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10 Keys to Preventing Childhood Obesity

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/food-revolution/childhood-obesity-10-keys-to-preventing-it_b_1902717.html?utm_hp_ref=health-news&ir=Health%20News

This article is about something that has been a rising issue for many years: Childhood Obesity. The article, by Keeley Drotz, gives readers the 10 keys to preventing childhood obesity. Drotz uses different methods and techniques from the rhetorical situation, such as diction, details and syntax, to get the message across that childhood obesity is a rising problem, and that there are ways to prevent it.

You can see one of these methods just from the first sentence. She starts with, "Obesity has reached epidemic proportions around the world, not only among adults, but in children and adolescents as well," and the diction that she used in this sentence really helps grab the readers attention. Using words like "epidemic" makes the topic sound very serious, and many people are more likely to pay attention if you used a word like that as opposed to something not as strong, like the word "big". That would be an example of a pejorative word, a word that gives a sentence a kind of negative feel to it, that she uses to convey the message.

 I also noticed some details that Drotz used. In the sentence, "In American alone, rates of obesity skyrocketed over the course of a few decades primarily as a result of changes in lifestyle habits," I could see some details that Drotz put there for a reason to help her readers understand the severity of the issue. She chose to put the fact that in America alone, obesity has skyrocketed. This creates meaning because she is saying that this is happening all around the world, but just in one country, so much damage has occurred in not that much time. Also, she added some detail when she put in the bit about the changes in lifestyle habits over the decades. That creates a lot of meaning for the whole article because it is where she got down to the root of the issue.

 As for syntax, I saw Drotz use in the article was putting emphasis on the shorter sentences in the article. We learned that shorter sentences often convey actions and ideas more forcefully than longer sentences. The sentence, "These are issues that the medical community never imagined possible," is one of the shorter sentences in the article. This conveys more meaning because of the fact that it is one of the shorter ones, and it gives the reader the idea that this is actually a very serious issue.

Open Prompt #1

1991. Many plays and novels use contrasting places (for example, two countries, two cities or towns, two houses, or the land and the sea) to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. Choose a novel or play that contrasts two such places. Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the meaning of the work.

One novel that comes to mind when thinking about contrasting places is The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. As those who have read this novel know, Fitzgerald put two contrasting cities in this story: the West Egg, and the East Egg. There are some key differences between these two cities, which you find out through reading and interpreting the text. Fiztgerald shows the differences in these two contrasting cities in many ways, the main one being that the East Egg represents old aristocracy and the West Egg represents the newly rich.

The fact that the West Egg represents the newly rich is very important to the novel. In the novel, people from the West Egg are portrayed as loud, and lacking social graces. For example, Gatsby throws many parties with hundreds of people, who by the end of the night, aren't acting very polite. His house is also very flashy and everything about him seems to shout out that he has a lot of money. Those are two of the ways that Fitzgerald shows that the people from the West Egg haven't had their money for too long and they don't really know how to use it. Aside from the money aspect of it though, the only reason Gatsby is living this lifestyle is for Daisy Buchanan, the one he loves. The fact that he would do all of that for Daisy shows how loyal he is to her. This ties into another characteristic of the people who live on the West Egg; they are more loyal, and care more about people than money, unlike the East Egg.

The East Egg is portrayed much differently. Daisy and Tom Buchanan live on the East Egg, and they represent old aristocracy, or "old money". It seems as though the people who come from the East Egg are much more put together, and possess some social graces. But although the people from East Egg seem polite, they are also shallow and fake. As the novel goes on, you continue to see how Daisy and Tom only really care about their money, and not about hurting the people who care about them the most. For example, at the end of the novel, after Gatsby died, Daisy and Tom just move away without even attending his funeral. That just shows how heartless they can be.

The West and the East Egg are completely different when it comes to social graces, but there is also a deeper meaning that is very important to the novel as a whole. The East Egg is associated with people who care more about money than loyalty to their family and friends, and the West Egg is associated with kind-hearted people who care more about the people in their life, instead of the money. The two main characters are perfect examples of this also. Gatsby waited his whole life for Daisy, and he would have done anything for her, but Daisy betrayed him by marrying Tom and shutting him out of her life. So, although the West and East Egg are contrasting cities because of the money, they're also different when it comes to the characters who live there. 

Response to Course Material

I've only been in AP Lit for a week, and I have already learned so much. Of course, there are still some things that I need to work on, which I realized after taking the terms test on Friday. I'll be sure to work on that throughout the year. What really stuck with me was learning about the Rhetorical Situation this week. I've heard about it before, but never really thought this much in depth about it. I realized how it connected to basically everything; the AP exam, college essays etc. And a lot of these things we are in the middle of working on right now. Before writing anything, including arguments which we also talked about, you have to look at the rhetorical situation, such as the audience, and the persona you want to use. Like I said...it connects to everything. I learned that this is also a helpful thing to keep in mind when it comes to the AP Exam. That was only the stuff that I learned the first few days of school. I actually learned a lot over the summer too, by reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster, and The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey. I've been able to identify themes, and symbols like never before. Who knew so many Disney movies had so many symbols? For example, I connected a theme from the movie The Lion King, to Hamlet. I never thought that I would be able to do that. I am also pretty confident that my writing will get significantly better after reading Harvey's book. You won't see me putting unnecessary details in my writing anymore, thanks to Harvey. I haven't been in AP Lit for that long, but I have definitely learned some significant things already.

Me Talk Pretty One Day- By David Sedaris

The rules found in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey apply to even experienced writers like David Sedaris. Reading the essay "Me Talk Pretty One Day", I found it very hard to find something that broke the rules in this book. I did however find many things that Sedaris did right. I saw how concise he was, how he used some good opening sentences, and how he was able to effectively end the essay by closing the circle.
For starters, what I really liked about the essay was how concise Sedaris was. He got right to the point, and he didn't go on and on about unnecessary things. Also, just like Harvey wrote in the book, "Simplifying makes the sentence shorter and stronger," (Harvey 3).  It was a lot better to read, to say the least. Some examples that I found that show how concise he is was when he said, "I've moved to Paris in hopes of learning the language (Sedaris 11). Another example would be when he says, "Some accents were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence that I found intimidating," (Sedaris 11). What I like about sentences like these is that it gets right to the point, and you know exactly how he is feeling about the situation.
In The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, Harvey states that the opening sentence of a paragraph usually tells readers what the paragraph is about. This is where the reader can also see how the paragraphs connect to one another (Harvey 71). I thought that Sedaris did a very nice job with his opening sentences and connecting the paragraphs. I saw a good example of this on page 13 of Sedaris's essay on the second half of the page where he describes his teacher. He does a great job at connecting the two paragraphs and making them flow.
Finally, we get to closing the circle. In the book, Harvey believes that this is one of the best ways to end an essay (Harvey 83). Going through the essay, I could see the full circle of emotions that Sedaris went through on this journey. He went from being nervous and uncomfortable (Sedaris 11), to him getting more confident when he understood what was being said in class (Sedaris 14). Here you can see that despite all of the struggles that he went through, he is happy that he went through this experience. He did not go through all of that for nothing, and it was a huge accomplishment for him to actually be able to understand what was going on.
Overall, I would have to say that Sedaris's essay is a good example of some of the rules in Harvey's book. You can see here how he portrayed many of these rules effectively and made this a good and interesting essay to read.