Share your thoughts and one idea that you learned from reading this article in the comments below.
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This essay helps me stop believing in biases. I used to think that I shouldn’t write anything until I was sure I had a clear idea about it, or it was possible to write a perfect first draft. Currently, I think writing down ideas when they come to my mind could be effective to write a strong claim and evidence for my writing assignment. Also, I used to have the wrong idea that argumentative essays were about arguing, disagreement, and tension between sides, and one side always had to win or lose. In argumentative essays, we should use evidence and facts than only thoughts and opinions to support our claims and persuade the reader to believe us. Now, I understand that I experience kind of argumentative essays when I read or watch the news and try to explain to someone based on evidence and my experiences. For example, as a woman, I always tell my brother that he shouldn’t yell or be impatience with his daughters because they would think it is normal to be treated in that way. So, he should treat them by making them feel worthy of respect and attention to prevent them from choosing bad boyfriends or husbands in the future. A couple of days, I was reading my psychology book about lifespan, and suddenly it showed evidence and facts about my opinion. Immediately, I sent a picture of it to my brother to back up my position. In addition, I think I can say now I can identify the three common types of college writing assignments. There are closed, semi-open, and open writing assignments. While I was reading, I was like I have experienced those kinds of writing assignments before, but I didn’t know them by their names. In general, the close writing assignment has prompts like yes or no questions, but the essay is not that simple because we must make a claim and support it. Second, the semi-open writing assignment could be challenged because summaries are not needed, you still must determine a claim and back it up with evidence. The last one is the open writing assignment which could be complex because the thesis on the prompt is not that obvious. It is more general; you will have to determine the thesis and your supporting ideas. Therefore, you should be sure you have a broad understanding of the content in advance, so you can write a specific thesis that would be limited and easier to work on. This essay helped me to apprehend that before I couldn’t see the question in the introduction paragraph could be very useful whether I keep it or not because every time that I read it could guide me through my essay to avoid losing track of my thesis because my thesis must be the answer to that question.
I feel you about the arguing thing. I used to believe the same. I think it’s great that you’ve used your understanding of argumentative essays and applied them to real-life scenarios, especially because essays can often reflect ways that we communicate with the people around us on a daily basis. I actually really appreciate the argument that you made against your brother. A lot of people don’t recognize that, even if there is no ill-intent, things can still affect others negatively. It was great to bring this point to his attention!
The article What Is “Academic” Writing? by L. Lennie Irvin, the author states each writer has to tap into their set of skills as a way to effectively engage with the readers. One idea I have learned when reading this article is writing is an expression. I really enjoyed learning about developing your “writer’s sense.” While there are grammar mistakes & formats to follow when writing, your words are meant to connect with people, timelessly. It was an interesting perspective to put myself in as a reader… How will my written words be portrayed by the next person? Whenever that will be? My point being is, there is much more to writing than just “the writing part”.
My biggest takeaway from this reading would definitely be how many myths we have to unlearn when practicing college writing. Along with many other students, I was constantly told that using “I” in an essay was the biggest NO. It was almost weird to be able to practice literary tasks without all the restrictions I have been taught throughout high school. Another thing I found useful from the article was that academic writing is not about conveying information, but about participating in a conversation about it. The author really emphasizes that you have to really understand what you argue. This way, the writer is able to write effectively and really help communicate their message to the audience.
Overall, I actually found Irvin’s article to be quite helpful for anyone looking to improve their academic writing skills. By highlighting the key features that show the difference between academic writing from other forms of writing, Irvin provides a vision for writers. The author encourages the audience to see academic writing as a skill that can be developed and perfected over time.
I like the idea “writing is more than the writing part”. From this essay, I learned that choosing adequate words and punctuation can help readers to determine our tone and understand us better. For example, if you don’t specify details or use the correct words in your evidence, readers can have a different idea from what you were thinking.
This reading has helped me understand college writing more in depth. Throughout all of high school, for four years straight, and honestly even before that, I was being taught how to write in a specific way. In fact, the author of this reading mentioned the “Five Paragraph Essay” as being one of the essay myths that many enter college believing. That style of essay-writing is what has been engraved in my mind – it’s what I am used to. Unlearning writing with such a structure has been uncomfortable, as I’ve had to find new ways to put words on paper and make my essays flow. Another myth that this reading mentioned was “Myth #7: Never use ‘I'”. This myth is actually something that was overemphasized in high school. I was always taught to never use the word “I”, and to keep things more general (ex. instead of saying “I like…” in my high school essays, I had to say something like “One may like…”). This reading has helped me recognize that it is actually okay to refer to yourself in some college essays using the work “I” as long as it is appropriate in context. The author also used a quote from Lee Ann Carroll, a professor at Pepperdine University, where she referred to college essays as “literacy tasks”. She then went on to explain that college essays are more than just organized structures and proper sentences – they’re meant to bring out high levels of thinking, analyzing, knowledge, research skills, and more. College essays are meant to test your knowledge and how much you truly understand about a subject, as well as the research and documents that you find and read relating to that subject. Basically, the text explains that college writing is a lot more complex than what most are used to before entering college, and I’ve found that to be very true.
I couldn’t say it any better about the “I” myth. Like you, during my years of school back in my country, I was taught to avoid using “I” because it made the essay informal. Also, writing in general was the best choice for a successful essay. And all of that has been turning upside down since I started my education in this country because my last professor told me personal experiences could make my essay stronger than just having facts and other people’s experiences.
I do believe what you’re saying Dana is true. When reading this I felt as though I was being taught how to better myself as a reader and college student. I Do use “I” a lot for the most part in my writing so that’s something I do want to work on. But I don’t necessarily think it’s bad to use depending on the essay or audience you are writing to for example. Say it’s an essay based on your life would you refer to yourself as “I” or “Dana”? As far as the basic 5-point essay it does make sense that our professor and others would want to us to write a different way this broadens our horizons and improves us as writers. It allows us to get our point across in a much better way than just “explaining.” College writing is also much more in depth and requiring of a lot more thought an so the basic 5-point structure just wouldn’t even work much of the time.
One thing I took away from the reading was that writing is hard but how you succeed with academic writing is how you have to understand what you are doing and how you are supposed to approach the task. When doing any type of writing I always find it hard to understand what to really write about until I break down a certain topic and how I go about tackling the task. I can agree with something that was said in the passage with the fact being that when most people start college they have strange ideas about what they are doing when it comes to writing an essay or sometimes they don’t have any idea at all. I agree with this because me being a freshman I have the same issue with what to really focus my essay on, well I wouldn’t say I don’t know what to focus my essay on but how to really put my ideas together, which makes my essay sound vague. It sounds that way because my ideas are not clear enough even though I know what I want to say. Punctuation and word choice helps to communicate our tone. Developing your writer’s sense about how you communicate within the writing situation is something that’s most important to learn in freshman composition. If you are planning on writing successfully in college you have to be highly aware that it has its own codes and conventions. Meaning to figure your audience, context, your message, your purpose, and what documents you would use. It also is a form of evaluation to demonstrate your knowledge and it shows proficiency with certain skills of thinking, interpreting, and presenting. I feel as if all of these are different guides that they give to help us be able to set up a proper structure when it comes to writing our essay and it also helps with creating different tones especially when we’re trying to communicate with the person who’s reading what we are writing.
I like this article because the writer went through a lot of myths that I’ve always used as an excuse. It is not one particular number in the article but it’s more so a mix of all of them; myth #2, myth #3, and myth #4 resonated with me the most because I put very unrealistic expectations and I think that I cannot start to write until I know everything 100% about the topic, lastly, I do think that I am horrible at writing and other people are better at writing essays than I am. Lennie Irvin debunked these excuses that I just mentioned, as I was reading the article I felt like I was a student who is taking a class from them and they were directly talking to me. In reality, there is no perfect first draft and they will never be one because arriving at perfection is not a linear journey and it is most likely to not happen; you start from the bottom and you revise your essay each time you see a missing element, and perfection is not a destination that you can arrive to but a motivation or a pursuit that will keep you going. This is also why you should start jotting down your ideas even if you only have mixed thoughts in your mind and you do not know everything, you will develop new ideas and you will insert them into your writing as you process further. No one was born like J.K. Rowling or as Shakespeare; everyone starts to learn from somewhere and they get better each time they practice. Some might be more talented than others but it does not necessarily mean that if you are not gifted at writing you will never accomplish good essays. Like for everything else, it will take time to be good at writing and it requires dedication but with patience, anyone can succeed in their goals.
What I took from this article was trying to show us what comes with having to write an essay. Not to be so generic but to find yourself in your writing the best you can. When trying to elaborate on a claim you would use evidence but why did you choose this specific piece. As well as how does it relate back to you instead of just your claim saying we don’t always have to go about our writing the traditional way so that we can become better writers an (can’t think of the word) to a more border Audience. This also allows us to not be seen as just kids anymore or those high schoolers that just graduated but as the future of our nation. When you’re willing to talk about topics that aren’t seen as proper it can show what you’re capable of as a writer. The reading taught me a lot because I tend to just write an when I read it it doesn’t always come out crystal which tends to not be the message I want to get across but instead it explains something completely different. So I have to be more precise with what I want to get across to the people reading what I have to say and not to think so much on supporting evidence but on why I chose to use it an how it all connects. The reading was also super long lol.
Ever since the first day of English 101 with Professor McFadden I’ve been repeating this one line over and over again in my head. “I must make an argument”, is what I mumble to myself. I remember our professor telling us to remember this statement, but for some indescribable reason I took it as law. “By no means shall pointless writing be tolerated”. We, as writers, are expected to prove a point. The point may be to show that I learned something, or to show you my passion behind a perspective– but one must ultimately prove a point. After reading this essay I feel as if I have solidified this point of view. I now have concrete evidence behind the idea that every time I write something with my name on it, I must be proving something. I’m not here to fight people’s ideas, or to not take any stance at all, but I am here as a college writer to prove that my opinion matters (one way or another). I have to avoid the common myths listed in the essay like the use of “I”. I am expected to use all the tools effectively so I can convince the reader to find value in what’s being said. If I can get you, the reader, to care about what I’m saying, then I have succeeded in my part. It may not be the most interesting thing to read about, but if I can effectively boast my comprehension and analytical skills while making it digestible and maybe even… fun– then I will have successfully done an “Academic writing” activity. This thought process has been my biggest take away from the essay, as I now feel like I have a solid foundation to build upon. I know I have a lot of work to do but I believe this essay has helped me understand my role as a writer tenfold.
Mateo I definitely concur with your comment. In the reading it is emphasized that we have to make arguments yes. But the arguments we make must be able to be used as if it were a credible source. It can’t just be a baseless argument with points just being thrown all over the place no it has to be clear, cut, and precise. Not only that but like you said “digestible and maybe even… fun” this really stands out to me from a reader’s perspective because from that statement alone I was hooked and interested in continuing to read what you had to say. An argument doesn’t have to be just blunt or iterated in a such a strict tone but allowing yourself to make it more fun and discussions based can engage a reader for much longer and also have your point be digested in the way you want. Then with your evidence to back your claim one would even come to your side and see from your point of view in a much clearer light.