Conversations Beyond the Classroom (Eng 100O): I'm a Pepper!

Welcome!

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?

As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).

Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!

--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100

Thursday, September 30, 2010

I'm a Pepper!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DWf-rSHn0

Ad Analysis

This ad is somewhat similar to the Budweiser ad as far as “making it”, or making friends. It’s an old 1970’s ad for Dr. Pepper. It shows a lot of the traits from an old stereotypical ad from this time period. A man who found the product that’s being advertised and starts having fun with life. Or starts succeeding. This is not because the main character of the commercial is now using the product, but it depicts what life “could be like” when you start drinking Dr. Pepper. It gives us a break from reality not only because it’s on your television screen. But that it can turn drinking a carbonated beverage in to drinking a carbonated beverage dancing/ singing number. From having bright colors, happy people, and of course the drink, people will just be happier if they just drink Dr. Pepper. The cultural reinforcement in the video helps the viewer to recognize, that he or she is part of something bigger than just their own life. That there is an entire world of people out there just like the viewer. This is just what makes a person want a cold one so bad. In the first few seconds of the video, this man enjoying a Dr. Pepper is being enjoyed by several women, he also comments on how he’s proud. Was this man not proud before? It might also hint to the sub-conscious that if I drink dr. pepper maybe girls/ guys will like me too. It continually shows this man dancing and singing. And everyone has something in common, for once. They’re all drinking dr. pepper, so they can all get along, he also go through the different types of people in that era. The working class, the hippies, and the people who lounge about town talking about life all day. So this shows the people watching, by whatever belief they had previously of the other class of people. Whatever cultural knowledge they had before is being shown and all the classes of people are getting along. The main singer, who is David Naughton, was not only a pepper. But a character on a television show. So if he can drink pepper, so can I. Seeing so many happy people can only make a person wonder, why is that man so happy? Or maybe I can be happy too!

3 comments:

AndreanaSeptember 30, 2010 at 2:14 PM
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AndreanaSeptember 30, 2010 at 2:15 PM
Question 2) The ad hopes the viewer will surrender to thinking that if you drink Dr. Pepper you will be happy. The gaps between the myth and the actual reality is that in reality you don't necessarily need to drink Dr. Pepper to be happy and popular with lots of friends. And it doesn't necessarily mean you will have a lot of people liking you because of what you're drinking.
Question 10) The audio or musical component of the text influences our reading because its energetic and up beat, makes you want to be active and animated.

By Andreana and Glendy
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kyle musilek aka mooseSeptember 30, 2010 at 2:24 PM
If you drink Dr. Pepper then you will be accepted as a member of a larger group than yourself. And because of this humans need to have a sense of being accepted and drinking a Dr. Pepper will allow you to be part of this larger group of people and have a sense of being one with everyone else. The audio component of the ad has a dance number and singing that draws in the viewer to make them want to be a part of this fun group of people by becoming a “Pepper.”

Kyle Musilek
Carson Artac
Henry Petersen
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Practice Introductory Post, Please!

Please Post an Introduction (for practice) by Monday, Sept. 22nd so that we can all be prepared for the first blog post assignment coming up next Thursday.

Here's what to do:

Once you've accepted the invitation to become a contributor to this blog, you will notice a "new post" tab at the top of our blog. Click on that and enter your text. (I suggest you first type in a MW doc and then copy and paste to our blog to minimize the risk of losing your work.) Then, post!

For your first post, please:

Write a brief informal introduction of yourself. Say whatever you’d like about yourself to us—your audience & collaborative learners. Check out Mary’s introduction if you need some ideas about what to say about yourself.