Reflective Argument Paper

Writing is examined in the first chapter of “Writing about Writing”, a textbook by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Not only does it examine articulate writing, but specifically the threshold Concepts of writing: “ideas that change the way you think, write, and understand a subject,” (Wardle, Downs 2011). Terms are used to educate readers, these terms are essential for the writer to better understand how to write, and for the reader to better understand composition. Three terms seem to do this; construct, contingency, and rhetoric.

Upon entering Columbia College, writing was one of my weaker areas. It was very important that I gained the necessary knowledge and confidence to become a better writer. I didn’t know how to express myself and felt as though my writing was not my interest. As a result of taking English 101, I have gained a better understanding on how to properly research and build a satisfactory paper. Every paper that was assigned seemed like a struggle to complete. Before entering this class, I did not know the meaning of a thesis or why it was important, however, I obtained this skill quickly. I noticed that every paper has an argument and the thesis helps clarify the rebuttal. Now, I have a new outlook on writing. It’s a way to express my thoughts and allow others to see things through my eyes. There is no doubt that I still have a long way to go, but I know if I continue to write, I will get better. Just as I developed more skills in class, the various papers assigned helped to better structure the writer in me. In addition, the subject areas were not only interesting, but very informative and made it much easier to write about my experiences.

Some of the top advice given to writers is to read prolifically. The more well-read a person is, the more they will intuitively understand what good, effective writing is. Moreover, good writing begins with critical thinking and careful consideration. Curiosity and open-mindedness aid in the endeavor and allow an author to think broadly about a subject. Careful reasoning allows a writer to logically organize information and thoughts and relay them in a compellingly clear way. In “College Writing and Beyond,” Anne Beaufort talks about how strong writers draw on five knowledge domains to produce good work. These five domains are: discourse community knowledge, writing process knowledge, subject matter knowledge, genre knowledge, and rhetorical knowledge. It is important to understand and consider what discipline and discourse community you will be speaking within in order to fashion your ideas into a well-received written contribution. Understanding effective writing processes and critical revising methods grants a writer greater ability to create succinct, effective, and enticing text. Understanding genres enables a writer to know what conventions of writing are expected of them and which best suit their purposes. Rhetorical knowledge facilitates the clarification of a text’s purpose and supports reader

While attending writing class, I learned about the 4 steps in writing, bases for revising, organizing, and connecting specific information, and I also learned about the different types of essays such as descriptive, narrative, process, cause and effect and argumentative essay. I have been a student at Milwaukee Area Technical College for 1 semester, and over the course of my enrollment I have grown and learned more that I knew prior to attending this writing course. Participating in this writing class has taught me so much more than stuff about literature and language, it has taught me another way of expressing myself. I have learned here how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things that I don 't know. Most importantly I have learned how important technique, outlines and organization are. My goal in this paper is to inform writers about how my writing skills have improved.

In the 2011 article “Helping Students Meet the Challenges of Academic Writing”, educators Linda Fernsten and Mary Reda offer innovative self-reflective writing exercises that post-secondary instructors can employ to help students improve writer self-image and academic writing. The authors’ rationale for reflective and practical writing strategies were developed from direct classroom experience, and are based on four (4) assumptions. Their claim that self-reflective writing can aid student writers in overcoming conflict (due to dominant culture, upbringing, former writing experiences, gender, and other marginalizing factors) to improve writer self-identity is plausible. However, their argument that cross-curriculum academic writing can be improved through self-directed, self-reflective writing requires further investigation.

Rhetorical knowledge was established in course lecture as a tool with useful consequences in establishing credibility with my audience. The application of rhetorical knowledge to writing requires some skill. Coincidentally, this skill was developed through specific developmental lectures that identified what rhetoric is, and how it can be divided into useful modules. Thereby, these modules can be individually applied to establish a foundation of credibility with an audience. Credibility, was identified to have a foundation in a variety of specialized skills that are based on common standards. One such common standard was identified and labored on extensively, ensuring grammar is effective and accurate was identified as the key. Consequently, the accurate use of grammar affords the audience an opportunity to be eloquently held captive by the effective flow of sentence and paragraph transitions.

In their book They Say I Say, Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst outline strategies writers can use to avoid common mistakes often seen in academic writing. The book thoroughly outlines the different components that make up academic writing, such as initially summarizing what others have said before, responding with original ideas, proving a purpose to the writing, and connecting the writing in a logical and eloquent manner.

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

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).

In the article by Downs and Wardle “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions”, the author’s state a common misconception of writing for first year composition is that academic writing is somehow universal. This idea can be misleading since teachers have always taught that there is a basic set of rules for writing. However, I agree with the idea that writing is not universal because college students write for a various number of discourse communities and do not have one general audience. Content, context, and genre are bound to change while attending a university.

This course emphasizes rhetoric and composition with a focus on expository writing and understanding writing as a process. The course establishes effective college-level writing strategies through four or more writing projects comprising at least 3,000 words in total.

In the last three parts of this paper, I described how my own literacy history has affected my pedagogy as a future teacher. As I looked closer at the different theories of rhetoric, I believe that I fall between the expressivists/new romantics and the cognitivists, as I explained in part two. I believe that when writers are able to become comfortable forming their own opinions in their writing in a writer-centric environment, they will be more likely to succeed in doing so with writing that has an intended audience. I believe this line of thinking or pedagogical approach will work best for developing writers, as it focuses less on the technical side of writing and more on the content- or being able to realize their own

In chapter 9, Writing Across the Curriculum, the process of reading and writing was investigated and explained in comparison to one another. The reading-writing connection focuses on drawing from students’ prior knowledge and cognitive processes in order to build learning. The authors mentioned that the writing process is a strong tool for exploring and clarifying meaning and the two major instructional components used are writing to learn (WTL) and writing in disciplines (WID). The chapter also focused on the subareas of academic journals and writing disciplines.

With this in mind, I still have the goal of using writing to effectively make an impact in the work that I want to do in the future. By reading Mike Bunn’s “How to Read Like a Writer” and the other given materials about rhetorical situations, I now understand that I am reading to learn about writing and the perspectives of the authors. I am putting forth material that is tailored to a specific genre, purpose, and audience. These are basic strategies that have helped me contextualize my actions and purpose while at Northeastern

During this class I expressed the use of rhetoric in the four major essays I wrote, including the Narrative Essay, Rhetorical Mode Essay, Argumentative Essay, and Research Essay. Being able to think critically is a crucial part of success when it comes to writing these essays. At the beginning of this class, I had a much less understanding of this particular area. I struggled with being able to use research effectively to persuade others of a certain argument. I also had difficulty with grammar issues, and paying attention to my overall “voice” of an essay. I believe that I improved significantly in all of those areas because in each essay I have learned to put myself in the audience’s position and view the piece of writing in the reader’s point of