Mastering The Art And Its Impact On The Quality Of A College Student 's Work

In “Preparing to Teach Writing” J. Williams argues that reading is not teaching critical thinking (88-89). Although useful, there is a disconnect between reading and writing in this manner. The major concern is one of transfer (93). Many Rhetoric and Composition students are only learning to write about literature, and not about other fields (80). This could cause problems with making writing applicable to other fields and professions. Furthermore, in his book “The Sense of Structure: Writing from the Reader 's Perspective”, G. Gopen argues that teaching writing by only teaching grammar is not working to educate students (3-13). Gopen argues that comprehension of the reader is the most important part of writing (6).

As stated above, this section of the book specially emphasizes change of focus of your compositions when you start college writing. In high school your writing assignments are mainly executed using your personal opinions and your own self encounters. On the contrary, college writing is much more factual and involves critical thinking. Instead of your writing being inspired by your emotional thoughts on a subject, your words now need to be backed up by scholarly sources that can prove your information. This, however, does not mean that you will never write about yourself or your personal opinions, it just means that you need to provide proof for your beliefs. College writing also introduces you to different genres such as essays,

Writing, and literacy in general, is one of the founding cornerstones of modern society. It is difficult to find any sort of occupation that doesn’t require at least some basic writing skills. From business managers to lawyers to doctors, despite their notoriously bad handwriting, all require intimate knowledge of writing skills. Yet, teaching critical writing skills is not the cure-all to solving the problems that the public education system faces in producing students better prepared to tackle the challenges of the world as Peg Tyre portrays it as in The Writing Revolution. Critical writing skills, despite its current underemphasis in the classroom, should not be the only focus of the public school system’s curriculum as Peg Tyre suggests in The Writing Revolution, because critical writing skills do not prepare students adequately enough for the standards of the real world which require more technical skills, critical writing skills only teaches a small subset of underlying critical thinking skills, and critical writing skills education, as presented by Peg Tyre, is formulaically based which can result in long-term inability to further student’s critical writing skills despite initial success.

Murray is insightful not only to instructors but also to learners. Murray argues that the challenge facing writing is the fact that teachers have treated it as a product rather than a process and the same concept passed on to students. The author holds that the main problem with this view is that students get to receive irrelevant criticisms that are not related to their learning goals. While I tend to agree with the author based on the arguments presented, it is notable that Murray has paid little attention to the idea of education in the contemporary world. In most learning institutions, the outcome of the writing is considered more than the process. As a teacher paying attention to the process of writing but not be consistent with the students, who are mostly driven by

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.

From elementary school to high school, I was taught that my writing had to be structured and follow strict criteria. After I arrived in Mr. Mukherjee’s ENG 102 class, I was given the opportunity to express my creative freedom through words and graphical pictures. It can often be difficult and challenging to improve upon my own writing abilities unless motived with an idea in mind. When looking back on my time at ASU, I thought about the goals that I wanted to address for myself and the course goals that my instructor had set for the class. These goals include ones that I had accomplished to the best of my ability and ones that I need to address as well as improve.

When it comes to critical thinking, reading and writing are two factors that deal with the critical thinking process. A few key aspects of critical reading and writing are identifying the tone in ones writing, how to throughly read and annotate a text, and the revision process. In the essay, “The Maker’s Eye”, Donald Murray explains how the attitude of a writer, listening to what readers have to say and how to edit your own writing makes your work better when critically thinking in college. These aspects of critical thinking, reading and writing make will keep the reader interested and make the writing easier to translate when read.

Writing is something we have been used to since childhood. Beginning to write with just a few words and activities to improve our pendmanship. From easy sentences we all gradually improve our writing, as expected from higher levels of education. However, throughout all this time, many of us have been writing blind. Only writing what is seen an necessary, oblivious to the true skill and precision it takes to actually write quality work. Through the use of Anne Lammott’s article “Shitty First Drafts” and personal experiences, I will advice you, my fellow freshman, on certain a aspect of writing that you may not have known prior to joining the college world, as well as offer some life advice.

Advancing in my critical thinking skills is as important as my writing skills. I have to take the appropriate steps in continuing to engage the readers throughout the writing process. Writing is crucial as a student and everyday life because it is a form of communication. I will utilize the necessary resources to assist me in applying the lessons being instructed for completion of each assignment in accordance with the University guidelines. Allowing myself to create an outline for the topic before the rough draft is setting

By examining the ideas in the essays Freewriting by Peter Elbow and The Makers Eye: Revising your own manuscripts by Donald Murray. One can gain a better understanding of the process of turning a piece of writing from an inspiration into a craft. By examining the elements lined out in each essay can be beneficial in creating a piece of writing that is beyond a college or student level. Elbows essay lines out the importance of a strong prewriting regimen. That editing too early can ruin writing. He believes that by using the method of free writing, it can inspire ideas that may be limited when worrying about grammar. While Murray emphasizes the necessity to create many drafts to form writing into its full potential. Saying each draft is an opportunity to discover what the author has to say and they the best way to say it. By transforming writing into its maximum potential it goes from being an idea an inspiration a masterpiece.

Downs & Wardle’s “Teaching about writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re) Envisioning “First Year Composition” as “Introduction to Writing Studies” talks about several ways to refer to writing and our response to it. As well as the misconceptions students have towards the proper way of writing and how they have managed to break the “college writing” stereotype and discover their own way of writing.

The survey result Berrett includes shows that students see writing as “basically a performance”. Berrett also introduced an argument from the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” report, which claims that writing is not a “linear process”. The author states that successful writing requires various processes, habits and experiences, such as “curiosity, flexibility, persistence and metacognition”. Since for most highschoolers, writing is ‘’framed as preparation of tests”, they do not have the opportunity to “develop ideas or raise prose”. The author suggests the students require change in their mindset of writing. However, the only evidence the author provides is from a students’ self-reported survey, instead of actual writing assignments. This rather subjective evidence results in a less convincing argument. Despite this flaw in logic, I personally agree with the author. I find the transformation of writing from high school to university is challenging. The main reason is that my writing experience back then was more about “following directions”. The format and structure of the writing assignment was provided, and all the information I need was spoonfed to me. As a result, there was no researching and developing my own idea, and in the first week of university, when I was asked to write a lab report with my own theory, I brainstormed for hours before eventually generated one. Nevertheless, I hold onto the hope that improvements on creativity in writing can be made as I gradually develop my “curiosity, flexibility, persistence and metacognition”. In general, although I agree with the author’s opinion, I felt his claim lacks

One of the areas in which we must all strive to improve to the best of our abilities is the potential to effectively articulate thoughts and ideas into our writing pieces. Improving my writing capability has been one of the most gratifying accomplishment because I have always been one to feel insecure about my assets as a writer. This insecurity spawns from self-awareness and knowing that writing can place you in a vulnerable state, as you allow others to perceive you personal notions and mental process. Some the most intimidating experience as a writer was having to write three essays within a short period of time because this type of task can demonstrate one’s genuine ability to both write coherently and rapidly. Due to these timed write,

A great number of instructors in a writing college consider that writing makes your brain work and that it requires deep thinking. Jonathan Silverman is an author and a high school instructor in the past. Dr. Silverman once requested Strong to write for his pupils about how writing in school differs from writing in college. Strong said that the difference is “writing is thinking”. In secondary school students mostly write to be tested about their knowledge and what they were taught, but in college the students are required to be creative and explorative in their writings. College learners are responsible for all their behaviors and actions. They are in charge of themselves and professors won’t go after the students to tell them about their studies such as deadlines and test dates. Writings in higher education must be written in a higher level. University

I have also developed my critical thinking skill during the long process of writing. From the expository essay to the analytical essay, I can easily tell the improvement of my writing and thinking skill. First, there is not much evidence in the former one and the explanation is not strong enough to support my point. Nevertheless, the latter one has a sufficiency of evidence that is followed by lots of explanation. The structure becomes more organized and transition words are used more