Writing Enrichment

This Blog is a Final Portfolio of a Quarter Long Writing 2 Class!

[writing2reflection-blog]

Discourse Community Essay

Dorian Lavabre

Writing 2

MW 2:00-3:50

 Discourse Community:

The American Mock Trial Association

 The American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) is a foundation that holds annual undergraduate level mock trial competitions throughout the year. The AMTA has many of the features that represent a discourse community such as common goals throughout, intergroup communication, specific lexicon, literacy, and specific genres all of which are critical according to John Swales essay on discourse communities. Mock trials are imitations of lower court trials taken part by students in order to practice true court scenarios. Any undergraduate institution within the United States has the ability to register for the competition. The competition encompasses regional competitions where teams who do well, will then be moved to the national competition with about eight schools, and finally a championship between the two very best school. Both the regional and national tournaments are held everywhere throughout the nation and include 600 teams from 350 universities.  In John Swales argument he claims that a discourse community has “a broadly agreed set of common public goals”. (471) The AMTA’s goal through court simulation is to teach students critical thinking skills, public speaking skills and for students to learn legal practices and procedures. (AMTA website) The universities and the students proceeding on the teams have a common goal to win the competition in order to receive recognition. Many of the teams are also made of students who hope to be future lawyers, and doing mock trial helps in showing their skills to law schools and law firm.

The AMTA has many levels of communication throughout the organization, which are essential to the community’s ability to function. These levels include individual team communication, communication between university teams, and the broad communication between the AMTA and its members. On the lowest level each university team comes together to organize their own practices and to develop their case. These teams may meet once a week to everyday of the week depending on what the group dynamic entails. At the individual university level, the various modes of communication used are faced to face contact, cellular devices and email. The communication between universities are done formally through email and then face to face during practice mock trials in preparation for the regional competition. During this stage of communication, the teams will share their ideas regarding the case but no specific details are shared in order to not give away key tactics that may be used during the actual competition. Lastly AMTA communicates with its members through mediated conversation, such as email, and newsletters. At this highest level, contact is less direct and the coordinators of AMTA do not have face to face contact until the final stages of the competition or ever. The main information that is passed on between the members of the AMTA are dialogues concerning the case and rules. This serves to insure that everyone gets a fair chance during competition. The actual competition is held in a real courthouse, which brings a sense of authenticity to the competition that is not felt when teams are meeting at their respective schools. Teams meet officially only six times over the course of the entire competition.

In a mock trial competition, primarily law jargon must be used in order to sound like a competent member. Speaking in a manner that is less formal would be considered very taboo and slang not pertaining to the case is inexcusable. For example, when speaking to the judge overseeing the case one would never great the judge by using the informal greeting “sup’, “wassup” or “what's good”. Instead the correct greeting would be “Hello your Honor”, the judge is always referred to as “your honor”. Specific law jargon such as objections are expected to be known by all the members of a mock trial team. This common lexicon among the entire mock trial community serves a purpose of educating students about legal terms they will encounter during their careers as lawyers.

           A mock trial team is not like a sports team that may have a junior varsity and varsity, as soon as a person joins a mock trial team he or she is fully immersed into the competition. Mock Trial teams have multiple members with varying degrees of skill. It is up to the older members to teach the younger teammates everything they need to know to be successful. A team consists of two to three lawyers, up to eight witnesses, one court clerk, and one-time keeper and these positions are ranked respectively. The timekeeper is usually the newest member of the group and often takes that position to study court etiquette and court proceedings. The clerk is also a new member and his role is to mainly observe and learn. The witnesses are more experienced team members who study the in great detail and have a very good understanding of court proceeding and etiquette. The person playing the witness is vital to the team and may take a leadership role within the group. Lastly the lawyers are the most familiar with all parts of the case and mock trial system these are the people who are the best on the team. This ranking between novice and expert members, is important for the team because it allows growth and makes sure that everyone is prepared.

AMTA members are skilled in many different forms of literacy.  A mock trial member develops the ability to read text on many levels as a response to how one must think about a case on many levels. A case is never black and with, it is always filled with grey area, finding the truth in the grey area is the challenge that faces competitors. Good public speaking skills are also required of a mock trial team member in order to be understood when giving the case. Members must also be able to read the energy of the room in order to best tell their argument. If a lawyer is discussing a sensitive matter of the case it is important that his emotions reflect how a real life lawyer may align his emotions. The ability to read the energy in a room also has much to do with the ability to read body language. In order to tell when a witness is becoming frustrated or feels uncomfortable. It is only when one becomes proficient in reading, speaking, and the analysis of body language that a person in mock trial can be considered literate.

Along with the different forms of literacy, the various rhetorical needs of this discourse community means that various genres were devised specifically for the competition. There are two essential genres made specifically for the mock trial competition. One of the most important genres used by the mock trial community is the case packet, which holds everything a member needs to participate in the competition. The case packet contains rules, procedures, an objection list, witness statements, and much more pertinent information. Without the case packet holding a mock trial competition would not be possible. Another genre devised for the mock trial competition is the roster in which all of the schools are placed. The roster does not have the school's name, but instead each school is assigned a number this is for the purpose of keeping anonymity. The roster also has room numbers for where each pair of schools will meet.

A fundamental text in particular for any mock trial competition is the witness statement. This is the foundation by which a case is built. The witness statement is found within a larger case packet which holds all of the information a mock trial team may use throughout the trial. Such as competition rules, learning objectives, preparatory reference cases, and pretrial motions. A witness statement is a personal recollection, by a fictional character, of the events which took place during an investigation preceding the trial. These statements are the only things by which the competitors can ultimately argue a defendant's guilt or innocence. A case is made or broken by how the teams interpret the information provided in the witness statements. The genre is centered around providing detailed information to the members of a mock trial team while still allowing enough objectivity to inspire critical thinking. In analyzing the form and context in which these witness statements are used one can see how a witness statement according to Dirk is the perfect tool to help “people get things done” which is why a genre is considered a genre. (255) A genre is a text, created when a specific rhetorical need must be met, it conforms to the contextual necessities of those using it over time.  As Miller explains a genre is “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (159) thus the witness statement over time has been developed to most benefit the member of a mock trial team. In other words, a genre first begins broadly and over time specifies and finds its niche within a particular discourse community.

The importance of the witness statement as a genre cannot be understated. Upon the first gathering of teammates, the group will sit, read, and analyze the witness statements and form positions on the case in which circumstantial evidence and direct evidence is found. The text is then used during the totality of the competition as a reference by everyone participating. The structure of the genre of the witness statement, is important because it is developed to be as usable to the mock trial competition as possible.

All witness statements are formatted in the same way with no variation. A witness statement includes a large bolded title which identifies whether the character is pro-defense or pro-prosecution, the character's name and occupation follows. The body of the text is written in first person in order to insure that a testimony is not being skewed by false interpretation. The first paragraph of all witness statements contain an introduction of a witness's name, age, occupation, and other credentials. This aids those who are playing the witnesses in the trial to develop an accurate representation of the character during the trial. The introduction paragraph also serves to qualify witnesses. The witness statement is also always written chronologically in order to tell the story accurately and without confusion. Usually the statement begins a day before the crime, and recalls all of the pertinent information the leads to the crime. Lastly a witness statement contains numbers running down the side of the page. These numbers start at one and run down the page consecutively. These numbers function as a point of reference for where a particular thing is said. If a witness says something inaccurate these numbers are important for guiding everyone in the court to where that particular thing was said.

The function of a witness statement is to aid in developing a case for the prosecution and defense. The witness statements have three different functional types, the expert witness, the character witness, and the eye witness. The expert witness provides opinion regarding trivial evidence based on quantifiable evidence. The character witness aids in forming circumstantial grounds for a defendant's innocence or guilt. An eye witness functions as a source for direct evidence in the case. Regardless of the type of witness it is important that all of the characters are written in a way that no one witness has more influence for the prosecution or defense. If one were to take a witness statement from an actual court case, there would be no way to control how the one witness would influence a case.

           A witness statement is important in insuring that a case is interesting, unbiased, and allows for competition. A member can interpret a witness statement in any way he or she deems accurate, and base an entire argument on the storyline that he or she puts together. Which aids in fulfilling the discourse communities goal of inspiring critical thinkers. Because witness statements are written in the middle ground the amount of different ways one can prove guilt or innocence is vast. The member then must accurately speak about his argument and persuade the court to rule it his or her favor, which he or she is able to do because a mock trial member values good public speaking skills. The universal form and function of the witness statement stand by the value of justice and law within the mock trial discourse community.

[writing2reflection-blog]

Writing Analysis Poject

Dorian Lavabre

Writing 2

MW 2:00-3:50

Analysis of Note Taking Habits:

Writing v. Typing

 In today's fast paced technological age, students are faced with more options when it comes to note taking than ever before. One can choose the tried and true method of handwritten note taking or choose various digital writing platforms such as Microsoft word, Google Docs, and OneNote. In the analysis of my writing habits, I specifically focused on note taking during my fifty-minute-long human sexuality class over the period of six lectures. I analyzed the differences between three notes written in longhand and three typed notes. I coded for how many words were in each note and how much abbreviated text was present within the notes. This was to see whether my typed note taking was as effective as hand writing my notes. Based on the encoded data I found that the patterns within my notes coincided with a study done by Pam A. Mueller and Daniels M. Oppenheimer.

The study found that “participants using laptops were more inclined to take verbatim notes than participants who wrote longhand, thus hurting learning” (Oppenheimer, Mueller, 1166). The researchers found notes written verbatim to be hurtful to learning based on a previous psychological studies which tested the encoding hypothesis and external-storage hypothesis which are both related to each other (DiVesta & Gray, 1973: Kiewra, 1985). The encoding hypothesis suggests that the very act of note taking aids in memorization and learning. The external storage hypothesis states that taking notes are helpful based on the fact that one can review the notes at a later time. The studies found that verbatim note taking is passive and leads to “shallow cognitive processing” (Oppenheimer, Mueller, 1160) whereas active note taking leads to more effective memorization. Oppenheimer and Mueller found that “students can often type faster than they can write” (1160) thereby facilitating notes written verbatim. In the study the students tested better when using handwritten notes rather than typed notes.  Based on the information given by the studies and my own analysis it can be hypothesized that typing my notes can hurt or lengthen the time it takes for me to learn the subject matter.

             The method by which I analyzed my note taking had three parts logging my writing, specifying to only logging notes, and coding for specific data. First, after each class general information was logged regarding the notes such as the purpose of writing notes and the technology used. In logging the general information patterns arose and the second part of my methodology was activated. The logs showed that for some classes I used longhand while I would handwrite for others. The basis for whether or not I would longhand or type depended on the length of time I was in the class and how fast the professor lectured. This peaked my curiosity with whether my notes had the same effect even though the mediums were different. I then specifically began to log my notes only for human sexuality, where in three class periods were designated for typing and three for writing. I started analyzing length of the notes comparing writing and typing and analyzing the different in the word usage and the amount of sentence fragment. In specifying the logs to note taking only I was then able to code the amount of words per note session and the amount of sentence fragments. The word count was used to see if the notes were being summarized or copied. The amount of sentence fragments also indicated whether the notes were being copied instead of summarized. The higher the word count and lower sentence fragment count indicated that the notes were verbatim and not taken actively.  For the longhand notes each individual word had to be counted and double checked for accuracy. Each sentence fragment was counted by hand as well, and again double checked for accuracy. With the typed notes the word count was measured using the word count tool in google docs, while the number of sentence fragments were counted by hand.

The results show that the long hand notes were in fact better notes due to the fact that across all written notes the average word count was 210.33 and the average abbreviation count was 35.67. Unlike the longhand notes the typed notes had a higher average word count of 368.67 words and lower sentence fragment count of 11 fragments. The hand written notes had an average of six words to each sentence fragment, while the typed words have forty words to each sentence fragment. Another significant difference between longhand and note taking is the ability to draw charts and graphs during a lecture which adds to cognitive processing while in lecture. The data obtained from this writing habits analysis shows that typing does in fact predispose my note taking to be done with less cognitive processing which interferes with the encoding process of doing notes. This is due to the fact I use more words and less sentence fragment, which show that I am copying instead of summarizing.

Average longhand word count- 210.33   Average longhand sent frag- 35.67

Average typed word count- 368.67         Average typed sent frag- 11

WC: SFC average ratio

Longhand- 6:1

Typed- 40:

 The amount of people who type in order to take notes has grown significantly over the past few years. Before someone chooses to make this switch from typing to writing it may be a smart choice to analyze the differences between the two mediums. For myself it is much faster to type than to write, the question that I sought to answer was whether or not typing made for lazy note taking. It would seem that because I type faster than write, I am more likely to copy the lecture instead of summarizing and creating mental shortcuts. Summarizing is important to the cognitive function of note taking because it ensures that one is not passively taking notes. The pattern in my data showed that my typed notes were in fact verbatim to the lecture and lacked original thought. The longhand notes on the other hand featured more fragmented or abbreviated sentences and also had the bonus of graphs and charts to aid in learning a feature that typed notes cannot have. Yet with this information I am surely going to still type during some lecture based on the fact that my study habits are not only dependent on note taking.

           If I were to further research the topic of writing notes or typing them I would analyze whether or not typing notes would reduce my test scores. I am unconvinced because there are many methods by which I study, and notes are not the sole tool I use. The Oppenheimer & Mueller study solely focused on note taking as a means of studying but no student solely uses there notes for studying, but instead uses a mixture of things. Another avenue for new research would be to see what can add more cognition to typing notes, certain ideas would be to color code the notes, or perhaps develop a system that could create notes in different forms such as the mapping method. While the data does not comprise a full study which gives results on effect on test takin, I believe the data does show that my note taking habits are better when written and not