DUE IN 3 HOURS Portfolio - Reflecting English course Semester

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Canan 2

Denia Canan

ENG 1301/CRN 10871

Portfolio

Dr. Dawn J. Bridges

May 5, 2021

The Before and After of My Writing Journey Through English 1301

My name is Denia Canan. I am currently a Freshman majoring in Bilingual Education. I would like to work in low-income communities to give children an opportunity to do well in school. As a writer, I tend to be hard on myself. I get stressed out as I write and run out of ideas or what to write about. I often confuse myself when writing, especially in my body paragraphs because I forget what I’m writing about and switch to another subject. I struggle with this a lot and I constantly erase my sentences because they aren’t good enough. Something I don’t do is proof read my essays because I get lazy, and maybe if I did go over my essay, I could catch the mistakes I made.

I chose my first essay, where we analyze a poster for the SB 1070 law in Arizona, because I found myself talking about things that were confusing to the audience in terms of what I was talking about in my introduction. My stance was that some criteria were effective and others weren’t, but overall the poster was effective in making a change and advocating for immigration reform. My professor gave me feedback and said “rework the introduction so that you make a clear distinction between SB 1070 and the book”. I went back to rephrase things where I changed the beginning of the sentence and explained what I was talking about, whether it was The Hunting Season or the Arizona’s SB 1070 poster. This was for the introduction and I’m glad she pointed it out because when I read it, I was confused. For my logos, I contradicted myself because I said the evidence that I used was logos, but not factual evidence; They are the same thing so it doesn’t make any sense. I changed it to say that the contact information provided was logical evidence, but it wasn’t effective in motivating the audience to contact them because action had to be taken and then poster can’t physically do that. I said, “some people don’t take their time to use that information”, therefore it isn’t effective. For me, my strongest paragraph was the pathos paragraph because there was a lot of evidence I could use and relate to the issue. There were so many symbols and signs that had a lot of meaning that I interpreted to being effective. I said, “the poster contains phrases that catches a Hispanics attention because it’s meant for them to fight back in response to the law” and this explains what my paragraph is about. I am able to stay on topic while avoiding being repetitive, which is something I do. For this paragraph m thoughts aren’t all over the place and that’s another good thing about the paragraph.

In my third essay, my proposal essay, I talked about the effects of minimum wage on illegal immigrants and how unfair the pay is for them. I proposed that a new law should be placed in order to prevent jobs from paying people less than the minimum wage. I fixed my evidence because I was talking about another group of people that weren’t my main focus. My professor said “refocus to adult immigrants in this example or migrant workers” because I was talking about migrant field workers instead of illegal immigrants. I was able to manipulate my evidence so that it could still back up my thesis without having to include other evidence. I said migrant workers “don’t get enough pay for the conditions they’re working under” where they are suffering along with immigrants, demonstrating that they are both victims from unequal pay and that they would benefit from the new law created. In my thesis, I generalized about who I was talking about, and although the main focus was on illegal immigrants, I related the issue to both groups which really helped me out. This was mainly what I needed to work on besides my spelling. My strongest paragraph for this essay was my introduction. Though it’s long, it includes a lot of necessary information, like background information, to make my essay stronger. If I didn’t include those details, then the reader would be confused and would have to fill in the blanks. I wanted to start off with a fact about those who make less earnings and it would catch the reader’s attention. From that, I was able to build on and make my argument better and more reliable.

Over the course of the semester, I feel more confident in my writing because my grades have reflected how I write or how I am as a writer. My strengths for my writing consist of being able to plan out an outline and being able to gather up my evidence. Once I figure out how I want my essay to look like I write it down and it helps me visualize and think about what I can include in my essay. The outline makes things a lot easier and my professor, Dr. XXXX, influenced me to do them and I thank her for it because now I will start doing it every time. As for the things I need to work on, I don’t use a lot of diction which could strengthen my essay, but I continue to be repetitive throughout it. I sometimes I’m in a rush and I misspell things or I use a word incorrectly, and if I proof read it I would be able to prevent that; it would also give me a higher grade and it shows that I wasn’t checking over my work. I fixed those and it made me realize how it makes my writing look less appealing because they are simply mistakes. These are things I have noticed and that my peers have mentioned to me as well as my professor. They are things that I will take in consideration as I move into English 1302 because then I will be successful.

Outrageous Debt!

The amount of college loan debt is crippling the financial stability of students who are just graduating from institutions of higher learning. I find interesting that many authors who have researched this topic suggest that today’s generations have more debt and, therefore, more financial burdens after earning a college degree than the generations before them. This cartoon by Jeff Parker shows a 20-30 year-old appearing to want to move back in with is parents after earning an undergraduate or graduate degree and is a perfect example of how insensitive older generations are to the realities of student debt that face younger college students. For example, students often graduate with five-figure loan amounts on average, which is an amount older generations would never have dreamed of having (Hacker and Driefus, “Are Colleges Worth The Price”). college debt sucks | sassy scripsit The amount of college loan debt is crippling the financial stability of students who are just graduating from institutions of higher learning. I find interesting that many authors who have researched this topic suggest that today’s generations have more debt and, therefore, more financial burdens after earning a college degree than the generations before them. This cartoon by Jeff Parker shows a 20-30 year-old appearing to want to move back in with is parents after earning an undergraduate or graduate degree and is a perfect example of how insensitive older generations are to the realities of student debt that face younger college students. For example, students often graduate with five-figure loan amounts on average, which is an amount older generations would never have dreamed of having (Hacker and Driefus, “Are Colleges Worth The Price”). college debt sucks | sassy scripsit The amount of college loan debt is crippling the financial stability of students who are just graduating from institutions of higher learning. I find interesting that many authors who have researched this topic suggest that today’s generations have more debt and, therefore, more financial burdens after earning a college degree than the generations before them. This cartoon by Jeff Parker shows a 20-30 year-old appearing to want to move back in with is parents after earning an undergraduate or graduate degree and is a perfect example of how insensitive older generations are to the realities of student debt that face younger college students. For example, students often graduate with five-figure loan amounts on average, which is an amount older generations would never have dreamed of having (Hacker and Driefus, “Are Colleges Worth The Price”).

college debt sucks | sassy scripsit The amount of college loan debt is crippling the financial stability of students who are just graduating from institutions of higher learning. I find interesting that many authors who have researched this topic suggest that today’s generations have more debt and, therefore, more financial burdens after earning a college degree than the generations before them. This cartoon by Jeff Parker shows a 20-30 year-old appearing to want to move back in with is parents after earning an undergraduate or graduate degree and is a perfect example of how insensitive older generations are to the realities of student debt that face younger college students. For example, students often graduate with five-figure loan amounts on average, which is an amount older generations would never have dreamed of having (Hacker and Driefus, “Are Colleges Worth The Price”).

Works Cited

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Slavery Has to End!

The United States has an infamous and depressing record with the fight against slavery. Being one of the last countries to outlaw slavery in the western hemisphere we are known the world over for perpetuating such an evil for so long past its acceptance in many other countries. Unfortunately although slavery has been outlawed it has persisted in the crevices and cracks of our society, feeding off of ignorance to its evil. Modern slavery has become a disease deep within our American anatomy. According to the Slave Next Door, a U.S State Department study estimates 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked from around to the globe and enslaved in the U.S annually. This evil is known by very few and detectable by even fewer. Also known as “human trafficking”, modern slavery is the for profit exploitation of kidnapped or smuggled victims through the key methods of force, fraud, and coercion. Although this is a worldwide issue, our city of Houston has a particularly heinous scene of modern slavery. My neighbors, peers, and fellow Houstonites, we must come together to set a national example of a true fight against the menace that is modern slavery. To our great misfortune the label of “land of the free” isn’t entirely true to our country anymore.

The first step to solving an issue is first understanding the problem. Force being the first and foremost method of exploiting slaves, it is the use of tools including fists and feet for violent beatings against the slaves. Often a severe beating of one slave will set an example for the rest on a labor camp for instance. The violence ranges from simple brutality, as a Romanian trafficker explained that he would beat women by punching and kicking them repeatedly all while smiling, to spraying pepper spray in their eyes, as was the case for a girl named Maria. The impeding threat of violence keeps the slaves from revolting or running away through fear. This use of fear and the threat of violence is called coercion. But this doesn’t just come through the use of physical or psychological torture, in fact according to the slave next door, the traffickers/enslavers will actually claim outsiders will harm them if they attempt to escape. One distinct example involves a West African woman named Ruth, who was admitted to Washington D.C on a work visa to nanny children of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) worker. After Ruth was enslaved she was told that if she tried to run that the Police would beat her, and she would be interrogated and deported. The saddest thing about this was that in part it was true, as she was severely mistreated during her attempt to escape! Neighbors who heard her screaming as a result of a severe beating called the police, and upon their arrival they actually turned to her traffickers (unbeknownst to them) for translation. As a result the enslavers told them she was crazy and the police had her hospitalized, sedated, and forcibly restrained by tying her arms and legs to the bedpost. To add injury to injury, she was subsequently returned to her brutally abusive enslavers, who proceeded to tell her if she tried to run again the police would put her in the hospital permanently. This leads us to the third means of keeping slaves under subjugation, fraud. Actually the first thing typically done once a slave has been trafficked or even legally transferred to the U.S, is they have all of their documents taken. Fraud is also committed before the slave even gets stateside. The traffickers do this when they take the victims’ money with the promise that they will live a much better life achieving the American dream. This is of course a lie. Without a passport, state issued ID, or any means of identification, the slave would have little to no help from bureaucracy even if they escaped, especially considering they most often cant speak English. Without means of getting help, constant physical abuse, looming threats of violence, believable claims of a brutal outside world, and an inability to speak English even if escape was feasible, “running” is a solution that holds no realistic hope in this world.

My plan to forge solutions that hold more than realistic hope involves a three step assault on modern slavery. Step one involves a depressing lack of awareness of this vast and horrifying problem. According to the Slave Next Door, in a case of human trafficking a team of Chinese men were illegally smuggled into the United States for what they thought was paid work that would allow them to support their families back in China. Upon their arrival they were stripped of their documents and forced to do acrobatic acts for the enslavers profit but with the slaves receiving barely any cut. After a long and terrible story, an interpreter escaped and police essentially freed them, but when the neighbors who had seen the acrobats often were questioned about what they saw, they basically had no idea what had been happening in the house next door because they fundamentally lacked awareness of such a prevalent issue. My first step attempts to solve this cluelessness by launching a campaign to raise awareness. This will be done through the use of several means that are extremely cost effective such as picketing. A group of protestors as little as 50 people can picket the Galleria mall to bring awareness to stores such as the GAP, who has been caught using virtually slave labor oversees several times over the years as recent as 2013. This will undoubtedly attract news crews and will subsequently be seen by tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Houstonians. The effectiveness of this can be seen through the occupy Wall Street movement. After witnessing such protests I was curious enough to look up what the protestors were talking about and I promptly became aware of the issues protested as did millions of others. This is also extremely feasible as it crosses into platforms other than T.V news reaching even more people through articles in the newspaper and magazines. This method is also incredibly cost effective as the publicity gained would require months of ad campaigns costing tens of thousands without it. Another method is already being done through the use of 5K and other runs which promote awareness. Another aspect which cannot be underestimated is a social media presence. Social media is fantastic at incurring snowball effects through trending and so forth. If we can attract enough attention through runs and protests we can bring people to our facebook, instagram, and twitter pages which will attract more and more people through this technologically integrated world that we live in. Once the people are aware of the issue and well read, they will be fired up to do something about it. Which is when we launch step two, mobilize the people.

With Houstonians fired up and ready fight this evil we will create an unstoppable manpower that yearns to end modern slavery. After tapping into the millions of Houston residents we will give them a list of what to look for and who to call. Starting with the 5 questions to ask as warning signs of slavery as mentioned in The Slave Next Door.

· Is this person unable to move freely, or is she being watched or followed?

· Does she seem frightened to talk in the presence of others?

· Does this person look to be of school age but is she regularly seen working during school hours?

· Are there signs of assaults-bruises, cuts, bandages, limping?

· Does she seem disoriented, confused, malnourished, or frightened?

With these five questions in the minds of every Houstonian no human trafficker in any neighborhood will be safe from his/her own community. We will have members in every community looking for these signs and with this knowledge we have the power to report it. The people will be informed that with this information they should immediately report this to hotlines such as the human trafficking resource center at 1 (888) 373-7888. With our new manpower we can then say we want our products slave labor free. Boycotting businesses has worked for decades and it will now as the one thing that every company undisputedly values is money. And with the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of people avoiding products like GAP or grocers that use unfair trading practices in foreign companies, they stand to lose more money using their current business practices than to gain.

Now with the citizens, the men, the women, the children, doing their part fighting modern slavery, we will then turn to the government and the police. According to the slave next door the national solved rate for murder cases is 70% while the governments own numbers put the annual percentage for trafficking and slavery cases at less than 1%. This shows a clear and present need for federal and state policy reform. We will voice that this is unacceptable and threaten to use our votes as a means of promoting change in Austin and Washington D.C. I think just about every American citizen can agree that the one thing politicians undoubtedly care about is the votes that keep them in power. And then both they and us will turn to the police and say that they must do their part. Creating special task forces and training videos have been proven to work. In the Slave Next Door there was an account of a local Long Island detective named John Birbiglia who was appointed the only member of their new human trafficking task force. With no prior training on the issue, he researched the crime and gained some basic knowledge of what a case can look like. After getting tired of waiting for federal training tapes to come in he made his own video, which the Slave Next Door described as a “rough, short tape that described what a human trafficking case might look like”(34). Fortunately before the whole thing could be scrapped by his superior almost immediately after it started, a police officer that had watched his “rough” and “short” tape reported a suspicious call that led to a human trafficking bust. Even more importantly it led to the freeing of two Indonesian women who had been enslaved for five years. This case clearly shows that even rudimentary training on behalf of the police can lead to life changing busts that can finally hold traffickers accountable for their crimes. With reforms in technique and policy we will ensure that slaves like Ruth will not see the abuses of our own system. They will receive help and they will know we do not stand for their oppression.

With our problem identified and understood through analyzing force, fraud, and coercion we can then address this problem through the steps and methods laid out in this essay. Step one uses extremely cost effective and wide reaching methods to arouse the fury of the people against a common enemy, the human trafficker. Once they have been made aware and knowledgeable of the issue we will mobilize the people, armed with knowledge and a fire to rid their communities of this atrocity, they will ensure no neighborhood is safe for slavery. And after we have shown our zeal in fighting this we will put the pressure on policy makers and police to do what they should be doing all along. Forcing the bottom dollar of politicians through votes and companies through money we will ensure no one will do nothing to discontinue modern slavery. Modern slavery isn’t an evil that we can brush aside as inhuman or pure evil. People are doing these things and people like us must be the ones to stop it.

Works Cited

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