FCO210f15Midterm Study Guide

1. Zappen: Recognize and/or illustrate the ways digital rhetoric/writing has shifted writing practices in professional cultures.

2. Ch 4: Illustrate how to communicate democratically in a collaborative writing environment.

3. Ch 4: Understand the implications of working collaboratively on a writing team.

4. Ch 14: Understand the elements of the professional memo.

5. Ch1: Identify the skills necessary to be a successful professional/technical writer.

6. Ch 6: Understand the difference between and appropriate applications primary and secondary research.

7. Ch 12: Understand the difference between adding graphics or visuals and integrating them.

8. Refer to the document “Understanding the Reproductive Cycle of Oysters” and answer the following questions:

a. Imagine this were developed for an elementary school audience. Find three sentences and revise/rewrite them to reflect a young person’s vocabulary and knowledge level.

b. Consider the images used. What concerns might you have about the images? How might you revise this document to ensure the graphics are appropriate and productive?

c. Develop headings for this document.

d. Find one place where a bulleted, parallel list would serve the document and construct it.

e. Find one sentence to revise for precision (i.e., “tighten” it).

Understanding the Reproductive Cycle of Oysters

Adult oysters reach their reproductive prime at about, on or around, 3 years of age. In order for an oyster to spawn or be ready to reproduce, they must eat naturally occurring phytoplankton, not artificial plankton, in the water and use that energy and invest it into creating a gonad, which will be either eggs or sperm. An oyster uses environmental cues to begin the ripening process in the early spring. An increase in water temperature, coupled with an increase/decrease in salinity or a change in

the phytoplankton biomass usually stimulates the oyster to begin putting on gonad. This process can take up to 2 months in the spring.

Once adult oysters are ripe they can begin to spawn. Environmental cues fuel the spawning process with oysters preferring to spawn at water temperatures between 20°C to 30°C (74°F to 86°F) and at salinity above 10ppt. It only takes one oyster to release its gonad to encourage other oysters to commence spawning. For example, if a male oyster starts to spawn by releasing his gonad into the water column, the oysters surrounding him will filter in some of this sperm. Once the other oysters detect the presence of sperm in the water, they will begin to release their own gonad to ensure successful reproduction. Fertilized eggs cannot exist without both egg and sperm. The eggs and sperm will encounter each other in the water, begin the fertilization process, and drift away from the spawning grounds in the water currents.