From the beginning I was really skeptical of the Swales article, given that in the second paragraph I am told I won't be familiar with what I am reading. As a reader, I'm already not happy. Not exactly the "hook" type of opening writers usually go for. Saying "Don't pay attention to this part, because you'll be confused." is just like the real life scenario of someone telling you not to look at something, because naturally, people almost always look. Now it's all I can see. It also kills my motivation to keep reading, especially reading it multiple times. Baaaaad move.
Even after all the discouragement, I kept reading and did the activities. Reading reviews on this book was pretty entertaining and I think this is a really interesting and creative move for the purpose of this article. One review was particularly weird, stating that this book was better than The Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, which were the only two other books this reviewer had ever red. However, all the reviews I read on Amazon were 5 star reviews. This intrigued me.
Through all my contemplation and reading about speech community and discourse community, this passage really stuck out to me: "A speech community typically inherits it's membership by birth, accident or adoption; a discourse community recruits its members by persuasion, training or relevant qualification." (p. 471) It helped me to separate these two communities on a different level.
The paper by Branick was a bit more difficult for me to read, only because I have no interest, nor do I fully understand football.
With that said, the persuasion on the importance of a coaches literacy was impressive. I absolutely agree with him that reading people is a form of literacy, and he argues this well. I can't imagine what it would be like trying to read the football players and an ongoing game, but after reading this paper, I can see how that is an important skill to have developed to do this job well.
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