Organization and Structure- Does it matter? When? Why?

It matters.   Human beings remember best what we heard last.   Have you ever considered why advertisements put the slogans at the end of advertisements?

Consider a baseball game where the first batter is walked and the next 27 are struck out.
Consider a controversial call on the first play of a Superbowl.   Would those stories make headlines?

Consider 


Structure is one way that writers control the attention of the audience and the emotions of the audience.  

Most stories that last over time have a familiar structure.   Joseph Campbell wrote a book called the Hero of A Thousand Faces describing the structure of most of the worlds' myths.    Some next evidence suggests that human beings are actually "wired for story."

Consider what the Cracked.com podcast says about movie structure.   In a roughly 90 minute movie
at 10-15 minutes, the conflict must arise, and, at 60 minutes, a major complication must arise.

For Extra Credit:  Go home and watch a major motion picture that was extremely successful.   Write down what event happens near the 60 minute mark.



Most essays that are effective have a familiar structure.   This structure starts with the five paragraph essay and moves on from there.   Since the structure is familiar and expected, following it makes it easy for the audience to understand the writer.  

The basics of structuring an introduction, body paragraph, and a conclusion must be memorized.   Knowing the parts of each kind of paragraph will make spotting weaknesses in your own writing clear.


Most sentences that are effective have a familiar structure.  In sentences, it is important to consider the structure of any two or three part sentence in order to create parallel structure.

Some great comedy, both intentional and unintentional, comes from a mistake in using parallel structure.


Visuals to incorporate
House of cards
Unusual/ creative homes 

Movies at the 60 minute mark
Raiders- They find the arc room
Star Wars- M Falcon lands on the Death Star
Die Hard- Yippie Kae Eh

Examples of five act movie structure
http://thescriptlab.com/screenplay/five-plot-point-breakdowns


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUgQCrQ1Czo

Handout LIst for Key Concepts

Note:  All of this is written in note form.   When taking notes in class, it is important to try to find shortened ways to write the important information.   When taking notes on reading assignments, sometimes it makes more sense to use complete sentences to record notes.   Complete sentences will be easier to understand later, once the original context is forgotten.



A reading plan- Once a text is previewed, a purpose is determined, and prior knowledge is reviewed, a reading plan is made.   The reading plan is a set amount of time to devote to the text and a list of techniques that will be used.
             Example: When reading Harry Potter for pleasure, I'll read fast and make no markings.
             Example: When studying a BIO 101 chapter, I'll devote a few minutes per page.  I will also  
             make lots of notes in the text, including confusing passages to ask about in class.


Previewing a text- What to Look At
             Headings and Subheadings
             Visual Aids
             Bold Words
             Introductions
             Questions after the reading

Adjusting reading speed
          "Don't read Harry Potter and a Bio 101 text the same speed"
           Adjust based on background knowledge and purpose for reading

Prior Knowledge- The glue for new information, a signal for making a reading plan.

Outlining
            For a writing project, it is called a graphic organizer.
            For a reading, choose whether to use a formal or informal
                       A formal version includes all key information like Cliffs Notes.
                       An informal version is more like a summary.
Paraphrasing
           "Putting things in your own words helps insure comprehension and memory."
            This can cause problems if your paraphrase is too far from the source.
 Questions
          Using a variety of question types
          Using a variety of question difficulties
          Using them as a tool for creating interest, for enhancing memory, for creating context
          
Summarizing
          Be sure to start with the author, title, and main idea.
          Don't retell the story, summarize it!

Inferences
         Example- One panel comics
         Example- Many jokes

         "Professional writers often demand their readers make inferences."
         Daily living example- flirting often requires one person to make an inference about the true                  intent of the other.

Fact Vs Opinion
The Four Easy Revision Methods
Reviewing for a Test
Textbook Marking
        Highlighting- Between 15 percent and 25 percent.  Don't make it an arm exercise!
        Annotating- A better technique.  It is hard to annotate without thinking


Prewriting/Discovery
        Narrowing topics- Some stories/topics take one minute.  Some stories take 10 minutes.
        Considering thesis statements
        Gathering specific details

        At least 10 minutes!
        "Your first thought is probably your worst thought."
Organization and Structure in Writing
         "A predictable organization is a trade off between being clear and being boring.   Once you                  master the simple form, try to mix it up."
Thesis Writing
          Is it debatable, clear, and properly placed?    Remember that process essays and informative                 essays have slightly different types of thesis statements.

Drafting a paper
Revising a paper
Noting Patterns of Error in Your Own Writing
Evaluating Sources
Surfing the Web faster and getting better results
Topic Sentences-  The Magic Trick to Prevent Going Off Topic
Context Clues- Understanding Unfamiliar Words
Context Clues - Making educated guesses on test questions
When To Use "Your Own Words" and When to Avoid Them 

You Are Now Less Dumb

A memory is least accurate when most reflected upon, and most accurate when least pondered.   Together, those two facts make eyewitness testimony basically worthless.  -6

Psychologists Dan Somons and Christopher Chabris published a study in 2011 revealing that 63 percent of those surveyed in the United States believe memory works like a video camera, and another 48 percent believe memories are permanent.  An additional 37 percent said that eyewitness testimony was reliable enough to be the only evidence necessary to convict someone accused of a crime.  Those are seriously shocking facts to a psychologist or a neuroscientist, because none of those things is true.   -7


This is not a book about abnormal psychology.  It is about normal psychology, the common, default, baked-into-every brain sort of thinking you can expect to find in rocket scientists, heads of state, and the lady at the office who has a kitten calendar for personal use and a fireman calendar for business meetings.  You think seeing is believing, that your thoughts are always based on reasonable intuitions and rational analysis, and that though you may falter and err from time to time, for the most part you stand as a focused, intelligent operator of the most complicated nervous system on earth.  You believe that your abilities are sound, your memories perfect, your thoughts rational and wholly conscious, the story of your life true and accurate, and your personality stable and stellar.  The truth is that your brain lies to you.  Inside your skull is a vast and far reaching personal conspiracy to keep you from uncovering the facts about who you actually are, how capable you tend to be, and how confident you deserve to feel.  That undeserved confidence alters your behavior and creates a giant, easily opened back door through which waltz con artists, magicians, public relations employees, advertising executives, pseudoscientists, peddlers of magical charms, and others.  You can learn about yourself when you take on the perspective of those who see through your act and know how to manipulate your gullibility.  A great deal can be learned and gained by focusing on your failings.   24-25




When you gather with others, they tell you about their reality in the same story format, and the better the story, the more likely you are to accept their explanation.  -23

Books, movies, games, lectures--every form of information transfer seems better when couched in the language of storytelling.  -24

The central argument of narrative psychology is that you do not use the logic and careful analysis to unravel the mysteries of who you are and what you want.  You do not hypothesize and test.   You don't study, record, and contemplate the variables of life and the people you meet along the way.  Objectivity and rationality find it difficult to thrive in your intellectual ecosystem.  -37

The people who came before you invented science because your natural way of understanding and explaining what you experience is terrible.  When you have zero evidence, every assumption is basically equal.  You prefer to see causes rather than effects, signals in the noise, patterns in the randomness.  You prefer easy to understand stories, and then turn everything in life into a narrative so that complicated problems become easy.   -55

As a professional do you feel compelled to wear a suit, or after donning a suit do you conduct yourself in a professional manner?  Do you vote Democratic because you champion social programs, or do you champion social  programs because you vote Democratic?  The research says the latter in both cases.  -61

This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard.  Without an obvious outside rewards you create an internal one.  -66

[About Power Balance wristbands, a worthless band which promised increased balance]
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was photographed wearing one, as was Robert DeNiro, and Gerard Butler, and probably all the uncles in your famnily who spend more time talking about golf than playing it.  The Associated Press reported in 2011 the trainers for the Phoenix Suns basketball team swore by the trinkets, and that a spokesperson for St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indianapolis, where hundreds of professional athletes go to train.  -72

You are actually more likely in your lifetime to win an Academy Award than get mauled by a shark.  -87

In 1974, psychologistsDavid Landy and Harold Sigall published a study in which they handed out essays to subjects, each with one of two photos of different women attached.  Some subjects received an essay with a photo included of a woman deemed by the scientists to be attractive, and others got a photo of a woman deemed unattractive.  They asked the participants to rate the quality of the writing in the essays but made no mention of the photo.  The more attractive the woman in the picture, the better the score, and when asked about the overall creativity and the depth of the ideas in the essay, the papers attached to the beautiful photograph were rated as being of higher quality in both areas. The essays, of course, were identical.   The only difference was the photo attached.  When the scientists ran the study with essays purposely written to be awful, the disparity between the ratings was magnified.  As Landy and Sigall wrote, you expect better performances from attractive people, but when they fail, you are also more likely to forgive them.  -91

  
The current understanding of this is that all brain functions require fuel, but the executive functions seem to require the most.   Or, if you prefer, the executive branch of the mind has the most expensive operating costs.   -115

Over the course of Graham's experiments, he found that partners tended to feel closer, more attracted to, and more in love with each other when their skills were routinely challenged.  He reasoned the buzz you get when you break through a frustrating trial and succeed was directly tied to bonding.   -122

The research into arousal says you are bad at explaining yourself to yourself, but it sheds light on why so many successful dates include roller coasters, horror films, and conversations over coffee.  There is a reason that playful westling can lead to passionate kissing, that a great friend can turn a heaving cry into a belly laugh.   Theres a reason great struggle bring s you closer to friends, family, and lovers.  There is a reason Rice Krispies commercials show moms teaching children how to make treats in crisp black-and-white while Israel Kamakawiwo'ole sings "Over The Rainbow."


Subjective optimization complements sour grapes, the inclination to see that which you can't have as taht which you didn't want in the first place.  Subjective optimization makes whatever you get stuck with seem better than that which you can no longer obtain.   Metaphorically, it is the process that makes lemons into lemonaide.   -131


In 1976, when Ronald Reagan was running for president of the United States, he often told a story about a Chicago woman who was scamming the welfare system to earn her income.  Regain said the woman had eighty names, thirty addresses, and twelve Social Security cards she used to get food stamps, along with more that her fair share of money from Medicaid and other welfare entitlements.  He said she drove a Cadillac, didn't work, and didn't pay taxes.  He talked about this woman, whom he never named, in just about every small town he visited, and it tended to infuriate his audiences.  The story solidified the term welfare queen in American political discourse and influence not only the national conversation for the next thirty years, but public policy as well.  It also wasn't true.  -145


In experiments where two facts were placed side by side, subjects tended to rate statements as more likely to be true when those statements were presented in simple, legible type than when printed in a weird font with a difficult-to-read color pattern.  -149


Social Norms and Pluralistic Ignorance
In every new situation, you innately seek out and follow norms like spilled water seeking its level, because doing so is an adaptive response built into the primate brain.  -160

The norms that hold a culture together escalate by an arrangement of concentric circles of tradition.  Your family has its ways of doing things; then your friends, your employer or school, your community, your ethnic subculture, your socioeconomic peer group, your town, state, nation, and so on.   Since norms alter your behavior from one setting to the next, they can build upon one another until they dictate voting, policy making, governance, and giant social movements.   Still, in many situations, people stick to norms only when everyone is watching.  -161

Prentice and Miller concluded that their research provided plenty of evidence that you have no idea whether the norms in your culture, subculture, era, or group of friends are real or imagined.   -165

the people on the fence went with what they assumed the majority wanted.   They didn't know, however, that most people didn't actually feel that way, and the presumed majority was just a figment of their imaginations.   -167

Thinking through that bias, most people falsely assume their culture is less progressively tilted than it truly is, and thus the institutions and media of culture will present themselves as more conversative than necessary.   In addition, its programming will consist of content designed to appeal to a public far more prudish than the actual audience consuming it.  -174

Public discourse is the path to being less dumb.  The only way out of the loop is to speak up, ask questions, and get a conversation going about what people truly think.   -175    [Awareness campaigns to change attitudes are less effective than getting people to share.]


Norms spontaneously generated.  For instance, when one boy hurt his foot but didn't tell anyone until bedtime, it became expected among the group that Rattlers didn't complain.  From then on, members waited until the day's work was finished to reveal injuries.  When a boy cried, the others ignored him until he got over it.  Regulations and rituals sprouted just as quickly.   188-189

The idea is this: You put on a mask and a uniform before leaving for work.  You put on another set for school.  You have a costume for friends of different persuasions and one just for family.  Who you are alone is not who you are with a lover or a friend.   -192h

The idea is old enough that the word person derives from persona, a Latin word for the mask a Greek actor sometimes wore so people in the back rows of a performance could see who he was onstage.   -192

Political parties establish platforms, companies give employee handbooks, countries write out constitutions, tree houses post club rules-- every human gathering and institution, from a fashion show to the NRA, works to remain connected by developing a set of norms and values that signals when they are dealing with members of the in-group and identifies others as part of the out-group.   -194

...the motivation to create and wear clothing rests somewhere in that 4 percent difference between your DNA and a chimpanzee's.  -202


The research suggests simply working to better explain your own opinion saps your fervor.  -200

In studies in which people unscramble sentences about rudeness, those people will later be much more likely to interrupt experimenters after being placed in frustrating situations.   People primed by solving puzzles that include words associated with the elderly will temporarily walk more slowly after the task.  In one study, subjects asked to imagine how cool it would be to become college professors outperformed others who were not primed in that way in a game of Trivial Pursuit.  Priming is one of the fundamental drivers of your behavior, and it isn't limited to simple symbols and images.  Studies in which people are asked to hold eitehr a cold or a warm beverage show that those same people will react differently to strangers.  Subjects in that same study who held a warm coffee said the people they met seemed sociable and outgoing.   Everything else was made identical to both groups, including the strangers.  The only difference was the temperature of the cup the subjects were asked to hold.  -206


Chap16
THE MISCONCEPTION:  There is nothing better in the world than getting paid to do what you love.
THE TRUTH: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for that task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feeling.   -235

Inferences

A few funny examples

Once a good-looking man and a woman walked up to me in Paris and asked me a question in French....

My mother once made a very intelligent guess as to what the word "embarassado" meant.

I once accidentally robbed an old man.   I didn't give him his money's worth.


Inferences come in a variety of levels

CRAZY TALK                  WILD GUESS            GUESS         EDUCATED GUESS 

If no inference is made, there are a variety of reasons

I AM NOT SURE THE MEANING OF THE STATEMENT
THE CONSEQUENCES OF A WRONG INFERENCE ARE TOO RISKY
I AM ONLY PRETENDING TO READ

Often, writers of jokes and riddles use inferences to their advantage, allowing them to create difficult riddles and hilarious jokes.
Riddle example
Joke example

(For the record, magicians take advantage of our bad inferences to fool us as well.)

The Power of Words- Masterlist

THE POWER OF WORDS

"NATURAL"

As a word, we respond to the word "natural" extremely positively.

As a matter of fact, things that are "natural" are often the opposite.

"It's good for you.  It's natural."
"Oh yeah?  So's arsenic.   Want to eat that?"

"Natural selection"

"Natural flavors"


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"A QUESTION CAN CHANGE YOUR MEMORY"

Found in Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling Toward Happiness, 

(Gilbert is a Harvard professor)

For example, volunteers in one study were shown a series of slides depicting a red car as it cruises toward a yield sign, turns right, and then knocks over a pedestrian.  After seeing the slides, some of the volunteers (the no-question group) were not asked any questions, and the remaining volunteers (the question group) were.    The question these volunteers were asked was this: “Did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the stop sign?”   Next, all the volunteers were shown two pictures—one in which the red car was approaching a stop sign and one in which the red car was approaching a yield sign—and were asked to point to the picture they had actually seen.  Now, if the volunteers had stored their experience in memory, then they should have pointed to the picture of the car approaching the yield sign, and indeed, more than 90 percent of the volunteers in the no-question group did just that.   But 80 percent of the volunteers in the question group pointed to the picture of the car approaching a stop sign.  Clearly, the question changed the volunteers’ memory of the original experience.   –p87-88

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"WHAT WORDS DO YOU NOTICE?   THE SLEEP LIST"

Bed.  Rest.  Awake.   Tired.   Dream.   Snooze.  Blanket.  Doze.   Slumber.   Snore.  Nap.   Peace.   Yawn.   Drowsy.

(Give the list for a few seconds.   Then take it away.   Ask this question:)


Which of the following words was not on the list?  Bed, doze, sleep, or gasoline?


Most get it wrong.   We don't remember the words.   We remember the basic meaning.




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"Lifetime Warranty"

When purchasing windows I was offered a lifetime warranty.   The hitch was this, it was not about a warranty that lasted for MY lifetime.  It was a warranty that lasted for the "lifetime of the window" which was considered to be 7 years.

When I bought a sofa from Sofa Express, I bought lifetime stain protection.   When they went out of business, I learned that it was good for their lifetime, not mine.

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"Fun Size"

It isn't small.  It isn't extra small.  It is "fun size."

When the audience can tell that a person is using a fake or unnatural way to describe a product, the power of words loses much of its power.   This is one reason for taking this class.   We are exposing the students to large numbers of these kinds of descriptions as a vaccine.

The word on the package doesn't bother us.   When it is heard from a person or in a commercial, my radar goes up.

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"The Telephone Game"

Students in my courses often complain about the proper use of quotations.  On a day where I am going to be teaching acknowledging quotes, I often have them play the telephone game in class.

You know the rules, right?  A person makes up a phrase, which is whispered to everyone in the room one at a time, at the end, the phrase is mangled.

Play this and enjoy it.

State to the class, "Now imagine that someone comes up to you and quotes (insert the name of a student in class) as saying (insert the mangled phrase here.)

Would you believe that person?  Would you think that the speaker was a little bit strange?

What if that person said "I think that X person said Y."   How would adding the words "I think" change the sense of the statement.

What if that person handed you a cellphone as he made that statement, and the cellphone was programmed with (the student in class)'s phone number?  What if the person said, "go ahead and call them if you don't believe me."

This is why English teachers have developed some rules for handling quotations  

This is also why we force our students to write things down instead of trying to remember what professors say.

Big finish:   In order to demonstrate why I think writing is so important, we will play this game one more time.   This time I have a message that I want to pass through 22 people, one-at-a-time.

At this moment I pull a fortune cookie from my pocket, crack it open, and hand the fortune to the first person in class.  This fortune is quickly passed along while the students look at me, either grinning or groaning, and thinking, "I see what you did there."


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"Sara Lee Cake Metaphor"

As teachers, we focus a great deal on passive/active readers, so I stumbled upon a metaphor about being active

unfortunately, my sara lee cake metaphor isn't based on facts..

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp

This is how factoids come around.  Do you know the meaning of factoid?  (Most won't.)   People repeat facts when they come in the form of a vivid example or a good story.

We tend to trust things that we have heard before.


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"Supercalifragilistic Expealidocious"

Have you heard of Mary Poppins?
How about "supercalifraglisticexpeialidocious"?

Well then spell it

The answer is "I     T".

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"Going once....   Going twice....   Sold American...."

Consider auctions and auctioneers
The auctioneer never stops speaking....
The brain processes the words, "going once.   going twice...:
It increases the scarcity pressure.
By the time the brain processes the words, the sale it about to end.   This means that rational thought does not have time to occur.

Consider the speed that Derren Brown talks during his tricks.
Consider the speed of the Modern Con Man talking.

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Say shop
Say flop
say crop
what do you do at a green light?

Say pork
Say dork
Say storck
What do you use to eat soup?

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Foreclosure everything confusing can make.    - On a Billboard put up by the Ad Council.

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Xylaphone

"Xylaphone should be spelled with a z.  If someone messes with you, tell them to get their head "z-rayed."   -Mitch Hedberg   

Ask the class, what are five words that you have a great deal of trouble spelling?
Ask the class, what are some words that have a spelling that doesn't make any sense?

Developing a personal list of trouble words is an important part about being a reflective writer.


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The Power of Words- unnecessary censorship


Your brain is a gambler, and your brain is on a roll. Most of the predictions your brain makes are right, and it is pretty cocky about it.
The problem is that your brain is often wrong. Your brain is far off, but it is not terribly far off.

In terms of language, here is the principle.

"The brain predicts patterns in language while it reads. These patterns are based on a number of things, including sentence structures, vocabulary, and life experience. These predictions are often wrong, but rarely cause for more than a moment of surprise or confusion."

In terms of language, here is the proof.

Go to youtube.com. Search for "Jimmy Kimmel 'Unnecessary Censorship'". There are no curse words in the recorded audio. Remind yourself of this before you watch the footage. While watching, notice the way your mind fills in the blanks.


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"The Dictionary Rule"

One question that all writers need to consider is this: "is this word clear to my readers?" The possible answers include 1. to all of them 2. to a group that is hard to predict (those who know based on life experience) 3. a specific group that is easy to predict.


(The above is unclever and unhelpful)

The way to tell if a word is dangerous is simple. Check how many definitions of a word there are on dictionary.com. The more definitions a word has, the more potential there is for abuse. A word with only one definition is safe. A word with 7 definitions is easy to abuse.

Think of Bill Clinton. What is the meaning of the word "is"?


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"It's Wrong.  It's Wrong.  Now It's Right."

What is the meaning of the word "peruse"?

Every time I've ever heard it used in my life, it meant "casually look through something." For example, "I'm going to peruse this article about XXXXXX, something that doesn't relate to my life in any way."

What it "means" according to the dictionary is "to read closely and deeply"

Here is the lesson, when the common usage becomes popular enough, it becomes the "working definition. Words mean what the people who say them mean. In any language, a large number of words have "informal definitions" which go along with the dictionary definitions. If the informal definition reaches a tipping point, the formal definition of the word may change.

Up until that point, there will be conflict. People who know and use the dictionary definition will judge those that don't. People who realize that language is flexible will know the book definition and not care much if people use it more liberally.

What is the meaning of the word "literally?"
Here's what it means.


Here's how many use it.


What is the meaning of the word "ironic"?