Examples Of Discourse Community Project
Discourse Community Project
1. I am studying the outdoors discourse community.
a. Majors relating to the outdoors include ecology, environmental studies, sustainable food production, climate science and geography. Related departments include: Biology, Environment and Society, Plants, Soils and Climate, Watershed Sciences and Wildland Resources. Some disciplines are ecophysiology (the interrelationship between the physical function of something and its surroundings) and behavioral ecology (the way animals react to a changing environment).
b. Anyone with any job can enjoy the outdoors and be a part of the community. Some of the more relevant jobs are working for the National Parks Service, the USGS (United States Geological Survey), working as an environmental scientist for a private firm, and working as a meteorologist.
c. The only defining quality of a person in this community is a love for the outdoors. It does not matter who are or where you live, anyone can join this group.
d. I gathered information about this community by being a part of it as a youth and observing others in the community. I met people who worked as scientists and Park Rangers and talked to them about their love for the outside. While at Alpine, I …show more content…
learned more by talking to Ms. Kayla, who also is in this community, and by researching online on the USU webpage.
e. This community is a part of the larger biology discourse community and the exercise community which are in turn part of the science community.
f. Some smaller communities are: birding, camping, rock climbing, painting, and boating.
2. The outdoors community communicates by means of social media, such as Facebook and twitter, and by speaking face-to-face. There are quite a few groups who meet up and spend time outside and talk about their interests regarding the outdoors. Also, there are many accounts and blogs that highlight the “outdoors lifestyle”. They write very straightforward, scientific papers and quick journals about their findings. There are also seminars open to the public about ecology hosted regularly at USU.
3. Ms. Kayla believes that writing is used in the outdoors community a lot. Those in the community write peer-reviewed scientific articles as well as descriptive ramblings about a nice sunset or a mountain they scaled.
4. The outdoors community does communicate through scientific reports as well as creative writing and social media. For example, the “Nature” magazine publishes peer-reviewed reports and the Sierra Club has accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where members of the club as well as others can discuss the outdoors. The USU Ecology center also has a Twitter as well as an email.
5. According to Doctor Peter Adler, “Doing good research, and not just a one-hit wonder, but at least a few solid contributions. If the ideas are good and well-executed, and communicated well, even a grad student can establish credibility and authority fairly quickly, within a few years.”
6. Writing papers about the outdoors tends to be about the environment and the current issues about it. a. I found a writing assignment from an ecology class at Ashworth College. The paper’s purpose is to explore the different types of ecological crises around the world. The audience is the student’s peers as well as his or her professor. Because it is a research paper, the goal is to inform the reader about a specific crisis. The writing in the example is straightforward and uses fancy ecology jargon. The point is to show the readers what information you have gathered, so well-cited information is key. The professor wants to see how good his or her students are at collecting information and compiling it into a concise essay. The professor expects it to be a clear, relatively short scientific report that is not a major assignment, so no drafts are necessary, though having graphs to back up the student’s data is advised. The example is formatted in a relaxed way. It is not in any professional format, but it does have a works cited page. It also includes “I” which makes it sound relaxed as well. The resources cited in the example are from the internet as well as textbooks. b. Ms. Kayla says that her goals when assigning something is to really learn to love and appreciate the topic. She dislikes it when a student does not give the sport or activity a chance. c.
Dr. Adler says, “In my world of academic ecology, writing is EXTREMELY important. Writing research papers and proposals is our bread and butter. No matter how good your ideas are, or your data are, if you can’t explain them in a clear and compelling way you won’t get very far. Well-written papers have better chances of being accepted at the best journals and well-written proposals have a better chance of being funded. If we are talking narrowly about papers and proposals, I might say 20%. If we are talking more broadly and including written materials for teaching, comments on student's papers, editing collaborators' papers, writing reviews of others' papers and proposals, and even emails like this, then I would say it's up to 75% of my
time.”
7. I am interested in climate change and how the environment is reacting to it. I certainly want to learn more about the effects it has on humans as well as other living things. Also, learning how to thwart global warming-if even possible at this point-is fascinating. I have been to small islands in Fiji in the South Pacific where warming oceans have already made impacts on the islands and their inhabitants. Viwa Island, part of a low-lying atoll, is in danger of sea level rise as well as hurricanes and floods. Because of raising temperatures, the people and animals are more susceptible to disease. Already, villages like Vunidogoloa are relocating to higher ground to avoid the destruction of sea level rise. I have this knowledge and firsthand accounts of climate change that can help influence the community. The more information they have, the better.
8. As an avid hiker and outdoorsperson, I think that the most important issues in the outdoors community are climate change and the introduction of invasive species. The two are connected, of course. If a species’ habitat changes too drastically too quickly, the species may move to a new habitat where they do not belong and throw off the ecosystem. Scientists at Oregon State University’s Marine Science Center have found over 280 invasive species originally from Japan on Pacific Coast beaches since the Japanese tsunami in 2011. This too is linked to climate change. When icecaps melt, the pressure they put on the earth’s crust lifts, which can trigger submarine landslides, earthquakes, and tsunamis like the one in 2011. This caught my eye because I knew that climate change was meddling with ecosystems, but I did not know that it was impacting natural disasters to such a drastic level. I found this information from a peer-reviewed article published by graduate students at a university in Japan. Like other scientific discourse communities, the outdoors community sometimes communicates through scholarly articles about their findings. The outdoors community also uses social media, which most-if not all-discourse communities use nowadays. My discourse community also values communicating by talking to each other face-to-face, which is something communities such as technology take for granted. Spending time with people in the outdoors community in the past helped me very much. I had lots of past experiences getting to know their values and concerns regarding the community that influenced my own beliefs. Taking part in a service trip in Bryce Canyon with the Sierra Club also helped me because I learned a lot about the impact humans have on the environment and how outdoorspeople work together and communicate in the field.
1. I am studying the outdoors discourse community.
a. Majors relating to the outdoors include ecology, environmental studies, sustainable food production, climate science and geography. Related departments include: Biology, Environment and Society, Plants, Soils and Climate, Watershed Sciences and Wildland Resources. Some disciplines are ecophysiology (the interrelationship between the physical function of something and its surroundings) and behavioral ecology (the way animals react to a changing environment).
b. Anyone with any job can enjoy the outdoors and be a part of the community. Some of the more relevant jobs are working for the National Parks Service, the USGS (United States Geological Survey), working as an environmental scientist for a private firm, and working as a meteorologist.
c. The only defining quality of a person in this community is a love for the outdoors. It does not matter who are or where you live, anyone can join this group.
d. I gathered information about this community by being a part of it as a youth and observing others in the community. I met people who worked as scientists and Park Rangers and talked to them about their love for the outside. While at Alpine, I …show more content…
learned more by talking to Ms. Kayla, who also is in this community, and by researching online on the USU webpage.
e. This community is a part of the larger biology discourse community and the exercise community which are in turn part of the science community.
f. Some smaller communities are: birding, camping, rock climbing, painting, and boating.
2. The outdoors community communicates by means of social media, such as Facebook and twitter, and by speaking face-to-face. There are quite a few groups who meet up and spend time outside and talk about their interests regarding the outdoors. Also, there are many accounts and blogs that highlight the “outdoors lifestyle”. They write very straightforward, scientific papers and quick journals about their findings. There are also seminars open to the public about ecology hosted regularly at USU.
3. Ms. Kayla believes that writing is used in the outdoors community a lot. Those in the community write peer-reviewed scientific articles as well as descriptive ramblings about a nice sunset or a mountain they scaled.
4. The outdoors community does communicate through scientific reports as well as creative writing and social media. For example, the “Nature” magazine publishes peer-reviewed reports and the Sierra Club has accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram where members of the club as well as others can discuss the outdoors. The USU Ecology center also has a Twitter as well as an email.
5. According to Doctor Peter Adler, “Doing good research, and not just a one-hit wonder, but at least a few solid contributions. If the ideas are good and well-executed, and communicated well, even a grad student can establish credibility and authority fairly quickly, within a few years.”
6. Writing papers about the outdoors tends to be about the environment and the current issues about it. a. I found a writing assignment from an ecology class at Ashworth College. The paper’s purpose is to explore the different types of ecological crises around the world. The audience is the student’s peers as well as his or her professor. Because it is a research paper, the goal is to inform the reader about a specific crisis. The writing in the example is straightforward and uses fancy ecology jargon. The point is to show the readers what information you have gathered, so well-cited information is key. The professor wants to see how good his or her students are at collecting information and compiling it into a concise essay. The professor expects it to be a clear, relatively short scientific report that is not a major assignment, so no drafts are necessary, though having graphs to back up the student’s data is advised. The example is formatted in a relaxed way. It is not in any professional format, but it does have a works cited page. It also includes “I” which makes it sound relaxed as well. The resources cited in the example are from the internet as well as textbooks. b. Ms. Kayla says that her goals when assigning something is to really learn to love and appreciate the topic. She dislikes it when a student does not give the sport or activity a chance. c.
Dr. Adler says, “In my world of academic ecology, writing is EXTREMELY important. Writing research papers and proposals is our bread and butter. No matter how good your ideas are, or your data are, if you can’t explain them in a clear and compelling way you won’t get very far. Well-written papers have better chances of being accepted at the best journals and well-written proposals have a better chance of being funded. If we are talking narrowly about papers and proposals, I might say 20%. If we are talking more broadly and including written materials for teaching, comments on student's papers, editing collaborators' papers, writing reviews of others' papers and proposals, and even emails like this, then I would say it's up to 75% of my
time.”
7. I am interested in climate change and how the environment is reacting to it. I certainly want to learn more about the effects it has on humans as well as other living things. Also, learning how to thwart global warming-if even possible at this point-is fascinating. I have been to small islands in Fiji in the South Pacific where warming oceans have already made impacts on the islands and their inhabitants. Viwa Island, part of a low-lying atoll, is in danger of sea level rise as well as hurricanes and floods. Because of raising temperatures, the people and animals are more susceptible to disease. Already, villages like Vunidogoloa are relocating to higher ground to avoid the destruction of sea level rise. I have this knowledge and firsthand accounts of climate change that can help influence the community. The more information they have, the better.
8. As an avid hiker and outdoorsperson, I think that the most important issues in the outdoors community are climate change and the introduction of invasive species. The two are connected, of course. If a species’ habitat changes too drastically too quickly, the species may move to a new habitat where they do not belong and throw off the ecosystem. Scientists at Oregon State University’s Marine Science Center have found over 280 invasive species originally from Japan on Pacific Coast beaches since the Japanese tsunami in 2011. This too is linked to climate change. When icecaps melt, the pressure they put on the earth’s crust lifts, which can trigger submarine landslides, earthquakes, and tsunamis like the one in 2011. This caught my eye because I knew that climate change was meddling with ecosystems, but I did not know that it was impacting natural disasters to such a drastic level. I found this information from a peer-reviewed article published by graduate students at a university in Japan. Like other scientific discourse communities, the outdoors community sometimes communicates through scholarly articles about their findings. The outdoors community also uses social media, which most-if not all-discourse communities use nowadays. My discourse community also values communicating by talking to each other face-to-face, which is something communities such as technology take for granted. Spending time with people in the outdoors community in the past helped me very much. I had lots of past experiences getting to know their values and concerns regarding the community that influenced my own beliefs. Taking part in a service trip in Bryce Canyon with the Sierra Club also helped me because I learned a lot about the impact humans have on the environment and how outdoorspeople work together and communicate in the field.