Grant Wig's Goodreads

Bullock, Richard, and Goggin, Maureen D, and Weinberg, Francine, editors. The Norton Field Guide to writing with readings and handbook. W.W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Lisa Nakamura argues in her article, “Words with Friends”: Socially Networked Reading on Goodreads, that Goodreads is a successful Web 2.0 business, worth studying by literary scholars. By applying the argument Carolyn Miller makes for a successful genre, in her text, Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later (2014), one can examine why Goodreads is successful in terms of fulfilling its requirements to its public. Miller defines genre as being “a multidimensional construct”, that is a “typified rhetorical response to” an uptake of a situation, “a ‘macro’ speech act”, “a mediation between private intentions (purpose) and socially objectified needs (exigence)”, and above all she emphasizes that genre must create social action,

In Dan Berrett’s article, “Students Come to College Thinking They’ve Mastered Writing,” the idea of freshman thinking they are or must be a refined writer is discussed. Students may think this way coming into college, but their teachers do not. While students might feel satisfied and think that they are prepared with their writing skills, professors found that these students did not necessarily meet the expected level (Berrett 1). Many students reported that they would normally write around 25 hours every week. They said that most of those hours of writing was for more formal purposes like passages to make changes in society (Berrett 1). It was found that one reason the new students might feel this way is that their assumptions about writing differed greatly from those of faculty members and their expectations. One big thing that students will not get for a while, is that good writing is not just listed as a bunch of steps one is to follow that automatically make one’s writing good. Good writing requires one to be in different mental states; it requires the understanding of how to write for different audiences and different reasons (Berrett 2). Berrett includes in the article that writing is not just universal and that in order to do very well, writers must use different forms of writing specifically for their purpose (2). It seems as though students think that, before they even take a class, they are supposed to know everything about writing; in reality, they are supposed to learn new skills and enhance others (Berrett 2). Berrett says that many believe the schools these students previously attended with their test focus might cause these feelings about writing (2). Berrett ends his article by saying that students these days do not think that informal writing actually counts as writing, and that students should practice writing for informal purposes because it can help them (2). Even if they feel like it, students are not fully prepared to write in all contexts when they arrive at college.

In her article, “Grading Writing,” Valerie Strauss proposes her theory of what defines good writing. She poses questions such as, what goes into a good piece of writing. What sets “bad” writing from “good” writing? How does age play a role in the complexity of a piece of writing?

In the article “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively,” Kantz explained to students as they write, how to use current texts to build a new original one. She argues that many undergraduate students cannot perform this idea correctly, because as they write they never had the opportunity to get taught to examine and synthesize a piece of writing correctly. Students need to understand how to view facts as claims, or view writing as a serial of creative ideas and drafts that drive to a final distinctive piece of work. In this article Kantz described how students think as they are writing, she used personal experiences, introduces “rhetorical situation,” and used

Many college students find themselves struggling, while trying to write papers in their English classes. This book was written to help you though these struggles. They say/I say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein is a book that was designed to help students be better writers. I think that this book is absolutely a huge help to anyone in need of becoming a much more confident and better writer. This book has helped me learn how to write more structured sentences and how to form them in ways that sound better and are also more grammatically correct than before. I have learned how to properly demonstrate and use many writing techniques such as making quotations, playing the believing game, how to write strong summaries, how to plant a “naysayer”, and incorporate “so what?” and “who cares?” into my writing. This book can be extremely helpful to anyone in need of assistance or for people interested in

The article by Culham made a lot of great points. The first one is that mentor text makes the students think about their own writing. Also, how reading teaches writing and this is true because when I read and I saw a word and phrase that I like I tend to want to use it in my own writing. Moreover, I have also noticed that my writing has got better due to all the reading that I have done. Moreover, I believe that reading and writing build on each other because by looking at the different books and using those books as mentors guides the students to a higher understanding of what and how is being written. Like Culham mentioned that regardless of the students mentor text, the students are thinking and engaging with text in a deep and thoughtful

They Say I Say preface and introduction explain how this book is going to educate us and how we should exercise different writing ideas as students. It discusses how the book is going to help us look at different writing methods like templates. The prefaces’ main topic is templates and the benefits and disadvantages of the students use of templates. In the introduction, rather than centering on the principles of writing, this book gives you templates that assist you put those writing principles into practice. These templates for writing give you a feel on how to work with different styles of critical thinking that you will need in college. Once conformable with the use of templates, students will be able to use them in new settings. Rules

It will help many students in which case they cannot read or write well. The book can be found in your local bookstore or even at your town library. The first part of the book talks about College Thinking, Reading, and writing. In this part it will share with you what you need to know from strategies for success and will share some advice from those who have been there and have experience. It will also help you with thinking critically and develop your power of mine. There it will explain what critical thinking is, what the key college skills are, and help you understand reading critically also. They will share the process and examples of critical reading. The book will show you visual images and real-world documents. This part will help you with the basics of writing. It will help you with understanding the Audience, Purpose, Paragraph and essay forms, Writing Process, Grading Criteria and will share Samples of Student Essays. It will help you explore topics and choose what to write about. They explain what a good topic is and exploring the topic. The novel helps you with writing your thesis statement and helps you practice writing one as well.

The woman behind of The Bookish Snob website is literally fond with fictions and romances book. Most of her summers, springs, falls and winters were spent curled up with a towering stack of books by her side. And not much has changed in adulthood; she still rather prefers the company of a good or bad character over that of most humans. A contemporary writer and a book addict that suddenly came up to her mind to do such things that will definitely, these book snobber will get back the excitement to their reading habit. The Bookish Snob website wants to focus

In my English 1010 class, I have learned to do a number of things through writing essays. I have written a Literacy Narrative, a Discourse Community Analysis, and a Writing Research essay. Firstly, I have learned to identify how an author’s purpose, audience, genre, and context determine effective writing. The purpose of the literacy narrative was to help me understand myself better as a writer (Jones 1). My teacher was the intended audience of the narrative. The genre of the narrative was non-fiction by cause of it being about my experience as a writer. The context of writing made my writing more interesting and more effective. Knowing those elements helps you to compose writing that is more effective due to you needing to know what you need to write about and who is receiving your writing. I displayed these skills by going into detail about my experiences with reading and writing through my life. As shown in the following sentence from my literacy narrative I shared how fun and exciting it was when my second-grade class received the opportunity to write a book, A Book of Future Astronauts, “Everyone in the class was truly excited to be writing our own book,” (Writing is Good).

Alexandra Alter, a books and book publishing reporter for the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in her article, "Your E-book Is Reading You" discusses the ability for publishers to collect customer reading habits information (analytics) through the use of e-book readers and related software. Prior to working at the WSJ, Alter earned a college degree and master's degrees in journalism and religion from Columbia University. The WSJ is a prestigious newspaper in the United States with over 2 million readers. The WSJ is one of the most widely read newspapers. The target audience for this article consists of general book readers and consumers using e-book readers. The article is a timely as in 2012; the Pew Research Center released a report demonstrating

Proficient writing is an essential skill in all aspects of academic and professional achievement. English 101, Introduction to Composition and Rhetoric, provided the framework to good writing, teaching me composition and rhetoric fundamentals, polishing up my grammar and style, and expressing a clear message. English 102, Composition, Rhetoric, and Research, continued to build on the skills I learned in English 101, focusing on the subject matter research process and employing various rhetorical and literary devices to better express a clear message to the reader. The course also improved my critical thinking capacity, allowing me to culturally evaluate my target audience, present logically flowing arguments using appropriate language and structure, and critically reviewing my writing projects for content and expression. Every writer inherently knows there’s always room to improve and I hold fast to this mindset in all academic, professional, and personal writing projects. English 102 has both challenged and inspired me to grow into a much better writer than before I began the class, providing the necessary skills to be not just a good writer, but a great writer.

In order to be considered a good we should be able to make connections with whatever book or magazine we are reading, we should be able to ask questions about whatever we are reading, and we should be able to summarize whatever we are reading.

Access to Communities of Readers & Authors: The third reason you might want to connect with Goodreads is the access. Goodreads features a variety of online communities in every single genre. This provides opportunities for networking with like-minded readers as well as other authors (and the occasional publisher or two).