A response to Week 12 readings:

Section A-6 of the Short Prose Reader, suggested the use of index cards as a way to organize for a research paper’s bibliography. By doing so you can give yourself a quick reference with useful information when writhing your paper and bibliography.

This is not the first time that I have been advised to used note cards as a tool when writing a paper. When I was a senior in high school I was required to take a collage prep. class. In the class I was required to write a ten page, research based paper. Part of the paper requirement making note cards.  I found them to be extremely helpful. I almost forgot about them untill I read our assignment for this week.

I will be using note cards to help me organize for our classes research paper.

A response to “How to Write with Style” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I made many connections while reading this work. The first one was to Mr.Vonnegut’s coments on newspaper and technical writers. He said the are trained to not revel any personal information about themselves. When writing my research paper for child psych. last night I continually found myself wanting to as personal experiences and advice into my work. I know that adding such information would not be appropriate for the assignment that I was given, so I stifled myself.  I am  not a technical writer.

Vonnegut also wrote about writing something interesting that an audience would enjoy. When I write I always consider whether or not an audience would find the information I choose to be interesting and informative. One of the reasons it is some-what uncomfortable for me to share papers that I have written with peers is my fear that they will not think it is interesting.

He says in his essay, ” All these varieties of speech are beautiful”. I like this line. I never really thought of language as something that could be beautiful, but when I put really think about it, speech is.

Finally he mentions keeping writing simple. I like to keep my writing simple. Sometimes its hard to do and I end up getting caught in wordy run-on sentences. I do agree though that the simpler the better.

The first article I have chosen is called, “Brief Report: Musical Interaction Therapy fo Children with Autism: An Evaluative Case Study with Two-Year Follow-Up” It was written by Dawn Wimpory, Paul Chadwick and Susan Nash. Published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Vol. 25, No. 5, 1995. The basis of the study in the article is to record music therapy’s ‘social and symbolic’ development of a young child diagnosed with autism.

The second  article I have chosen is titled, ” Music therapy in the assessment and treatment of autistic spectrum disorders: clinical application and research evidence”. Authors: T. Wigram and C. Gold, published December 19, 2005.  This article reviews the positive effects of music therapy on children with limited verbal abilities and non-verble communications. The article states that in some case studies, music therapy had an assortment of positive outcomes such as: language development, behavioral control improvements, emotional responsiveness, ext.

I have decided to write my research paper on music therapy’s long-term effects on children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. I have chosen this topic because I am an aspiring special education teacher. I have always been curious as to the ‘healing power’ that music can have on some individuals. Music is a very inspiring and powerful and can influence people both positively and negatively.

I would like to understand better what a music therapist does and why music therapy is such a rapid growing feild of work. I would also like to know how the music affects the children with autism, and what areas of development do they show improvement in.

My research question is as follows: What are the long-term effects of music therapy on children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)?

I can’t think of a more clever title. I’m sorry to disappoint.

I enjoyed reading both of the essay’s from the Short Prose Reader. I liked the descriptive aspect of Harry Crews piece ” Why I live Where I Live”.  The words he chooses to use to describe the landscape of the house where he lives, brought to picture to life. For example,  ”…enormous bull bay tree through a thin stand of reeds into a tiny creek, the banks of which are thick with the greenest fern god ever made.” Once again I enjoyed reading the piece. It made me wanna go to Florida!

I’ve always liked reading works by Elie Wiesel. His words are aways profound, and tend to evoke a range of emotions from me. While reading “The America I Love” I felt an imnence amount of pride for the country I live in. I thought about how sometimes I  take all the freedoms I have for granted. I could not imagine living in a country that would not allow me all the rights I have now, freedom is all I have ever known, and I know that makes me a blessed individual.

Like in our other cause and effect readings, I like how subtle the cause and effect aspect is.

We have learned many writing strategies so far this semester. One that I would like to continue using is the X diagram to organize my thoughts. I used diagrams similar when I was in elementary and middle school, and I never thought that they could still be useful to me today. I like using the X diagram because organization of my essay is where I seem to run into the most trouble. The x diagram gives me a clear visual of what my ideas are and where they should be in relation to other ideas.

The strategy that I have grown most fond of is: approaching my reading as if I was journalist. I read through my essay, then I ask questions on what else I would like to know about the subject and how i can elaborate more on certain details. I like the journalist approach because it allows me to look at my writing as an outsider and get advice based on what somone else might want to hear.

A response to the cause and effect essay “Why we Crave Horror Movies” by Stephen King

I enjoyed reading Stephen King’s essay on “Why we Crave Horror Movies”, which is surprising considering I don’t enjoy reading his novels. I liked how the cause and effect aspect of the piece was not over exaggerated. It was subtle, yet it got its point across. He brought up the issue of humans getting some pleasure of joy out of seeing people get cornered by a serial killer or visited at night by a menacing ghost. It got me thinking, why do I like to watch horror movies?

When I see previews for Saw 6, I know that I’m going to go see it. I get excited for it, my  plans for the night are worked around seeing the gruesome film. I go because I’ve seen Saw 1 through 5 and I can’t turn my back on Jigsaw now. My friends will want to see it. I am curious about what forms of torture will be used in this installment of the stomach turning saga (that sound really creepy of me, I know). The effect Saw has on me, is probably the same effect it has on a lot of the individuals that decide to go and see it. During the movie I am sickened, my face scrunches and tightens and i sometimes have to look away from the scene. After the film,  I tell my friends that I thought the movie was stupid, definitely not as good as the last one. I am very cautious about going into the theater bathroom on my own, I feel like I’m in the movie, and some a women in a pig suit might try capture me. At home I sleep with the light on for about a week, and in about a year and a half, I’ll go and see the next Saw, and repeat the series of events.

A Response to “My Ticket to Disaster” by Suzanne Berne

When I was finished reading the essay “My Ticket to Disaster” by Suzanne Berne, I was overcome with silence. Most of the time when I’m finished reading, the television volume goes back up or my i pod gets turned back on. But this time I sat still in the quite for a while, and absorbed what I just read.

I thought about September 11, 2001, sitting in my 6th grade study hall, confused and scared about what I was watching on TV. I thought about my trip to NYC September 24, 2001, and the strange mass of gray and gloom that hung over the city on a day with no overcast. People were trying to be optimistic and patriotic, but I could tell that every one was just as scared as I was, and that scared me even more.

The essay evoked and array of emotions and thoughts out of me that I was not expecting to feel at 10am on a Tuesday morning. The works use of description painted a vivid picture of the events that took place for her that day in March. She writes “…raw winds and spits of rain” and I can feel it, I can see people pulling their jackets tighter and  shoving their bare hands in their pockets.

When I’m done reading somthing, I want to be moved to silence. I want whatever I read to make me think of the story long after i’m finished reading it. That shows me the author did their job. Suzanne Burne diffinetly did her job.

I have only had experience with peer review once. It was the Spring semester of 2009. I was apprehensive about sharing my work with people in my class that I barley even knew. It was awkward at first when we were paired into groups of three and asked to exchange essays. It was kind of like handing over something personal, like an embarrassing baby picture, and hoping that no one would think it was dumb.

Bigger than the problem of sharing my own work was looking at someone elses and giving an opinion on it. What if I thought the work was terrible and needed a lot of work? How do you nicely put that the essay, this personal thing that they allowed me to look at and review, is complete rubbish? I would never want to make anyone feel bad about what they wrote.

I don’t know if there is a nice way to put somthing so harsh. So I would try and work around the garbage and pick out the good things and give praise for what is right, not critisize for what is wrong. Along the way I would try and guide them twords better sentence structure and so on.

An ideal response to my writing would be a brutally honest one. If my thesis is weak my adjectives are boring and over used and my grammar is atrocious, I want to know. I have problems picking up subtle hints and hidden messages, if it’s not straight to the meat, I more than likely will not get it (it’s a blessing and a curse).

That being said I know that not everybody feels the same way. I think most people just want their work to be respected and well liked by anyone who reads it.

I just finished looking at this weeks readings. Both essays really impressed me and the piece on Description very informative. I particularly liked the essay, “A Fable for Tomorrow”. It painted a vivid picture in my mind of everything that was going on in the town. I heard the noises of the animals and children playing, and then after illness stuck the town I heard nothing. I really enjoyed using all me senses at the begging of the essay to put together the town that she was describing. It almost reminded me of the small town I live in, except my town is more modren than what I picture hers to be.  I wish that the town stayed happy and pretty throughout the essay.