Is global climate change man made?


I picked this topic because it is a biology topic but also one of the most controversial arguments of today. Not only have we heard about global warming but we are starting to see it actually happening in the world today. I think this topic is very interesting because i can see both sides of the argument. Global warming could be due to all the pollution making the ozone layer thinner causing global warming. But then i see the side of the earth getting sucked in the sun's gravity making it closer to the sun as a natural thing causing everything to become warmer. Im really exciteted to do this paper and think it could be a very interesting topic.

Informational Report

Samantha McLean

English 102

Informational Report

            My report is about writing in the Biology field compared to writing in the English field. To learn about the differences I interviewed my brother Robert McLean who is a scientist, and my Biology TA. I also gathered information from online. Two academic sources and two nonacademic sources. In this report I will discuss the main differences between writing a piece in Biology compared to English.

            Writing in English is what we were originally taught to do way back in Elementary school. A teacher would give you a topic and told you just to write what ever came to your head when you heard those words. Fairly easy right? Well, getting older writing in English becomes more difficult. You learn how to write different types of paper. You’re probably thinking what different types of papers? Writing in English is easy all you do is express your thoughts. Well you’re wrong. In English there are many different styles you learn like; literary narratives, rhetorical analysis, argumentative analysis, summaries, book reports and many more. Writing in English is all about placing all the right sentences into one big piece. Or looking at something like a book or picture and trying to think what the author was thinking, and what they were meaning. If you take any course its going to be all about grammar and essay building. Those are very important skills and are used in every type of writing.

            Writing in Biology to me is a little bit easier. My mind doesn’t think like an English teacher’s mind. I have more of a scientific mind where I need evidence to support my answer and to help me come to the correct conclusion. I cant just read a book and then write a piece on what the author was thinking and what the message of the book was. My response is just ask the author. So writing in the scientific world is a lot more natural for me. Writing in Biology is mostly taking an experiment you did and writing up the lab report to justify your findings. Writing in Biology there are many pieces to basically one type of piece. You do  a lab report most of the time and you need to include an abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, and a works cited.

            After researching and interviewing people for this paper I have concluded that the two are completely different. “I always felt I had a bit more freedom writing for English class as opposed to science classes like biology.” Biology is more strict than English. English you can write in any order you choose, and almost any way you would like. “Reporting results in science papers requires one to follow a very specific format describing your approach to the scientific method (e.g. intro, methods, results, discussion), whereas for English papers seem to allow more creativity in the way you get your message across; there's no required format to follow.”  For Biology there are pieces to the whole piece. You have to justify your own work which may not seem hard at first but that is usually the hardest part. Writing in Biology you have to take your work and place it into another field and describe how it would effect that field. But with this strict format sometimes it is easier for people. Like me for example, when I am given the freedom I have no clue what to do.              

For which one is more useful it all depends on what field you are going into in life. If you are going into a science field obviously learning how to write scientific papers is going to be more useful than the two small semesters of English you are just taking for a requirement. Yes some things learned in English are going to help with writing a Biology paper, like the grammar and the how to structure a sentence in the correct way. But all the other stuff like how to analyze a book is not useful to someone in the science world. As my brother says “ I suppose I would like writing a biology paper better since it comes very easy to me; primarily reporting what you're done and how it impacts the field.  English papers are somewhat more difficult as there is often a lot of interpretation of what someone else is writing about, and that requires a lot more thought.”  But just as things in English help with all topics things in Biology help with all topics too. “I think scientific writing has enhanced my ability to build a case for and justify any thoughts or hypotheses I might have about anything, as well as how to present them in a very clear way so that anyone reading my work, scientist or not, can understand the message I'm trying to get across.”

                  Writing in these two different fields are very different but a like in the same way. They both have ways where they are similar but different. They share some of the same qualities like making sure your audience understands you. Or making sure you are writing to the correct audience. They both help with different things and if you can do both than you would be considered a well-rounded writer. For which one would be more useful in todays world, it really all depends. If you go into a science field obviously nothing in English is really going to help opposed to what you learn in Biology. And for the other way around what your learn in English is probably going to be your career and nothing in Biology would even be relevant.

Works cited:

https://www.edx.org/course/english-grammar-essay-writing-uc-berkeleyx-colwri-2-2x#.VNDzyqbF-Hw

https://www.coursera.org/course/basicwriting

http://writing2.richmond.edu/training/project/biology/biology.html

http://www.cbs.umn.edu/explore/departments/eeb/writing-science

Summary of source

                   My source is from the University of Connecticut's writing center. This source tell you all the elements on how to write a paper for Biology. It gives all the pieces and different assignments you could possibly need. It goes from writing a Biology reseach paper to writing a lab report. Not only does it just list the types of papers, you can click on a type of piece and it will bring you to a page with more information. This source is really going to help me because thats really what my paper is going to be about. I was thinking about writing a paper on all the different types of writing in Biology and how they are different. This source really captures that too. I feel like finding another source just like this with this one is really going to help my paper.

Rhetorical Situation Assignment

               The purpose of this assignment is to get the class to realize there are different types of writing based on the subject. If it's scientific then the piece is going to be very different from an english narritive. My purpose of this piece is to write paper with my major as my topic. My major is Biology. So with this im going to have to interview teachers and look for scientific research papers online. The audience of my paper is going to be anyone that appeals to the biology topic or anyone interested in biology as a major.

Analysis of an English 101 Paper

                      In English 101 we wrote a rhetorical analysis on an argument of todays pop culture. In my essay I wrote about the topic of abortion. We used a rhetorical writting format to make our argument stronger by using Ethos, Logos, and Pathos. Those really helped our argument because it appealed to people and made them actually think about the argument. The assignment had to be persuasive and those three techniques really helped my argument be persuasive. My argument was a very touchy subject so I had to make sure I wrote it in a way of making people think about abortion in depth but without offending anyone. My argument was on the side of pro choice so I got to find out a lot about abortion I didn't know about. I feel as if my argument came out pretty well, when we did peer review it was really making the other kids in my group really think about abortion and that was my goal. I took this peice to the writing center and they said I didn't really hit the Ethos, Logos, Pathos aspect, that I should go back and revise that part. I did that for my final copy of my paper and it actually came out better than I epected.

Syllabus

                      The syllabus for this class was very explanitory which left me with no questions. My last teacher told me what English 102 was about and so far from hearing the over view of the class it seems pretty much the same as what she said. The only thing that I heard different was that this course only had one big paper, and over the semester we would be adding and revising. I was told it was a class on how to learn how to write a research paper. For this class there was more than one paper and it threw me off a little bit.

                       I think this class is going to be a little different but manageable. The whole blog idea is a great idea its just hard to remember to post a new homework every time before class. I hope that once I get into a routine of doing one every night I wont ever forget about posting my homework. I like how its an easy way to earn points though. This class looks fun and I am looking forward to it.

My name is Samantha McLean. I am from Niskayuna New York. Niskayuna is a small town right outside Albany, the capital. I came to the University of Louisville to study Biology to hopefully get into a Veterinarian school in Kentucky. With that I would like to become an Equine Surgeon. An Equine surgeon is a horse vet with the focus of surgery.