Blog #7

I feel that through each annotation we do, I am improving the quality of my annotations. I think it is important to acknowledge the text and what the author is saying, but is also important to incorporate one’s own ideas and out of text references, which I felt I have been doing more as we annotate new articles.

The surrounding context for this essay is the details of publication of the text, the author of the essay, and the author’s bio. Yo-Yo Ma’s “Necessary Edges: Arts, Empathy, and Education” was published in an online website called World Post and it was published in Davos, Switzerland in January 2014. I noticed that Yo-Yo Ma’s bio began by listing his achievements in his professional career. He has won a significant amount of awards for his work. He also graduated from Juilliard School and Harvard University. Next, his bio begins to explain the publications of his essay and the history of the site it was published on. Lastly, Ma’s bio addresses the subject of the essay and gives the readers insight as to what they will be reading. I noticed this summary of the essay seemed to be very opinionated because it only focuses on Ma’s beliefs.

The circumstantial context for this essay is the situation that prompted the reader to continue reading and pay attention to the text. I felt that Ma was very proficient in using circumstantial context in his essay, as he was sure to incorporate multiple examples ot relate to his readers. In my annotations, I found I related his text to my future career as a nurse, my essay about metaphor, my school switching from STEM to STEAM, my anatomy class, and my sociology class. My purpose for reading this text was for my english class, but it was interesting because it made me think of empathy in a new perspective, as it should be something that connects individuals together.

The intentional context is the rhetorical situation or when the author creates the context of the text to include his or her own personal opinions and beliefs. I believe the author’s method of writing was persuasive in this essay because he wanted to share his beliefs with an audience. He believed that the arts should be included in education in addition to science, thus making the acronym STEM transform into STEAM. He believes that through art, culture, empathy, and equilibrium, one can learn to be more creative as he or she is learning.

Glossing the text: