Tuesday, September 11, 2012

My discourse community

The discourse community I think I'm going to be discussing is the APEX Summer Bridge Program I was involved in this summer. To some it up me and 60+ kids were involved in a academic "boot camp" if you will, to push us into strengthening our knowledge, study skills, time management , and other things to prepare us for college. This community believed academic success. All of the students in the program slacked off in high school in one way or another resulting in us being pushed beyond our limits with long class hours, intense studying, multiply tutoring sessions, and more. The special term that represents my discourse the best is the quote, "Crossing The Bridge", everybody in APEX knew that if you didn't "Cross the bridge" you wouldn't be accepted into Wayne State. This could cause many issues especially the uncertainty for all our futures because of the fact we wouldn't be accepted into college. "Crossing the bridge" wasn't an easy task. Many things could determine us getting kicked off the bridge such as skipping classes, failing a class, not doing homework, being late,having guest,breaking curfew,disrespecting teachers,not going to tutoring, and most of all not taking care of business. The administrators made it pretty clear they weren't about any games and foolishness would NOT be tolerated. Now I admit, it wasn't always this structure boot camp going on. Some kids broke curfew, had over night guest, drank, and smoke, but just like we were told in the beginning nothing was a secret in APEX and  not everybody would make it across the bridge. The boot came style structure that was set up for us helped us "Cross The bridge" was helpful because it pushed us  to limits we thought we wouldn't go and that made us successful at the end of the resulting in 80% of us "Crossing The Bridge"

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

 Swales

Swales did a very good at explain what a discourse community was by using complex words and content to elaborate on his beliefs. While reading I had to break down certain sections of the text to fully understand what he was saying, For Example he says,

"Irrespective of the merits of this 'cluster of ideas', the cluster is, I suggest, consequential of the assumption that there are indeed entities identifiable as discourse communities, not criteria/ for establishing or identifying them." 

 "Irrespective of the merits" meaning No regards to the specific claim of ideas  can conclude(consequential) that specific things can be identify(indeed entities identifiable) to describe a discourse community. Not having a certain way of teaching how they are. 

Although Swales text was a little hard to read, the details used to describe the discourse community such as breaking what he felt down into sections and accurately describing them.