This Week’s Reading was examining the do’s and don’ts of
academic writing and how student’s preconceived rules about how to write a
piece of work’s structure, grammar, and planning for academic or professional
situations is not always black and white. We also learned how to read like a
writer and how students can take the perspective of the writer when reading a
authors work and carry over those observations to their own work.
In Respect to academic writing my take-away from the reading
was that there is usually a happy medium and subjective freedom that many
incoming college students are too nervous to explore. The proper performance
aspect of writing has been beaten into them by their previous educational
institutions, and because of that relationship, many students’ confidence is
too injured to explore their instinctive contributions to their writing.
The previous happy medium I mentioned is a mixture of tone,
style, planning and context. These conventions of writing contribute to making
writing an extremely vast platform that breed’s creativity for writers, but
it’s in the intentions of the writer that makes all of those tools handy for us
as writers to use!
To add to my observations, my purpose for this blog is to
convey, in a weekly forum, that I have understood and applied the course topics
in my writing. I have identified the artifacts of these pieces and now I can –
from a writer’s perspective – extract he authors purpose, context, tone,
intended audience and level of effectiveness a piece had on myself (the
audience). When I do this I am doing more than following a story or argument, I
am dissecting the whys, the hows, and the whats of a piece of writing so that I
can better understand how to rebuild it in my own way for my writing.
Like different Engines and motors, writing is build with
intention to propel argument and rhetoric to intended audiences and invoke emotion
and connection to a writer’s purpose. If we as writers are to someday emulate those
similar feelings we yearn for when we read a good piece of writing then we need
to know how to build that engine to get us there!
Thoughts.
Kyran,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, your style of writing -- as evidenced by your posts and assignments -- does an excellent job of finding that "happy medium and subjective freedom that many incoming college students are [usually] too nervous to explore." Your words are wise, tempered, and not "bone dry." You come through the page, and that's helluva quality to have as a writer.
The "push students even further" part of me is thinking about asking: could you provide specific examples about students not "going for it"? What were some of the concrete examples Bunn used in "How to Read Like a Writer" that helped him construct/build his overall case?
But... we can save that for another day. :) Keep up the great work.
Z