To me, reading Erard’s essay for the first time was quite confusing to follow as he jumped from idea to idea at times, but rereading and annotating a second time was quite impactful in learning and noticing new information and ideas.One thing I noticed while re-reading, was a quote I had originally marked, but it was not to this second time reading did it truly stand out to me. It was the paragraph when he had wrote about a department in charge of programs. Originally that paragraph was a blur and was quite confusing when I read it, because I truly do not think it connected, and stuck with me. What really caught my attention going through it a second time was his quote of “the right metaphor must speak to inclusion and community”. This made me react and ultimately gave a new look on metaphors in the sense that a good metaphor truly has to include most, if not all members of a community for success. That changed my believes, after the first read I felt like certain metaphors were only for certain people, and the rest it did not mean anything, but after thinking of that my mindset towards metaphors were changed.

The part of the text I had glossed was when Erard mentioned the book titled “Metaphors We Live By” written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Erard mentioned about this book that “pretty much every metaphor is inspired” by this book so I felt it may play a big role in his logics in his metaphors. I can say it helped glossing because when searching I found out the focus on this book was on cognitive learning and how metaphors affect it, and in relation to Erard’s essay there is almost a moment he says that with his mentions that metaphors should be used cognitively rather than emotionally. All in all, I feel like glossing the text is a great way to get more into the mind of the writer and their almost sort of get where some of the inspirations they write about may originate, or be closely related to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphors_We_Live_By

In “See through words” by Michael Erard, we are enlightened with the idea of metaphors, as well as the designing of metaphors. Throughout this essay, there were quite a few points that stood out to me while reading.

One of the biggest remarks made was on page 5 of the essay, in which Erard talks about his brainstorm sessions with the quote, “a former colleague would always suggest sports metaphors. another guy always had a vehicle metaphor… I told him to buy a new car already”. This section of the essay really stuck out to me, and my interpretation from this is that the subject in the metaphor truly has a greater meaning if it is something the reader enjoys. Like as stated in the quote, one person always would write about sports that could be because, sports relay the most impactful information to them and as writers of these metaphors know they can portray the most successful results because of their interest in that category. Also the point about the man who writes about cars, it is a neat view to see how much daily life can affect your thoughts and ideas. If he would continuously brainstorm ideas of repairment he must be having some issues with his car and therefore the ideas he possessed were geared toward the car.

Another great point that was made was on page six of the essay, with the statement of “to design a metaphor, you have to go beyond what people say they like or don’t like”; and then goes into discussion about how those are emotional responses rather than cognitive, which is the goal of metaphors. I truly agree with this statement because, if we may think of a metaphor, the meaning does not require if we like it or not, but rather its the cognitive processing that gears us to like it or not. How does it relate to us, and how it can be applied to our daily lives are much more impactful questions that would be asked after analyzing a metaphor, rather than just the “I like or dislike” it. If we were to look at it in the form of an analogy, thinking emotionally would be considered “staying inside the box”, where as cognitive processing this would be “looking at the bigger picture” and pulling the true meaning that this metaphor has.

After going through the numerous amounts of features this website has to offer I feel that the eportfolio is going to be a great tool for not only English 110, but also for all other Classes.It is a very modern and neat way to keep all of your work in order, and also gives you credentials in the end that this is all your masterpiece. It will be a great tool if you use it to its full potential. I feel the only downside is if you become messy in this by not putting material in the right place. Overall this is going to be a great resource for us to use.