Summer Assignment 4!!!!

   The book I am reading is Drive by Daniel Pink. It is non-fiction, publication date 4/5/2011. Drive is a book whose purpose is to show readers that the best form of motivation is not a material object, a prize, or any kind of reward. It is actually a feeling of satisfaction, of actually completing it that motivates us the most. An example used in the book is a puzzle. We solve puzzles, yet the majority of us do not get paid for this, nor do we usually win a prize. So why exactly is it that do it? Because of the feeling that we get once we have completed it.
   The author most definitely uses logos  throughout the book Pink actually begins the book by discussing how a professor of psychology stumbled across this discovery while performing an experiment on primates. Pink states that the primates enjoyed solving a certain puzzle and did it quicker when no reward was given at the end.  The book itself is very intrcitley written in the fact that you can tell how passionate Pink is about the topic and how much he's actually thought about it. He uses a significant amount of metaphors to better help the reader understand what it is he is saying. Pink also tackles past beliefs on how our mind worked and showed how involved in economics it was perceived to be. Economics was thought of as "the study of human economic behavior." All throughout the 1900s and even into the early 2000s. But recently new ideas say that  "we'd placed too much emphasis on the economic and not enough on the human." 
   The authors message seems to be that doing something solely for the purpose of getting money, or for winning some form of reward for completing a task, is not the way to get your best. Pink wants us to be aware that the best form of motivation, in his opinion, is just the mere satisfaction of getting it done.
   Pink uses very formal language throughout the entire book except for his occasional metaphors. The book seems to be targeted at adults in search of a way to reach their full potential and trying to find a way in which to feel the most content and motivated. The author comes off as persuasive with the amount of facts that he incorporates into the book.
   The first book I read of the summer was Flow by Mihaly. It is also a non-fiction, publication date July 1st 2008. Flow is all about how to experience an almost perfect sense of joy, whenever needed. The "whenever needed" part is the most difficult part and is what Mihaly focuses on throughout the book. He calls this sense of immense joy, flow. To describe the sensation he uses examples such as when your doing something that you enjoy very much. Whether it be a hobby such as singing, or playing an instrument. Just any moment where you feel as if the world is perfect. That, is what Mihaly describes as Flow. The problem that Mihaly addresses is that, people struggle to achieve this on a regular basis.
   Mihaly uses logos very much in his book. He continuously quotes famous psychologists and even Buddha on occasion.  The author somehow weaves all the quotes together to help create a better understanding of what it is he is attempting to discuss. Mihaly says that we are always told to worry about the future, to think about the future, to focus on the future. The problem here is, we don't "live in the moment." We don't enjoy ourselves now, and that is why we are not getting that Flow experience that we all so desperately crave.
   The authors target audience seems to be an older age group. People not satisfied with there lives at the moment, looking for joy and happiness. Mihaly targets them by using examples involving retirement, and work and uses language and metaphors that also involve retiring and having kids.
   

Summer Assignment Number 3!

   The book that I am no currently reading is Drive by Daniel Pink. It basically focuses on what it is that actually "Drives" us to perform our best. The first article that I located which seems to correlate with the similar topic is called "What Motivates us to Do Great Work?" by Jocelyn K Glei. The article summed up is that just the thought of expanding our knowledge or accomplishing something new is enough to motivate us to do our best. The article refers to this as our "inner voice," it's where we decide whether we want to do something or should do something. To provide us with evidence of this, Glei uses and experiment that was conducted. 

   Both Drive by Daniel Pink and the article "What Motivates us to do Work?" have a common argument both saying just about the same thing. That the reward that we crave the most for completing something, isn't a material object, it's an a emotion, a feeling. It seems as if the same methods are used in the article as Daniel Pink used in his book. Logos plays a big part in both the book and the article. In the article the author Jocelyn uses an example of a college study done, to support what she says. In the book the author also uses a logos approach to support his argument, by using a study done by a well known professor Edward Deci, that portrays and supports exactly what Pink is attempting to say.

   Both authors seem to have a similar idea and approach to this topic but if there were a conflict it might be that in the article, the focus and audience seems to be on workers, while in Drive, the focus seems to be anyone interested in this topic. They might argue over why it is they each chose those audiences and I would have to say that I side with Daniel Pinks way of thinking and targeting. He made it accessible to anyone who wants to become aware of what makes them try there best. 

   The second article I found that I thought related rather nicely with Pinks book is a article written by the Chicago Tribune titled "Are you Born to be Motivated?" by Jen Weigel. This article takes motivation and shows it in a new light. Discussing that how we are motivated might go all the way down to our genes. Along with that, the article discusses the idea of motivation by fear, and motivation by striving for a goal. The author of the article has a similar take as Pink, but they include fear as a motivator which Pink didn't mention very much in his book. Pink focuses more on the satisfaction of accomplishing something. The author uses a large amount of pathos by having a rather large quantity of quotes from well knows psychologists such as Paul White. If an argument took place between these two authors I would side with Weigel because fear as a motivation is definitely something that should be studied a little farther.

   The final article that I read regarding motivation was one focused on kids, and targeted at parents and teachers.  The title is "How motivation Affects Learning and Behavior " by J.E. Ormrod. This article discusses how in order for kids to learn they have to be motivated to do so,this article suggests through material objects. That is very much the opposite of what Daniel Pink states in his book. Both of their arguments are very different but I can't help but wonder if it's because Pinks is directed at adults for adults, while this article is directed at teachers/parents for children. If these two were to get in a argument I would be very interested to see how it is they would each support themselves but I would have to side with Pink, since his book has a substantial amount of evidence and support while the article was very poorly supported.

1st article- http://99u.com/articles/6943/what-motivates-us-to-do-great-work 

2nd article-http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-14/features/ct-tribu-weigel-motivation-20120814_1_motivation-personality-social-network

3rd article- http://www.education.com/reference/article/motivation-affects-learning-behavior/

   

Summer Assignment 2!

   When it comes to finding ways of persuasion, or anything involving persuasion, three main things always come up. Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, or "the Three Appeals," are what commonly comes to mind. Ethos is when an argument is being supported or stated by someone with authority such as a celebrity or a renowned brain surgeon.  Pathos is a play on emotions. You can commonly see Pathos in commercials involving pet adoptions, where they show sad puppies and play sorrowful music. The final of the three appeals is Logos. Logos uses facts, such as percentages, charts, basically information, as a form of persuasion. Each of these three may sound great, but they each have there flaws. 

    Using an authoritative figure may make the argument more appealing because of the basic idea of "well if that famous persons saying it, then it MUST be true." But as you might guess, that can cause some problems since, where are the facts? Where is the proof? Pathos uses your conscience against you. It brings tears to your eyes and almost makes you feel like you absolutely need to agree. The issue with pathos is that the author has to know how the audience already feels toward a certain subject, to make sure that they persuade and not accidentally end up doing the opposite. Logos is the only one that seems to use facts and not emotion or authority. It gives the straight, hard facts, and that can sometimes be the downfall to using this argue. Most people, most audiences, find numbers and facts to be boring and not very entertaining to read about. It can make it a little hard to persuade an audience when they're not really connecting to the text. 

     In the book that we have been reading for the past month now Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we can see that the author uses Logos quite a bit. When Mihaly discusses how people attempt to overlook all the bad that seems to be happening in the world he basically says that no matter how hard people can try and overlook this, there are still the facts such as when he states, "In the United states the per-capita frequency of violent crimes-murder, rape, robbery, assault-increased by well over 300 percent." Here Mihaly is trying to persuade readers to see that there is an issue here in our world. That bad things do happen, and here are the facts to show that. "Between 1950 and 1980 teenage suicides increased by over 300 percent." Mihaly also tries to show that "the level of knowledge... seems to be declining." " The average math score on the SAT tests was 466 in 1967. In 1984 it was 426." Mihaly throws fact, after fact, out at the reader. Showing cold hard proof that the world is not perfect. He himself says " The ostrich's strategy for avoiding bad news is hardly productive." 

   Along with Logos, we see a fair amount of Ethos. Mihaly continuously uses quotes from famous lecturers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other known professors. At one point in the book, Mihaly is discussing this idea of hope, or "which will occur in the future." Mihaly discusses the idea of how were always told to wait and something good will happen tomorrow, or do something good today and you'll get rewarded later. Mihaly calls it "the postponement of gratification." To further push this point, he uses a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, '"We are always getting to live, but never living." During this same part of the book, over the same discussion Mihaly uses Pathos at the same time to also the push the point that we are always told to wait to achieve satisfaction. "The company vice president tells junior employees to have patience and work hard, because one of these days they will be promoted.... the golden years of retirement beckon." Here Mihaly basically makes the assumption that the majority of his audience will have worked and felt that need to move up at a job and eventually look forward to retirement. He plays on our emotions by putting that idea of hope that we've all felt at least once, to strive for something better. To veer back to Ethos, when discussing paths of liberation and how our conscious is what determines our quality of life, Mihaly mentions Aristotle, "It was clearly recognized by Aristotle, whose notion of the virtuous activity of the soul prefigures the argument of this book." Aristotle is a very well recognized Greek philosopher and using him as a supporter of his argument was a  great way to really make his argument shine. 

   Out of the three appeals, it seems like pathos was not used very much throughout the book. I found this to be very odd since the purpose of this book is to find a way to achieve the emotion, happiness. The lack of pathos may be because he assumed the audience might be of an older age group where in that case using more of a factual text might get to them more clearly and be more persuasive. 

Summer Assignment 1!

   
     Today we will be covering the two terms Rhetoric and the Rhetoric Triangle. Researching about what exactly rhetoric is comes up with a couple different meanings, but they all revolve around one central topic, persuasion. To be more exact it is, "the art of persuasion." Now, knowing this we can see that the Rhetoric triangle correlates with this very nicely. A rhetoric triangle is when the speaker has an audience and purpose in mine and uses ethos pathos and logos to determine the best way that they could win there audience over, and how to get the purpose of the work to come across.
    Rhetoric,  along with being known as the art of persuasion, it is known as "the study of effective speaking and writing." In this definition we see the use of the word "effective." In order to make something persuasive, it must be effective at convincing whatever it may be. Being effective in what your doing is key. Here we can connect to the book, "Flow" by Mihaly. The author uses logos to convince us that what he speaks of is real and his scientific backing. Having scientific proof is a very "effective" way of persuading someone to believe.
   The Rhetoric Triangle is seen in the book "Flow" because it has a speaker, who is the author, it has a audience which is people searching for a way to be happy, and finally it has a purpose. So far, the book focuses on attempting to show the audience the way to happiness. It of course doesn't just lay it out for us, the author first gives us examples and tells us why it proves to be so difficult for everybody to just be happy. He lays out that the universe was not created to make us happy, it gives us challenges. And all the while the author is explaining this, he keeps his main purpose in mind the whole time, the key to happiness.