to evaluate the article.

unit 5

For the fifth blog, I will express my personal response to the Critical Literacy lesson from the lecturer and tell what I understood from my friend’s presentation. For the last week, I learned about Unit 5: ‘Audience and Impact’. Who is the audience? What impact does the text have on the audience? This unit covers about who are the target audience for a particular article and whether the audiences have effect towards the article. We can know about the writer’s target audiences from the words used in the article. For example if the writer always said ‘advise for parents’ or ‘parents should know’ .That means the writer‘s audience is the parents. If the article critics an organization, the article is not written for them. Sometimes, we can know the target audience if the writer use jargon words. For instance, only people in business field know what are the meanings of price elasticity, rung on the ladder, menial, and loss leader and so on. Therefore, we can guess that particular article being written for the people in a specific field. Every text was created by the writer with an intended purpose of an article on the audience. The effect of an article on the audience (reader) was called ‘impact’. The writers have few ways to convince the readers such as show the evidence, statistics, quote from experts and testimonies. For the practice text, we analyze the text title ‘Australia’s Methadone Madness’ Reader’s Digest, (1998, May) page 19-25 by Mcmahan and Sioban. From this article, the target audience is the tax-paying citizens because there is frequent mention of tax-payers. The doctors, drug addicts, and government are not the intended audience because the writer critics them. I think that the impact on readers are likely to be successful because the writer shows evidence such as the statistics, testimonies and quote from export to support the article. For the conclusion, I found it is remarkable to know that each article has it own target audience and it depend on the creativity of the writers to give the readers effect towards the article. Furthermore, the choice of metaphorical language in a text can help us to understand the writer’s perspective and ideology. For me, language is unique

UNIT 4

Assalamualaikum w.b.t .
This is the fourth blog that I wrote for this week. Day by day, I feel that Critical Literacy is fascinating. With the help from my lecturer, I feel so happy to learn this subject. I also feel relief that I already do the presentation for this subject because it gives me more time to read article for the practice texts and for the next presentations.

This week, I Iearn about Unit 4: Arguments and Evidence: ‘What is the argument and what evidence supports it?’ This unit covers about what are the things that we have to know about these concepts. Not every text includes arguments and evidence. Usually, the texts that have arguments and evidence are finding in academic journals, policy documentation, and legal literature, reports and so on.

For the practice text, we have to analyze the article title, ‘Body language that speaks to muggers’, (1980, August) Psychologist Today, page 20 by Rubenstiel, Corin. The article is about what are the body languages of pedestrians that may lead to be one of the victims of muggers, studied by two New York psychologist, Betty Grayson and Morris Stein. From this article, the writer includes some evidence to support the arguments such as the psychologists include how they conduct the research, they use 12 prisoners and 53 other convicted muggers to clarify the case. The pilot experiment by them is to convince the readers to believe that the arguments are from the evidence. I learn that with strong evidence, it can give the great impact to the readers.

unit 3

In the unit 3 title ‘Positioning: how does the writer construct the participants in the text and how is the reader constructed?’ in this unit it’s explained on developing the ability to recognize and identify elements of positioning. This Unit developed my ability to be familiar with and explore elements of positioning. Positioning is how the writer of an article constructs each participant and the readers. From the article, we can see the writer giving role to the participants whether the people or institutions. It constructed with the perspective whether the writer condemn or commend the article.From the article title ‘Please let me go to your school’ that I’d read The article is about a six-year-old Scarlet Finney case because of her discriminations against The Hills Grammar School. The school cannot accept her because of her spina bifida disease. From the article, the school was characterized as an unfair school because its prospectus said the school can accept students with physical disabilities but they cannot allow Scarlett to school there. At first doing the positioning for the first article is quite hard because it is hard for me to find the word that’s show how the writer wants to construct the reader. However when we discussed it in the class I finally know how the writers construct the reader by combined the effect of the caption and the photograph. It is not actually about finding the words that show the writer position but about how we look at the photograph in the article. From there we know what is the writer want to construct the reader by influenced the reader to believe what it has written plus the image that has been shown to give greater effect to the reader. But I think we have to be careful because sometimes the article might be conflicted with the image shown. So it will be hard to know what the writer position is. Finally on this unit I did learnt something interesting even thought I still have things that I don’t really understand but I think we still can learn this in the next unit.

Unit 2

In the next unit the critical literacy subject getting more interested. The unit two titled perspectives: what stance does the writer take in the text? In this unit, it emphasises the role of perspectives in determining a critical literacy understanding of text. The article title ‘Battling the Bullies’ is a common type of article that I read daily when I first read it. However, when I read the article after read the reading 2.2 in the class because Madam Sharipah told the whole class to read. It is interesting that the ways in which the language used to create a text can reveal the ideology or perspectives from which it is written. Besides that I’d learnt that the selection of vocabulary and grammar make reflection of the values and attitudes of their social group. Besides that as what I understood that “events are perceived and reported through a given ideological perspectives” Lee (page 79). Due to this we can see that the writer can be bias and had a different approach towards the events that happened. The terminology that is used in this reading quite hard but interesting to know for example metonymy that define as a type of metaphor in which one words is used for another . Besides that other terminology is that euphemism that means a more pleasant, almost “antiseptic” term used instead of one that people find unpleasant. In other words, the patterns of language in which writers present their thoughts signify or make a statement about the writer. In conclusion to really critically thinking about a particular article, one must be really understand the word and style that the writer use so we will not be influenced by them by the way how they construct our reading by using words that can manipulate our thought.