Exploration Five

    The reading states that a review is to try and get others to see something as you do. This gave me a new view on reviews that I have never considered, a review is trying to convince you of something be it good or bad. The example the book gave, reviewing employees performance, drives the point home for me because it gave me a real world connection for a review. Also the example goes on to say that the employees would want reasons and evidence to back up what you are saying and suggestions to improve on, the example paints a picture of what a review should be in my head.     

    Another observation I had while reading through the book is that a review can give someone a different way at looking at something. For example the review on the movie A Christmas Story, a movie I've seen many times like I'm sure most people have, made me feel like it was a fresh movie to me, A Christmas story is admittedly not one of my personal favorite movies but the review we read brought on fond feelings for the movie, even more so then when I watch it myself. The writer also brings in examples from several sources to back his thoughts up, such as his own background while talking about the BB gun, and it almost makes you feel that everyone likes the movie so you should too.
   Reviews are used in my life like they probably are in most peoples lives, sort of like a guide to try and get an idea of what I'm getting into before I get something. Reviews have also changed my opinions on things such as the case of the movie Star Wars:The Last Jedi. I've always been a pretty big Star Wars fan so when the newest film at the time had come out I was pretty excited to go see it and when I watched it I thought it was pretty good. Then a couple of weeks later I started to read reviews on the movie that pointed out more of the bad stuff within the movie and it changed my opinion on it for good. Nowadays when I hear anything about the movie I can only associated it with the negative reviews and therefor I can only think of it as a bad movie.

Exploration 5 Edwards

One question I have is how can reviews be used in a negative way? The book talked a lot about the positives to writing a review about something, but I'm curious about reviews in a negative sense. Reviews can be helpful to those who might not have read or watched something, but how can a review affect something negatively? Will it shape the mind of the reader to a closed opinion? Will it turn force someone olive their life differently?

I use reviews in my own life almost everyday. The most recent use of reviews in my life was before I went to watch the new movie Deadpool 2. I wanted to know what other people thought of the movie. I use them to help me sort out what I should watch/not watch, do/not do, or where I should go/not go. It can make life a lot easier in the sense that you don't need to waste your time watching a bad movie, for example, because you read a 5 minute review on said movie. This is a very helpful tool for people who don't like to waste their time. However, this can lead to problems as well. In a society that looks for shortcuts, you can jump to some very hasty, as well as negative, opinions on something because of one review of it. The best advice I can give to avoid that is simply keep an open mind, understand why someone might hate a movie, but also understand why someone might like it. Make sure to look at all the facts before using a review as an end all be all trick.

Deadpool 2 starring Ryan Reynolds

Exploration 5 from Preston

Part One:

The first observation I had in my active reading explained how when we review something, we need to keep an open mind. This can sometimes be difficult if we have strong feelings towards the topic. Take movies reviews for example. If someone reviews a movie that they personally didn’t like but they knew deep down that it was a quality-made movie, than their review should not be overly biased towards their own opinion. The reviewer must keep an open mind.

The second observation I had in my active reading was how a reviewer needs to explain why they had the feelings that they had towards a topic. There needs to be reasoning why they liked or disliked something. If there is no reasoning, then the reviewer will not receive credit from the readers of the review. The reviewer must defend their opinion.

Part two:

One of the biggest way that I use reviews in my life is when I buy something off of Amazon. Most of the time, I’ve never seen or used the object that I am buying so I do not know if it is a quality product. I will read the reviews and see what people like and dislike about the product. The goal is to find a good balance of low price and best reviews. When you buy a product online, you do not get to get a feel for the product and do not get helpful information from a store employee. I think it is vital to look at the reviews before every purchase on Amazon because it is honest reviews from peoplewho purchased the same product.

5 out of 5 stars

Exploration 5 ~ Tej Patel

Part One:  Chapter 5 was full of many important facts about a the topic of writing a review. Reviews are a very common thing in this world and we see them or hear them wherever we travel. A review is basically an evaluation about something. One thing that caught my attention was the four things that are necessary for a perfect evaluation, which are Judgements, Reasons, Criteria, and Evidence. All these four topics go hand in hand. For example when we watch a movie, We judge it wether we liked it or not. And we use reasons and evidence to describe why that movie was great or why that movie was bad. However the judgement process is based of our criteria. We all have our own criteria that we make and our judgements are based of wether it fits our criteria or not. Another thing that I feel like is very important from the reading was the the source of information is critical for a perfect review. To persuade someone based of a review and to make that review effective, It has to include information/evidence from a very reliable source such as personal experience or research on that topic. I believe that the source your information comes from is very important for a review.

Part Two: I read reviews for basically everything. My hobby is photography and I use reviews for that. Whenever I want to get a new camera, I take at least a week to just do research and look at reviews on online retail stores. I also watch review videos on Youtube that help me get a better understanding about which camera I should get. There are many other times I use reviews to see what others think about a specific topic.

Exploration Five From Nate

Part One: 
Reviews are one of the more useful pieces of writing. They have the ability to explain someone's judgement on an issue, topic, or an event. Reviews are used to to help people who may not be experts on a topic to become informed. This helps them to coming to a decision. I observed how the process was relatively common sense. First you want to make a judgement on whether something is good or bad. Next, you have to use your reasoning on whether something is good or bad, which requires us to examine the criteria of what makes something good. And we also must have evidence behind why the criteria of something being "good" is met. My second observation was that reviews can be used for almost everything. If I want to know if a film is good then I can just look up the reviews, if I want to know if a book is good then I can just look at a review, if I want to see if a restaurant is worth going to then I can just look at a review.

Part Two:
I use reviews quite frequently in my life. Every time before I go see a movie, I look up the reviews to see whether a movie is worth going to or not. I look up reviews because I don't want to waste my time and money if other people can already tell me it isn't worth seeing. Reviews are nice because they can give me an idea of what my experience may be like and if I would enjoy going. An example of me using a review was when I was deciding on whether to see the movie Avatar or not. I read about what critics thought and ultimately I ended up seeing the movie.

Avatar the movie (2009)

Exploration 5- Bhakti

One of my observation was language. Language is very important wherever we go and whatever we do. Me coming from a different country with different language, know how difficult it is to give your reviews and people don't understand what you are saying. Reviews are used for everything. They are used for movies, books, personalities or any other things. That is why I think learning and using other languages is really very helpful. The other observation I made was "Subject Matter". We learn and evaluate more about our interest but the same interests matters to others too. While writing a review we always give our thinking, but we don't see that the same topic would matter to other too. So, I think that whenever we write a review we should be ready to accept other's response to our review.

One of my life example is the reviews of my friend and mine on my favorite hero. She keeps telling me that he is not good, he did this and that; and I always kept on saying that that's your point of view. The way I look at him and the way he appears is different. So I always have arguments on the reviews of him with his haters, and I just ignore them because I don't feel like giving an explanation and proving that he is the best, as reviews are different; sometimes they match sometimes they don't.

Exploration Five by Alex Valentine

One observation I discovered is that when evaluating something it becomes challenging to keep an open mind despite our initial feelings or bias towards it. This leads to a tension occurring between our desire to validate our point and our willingness to consider other points of view. I can relate to this as I usually tend to have a previous assumption before I ever experience something. I also discovered from the active reading that we must be able to support our criteria behind our judgement. If our criteria doesn't belong with a widely held belief, we must defend and explain our reasoning behind it.

I use reviews all the time when shopping at online retailers. Its the first thing that I look at to determine the value and long term quality of a product. One review that impacted my decision was about a Bluetooth speaker. From the pictures and description, it seemed like a great buy although the reviews stated otherwise, exposing multiple issues of its poor design and sound. Without the help of reviews, I would have fallen into the seller's marketing scheme and its deceitful lies.