Inquiry Four Final and Writer's Reflection

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Brittany Anderson

Professor Cummings

English 111

July 28, 2012

Inquiries Three and Four Writer’s Reflection

When I found out we would be completing both Inquiry Three and Inquiry Four at the same time, I was a little intimidated. It had taken a lot of time and energy to produce one inquiry at a time, and I could not fathom two! After reading through the rubrics, I understood why the two Inquiries were combined; they are really extensions of one another. It would not be two papers as I expected, but rather one research paper and a multimodal representation of that paper.

I really enjoyed writing the research paper. Because I chose a topic that was interesting to me, it did not feel like work looking up article to support my argument and use in my paper. I also liked using the research blogs. At first, I honestly didn’t think they would help me, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did the research blogs help me, they have convinced me to use them for every research paper I write from now on. The blogs made supporting my argument in my paper much easier, as I had already done the work finding relevant quotes and information. I simply needed to find a good place for the information, and word it accordingly. I also made a point of explaining why the information I was researching was important, and how it supported my argument. This was really important to include in my paper, and it was nice to already have it written down. The blogs also helped when creating my works cited page. All the citations were in MLA format already, so all that needed to be done was alphabetize them. The blogs came in handy again when creating Inquiry Four.

Inquiry Four has been one of my favorite Inquires to date. I loved being able to put the research I had accumulated and argument I had constructed into images. It was also enlightening to learn the correct way to construct effective PowerPoint presentations, as I learned areas I had been doing wrong for a while. I tried to use as minimal text when constructing each slide, lending more attention to the images I chose for each slide.

Much like how charities chose specific images for specific purposes, I took great consideration into the images I selected for each slide. In my research, I found that one of the most important aspects of a successful charity was an emotional connection. Charities often achieve this through emotional images or video. Many of the slides are screenshots I took from the Kony 2012 video, a great example of an appeal to emotions in my opinion. I also wanted to incorporate images from the Kony video specifically, as it served as the basis for my inquiry into what makes a successful charity, as well as every other Inquiry I have written. On the sixth slide, I used a still from the Kony video showing children huddled together trying to avoid abduction in the night. The image also captured one of the children’s narrations of the situation in the video. I chose to include this image in a series of what emotional images get the attention of viewers. Fear is an emotion that everyone has experienced in their lives, and because it is so relatable, I would imagine most audience members to be able to identify with the children and see the need to help stop the source of the fear. For another slide, I wanted to incorporate information from research. I found an image that corresponded with the information, that negative framing results in more donations, and created a slide depicting that research. I made sure to cite the information I had also used in my paper in my presentation.

I structured my presentation with three background variations. Each slide was either black or white with text and/or an image, or an image was used as a background. I also only used three different font colors: white, black, and red. I used the red font to emphasize important points in longer text, or to draw attention to a particular phrase. I also only used one animation, fade in/out, throughout the whole presentation. This achieved my goal of making the presentation visually stimulating, while not distracting to the viewer. All these techniques for more effective presentations were things I learned from online lectures such as, “Death by PowerPoint”, “Effective PowerPoint Presenting”, and other lectures from that day.

Overall, the process of remediating my paper into a presentation was not as bad as I expected. My presentation follows almost the same path as my paper, and was actually enjoyable to create. I had never worked with the Google presentation software, and I now prefer it to PowerPoint. It also made explaining rhetorical theory in my paper easier, because I had to demonstrate them in my presentation. In hindsight, I would definitely have written my Inquiry Three paper before starting to construct the presentation, but it all worked out fine in the end.

Peer review proved once again how useful it is while revising Inquiry Three. I got a lot of good feedback about how to better establish my argument, as well as how strengthen my thesis. I did this by incorporating the importance of emotional appeals into my thesis. It was a point I kept making in my rough drat, but not clearly states in the beginning. I also got sidetracked with all the information, and sometimes forgot to give my input as well. I made it a point to add why I felt the research as important to my argument, as well as why I did or didn’t disagree with it. I really learned about the benefits making an argument multimodal, as well how to do more effectively while writing these Inquiries. I felt that it added dimension to my paper, and made me more confident in my research paper writing abilities.