Roy Popkin: A Personal Essay

Reading Response on “How to read like a writer” by Michael Bunn The essay written by Michael Bunn, entitled “How to Read Like a Writer” conferred the main outlook that someone as a writer needs to examine, and keep in mind while reading any kind of written manuscripts far beyond the typical reading set of mind.

reading the works of other authors is vital to the growth of a writer. This allows the writer to

While reading a variety of stories, I am able to point out literary elements to my students. I know reading to my students can teach my students about good writing (Bruning, 2011, p. 295). I also

As I was reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I was thinking about how much I have missed in the books I have read due to not knowing how to look for certain literary devices. Something as simple as not knowing how to read between the lines caused me to miss out on points the author was trying to make. Over the course of reading How to Read Literature Like a Professor, I have learned many ways to analyze literature that I did not know before.

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are,” (Cooley). Throughout our lives, reading has impacted us in many ways. Often times books give people different perspectives on their lives. People with high stress levels often find comfort in reading books to take their mind

Jessica Bartlein November 10, 2014 Phase 5 Individual Project LITR201-1404A-06 Melissa Eidson Reading can open one’s mind to the imagination of anything to be dreamt of. Poems, short stories, novels, plays, and dramas are all different types of literature that exist today. All of the different types of literature have their own ways and formats that they are written in. Literature has many ways of speaking to us as we read them, it can strike up emotions or memories that we have or it can make us rethink a situation that we are going through. I believe that literature can help a person open up through his or her stories.

Mike Bunn in “How to Read Like a Writer” begins with a revelation: that writing is a process in which individual words are specifically chosen and strung together in a way that impacts the reader. With this in mind, Bunn encourages his students to read like a writer. Reading

I have made it my goal this year to read harder and older books rather than newer and easy books. I think that I have followed through quite well, though I did read a few easy books. Three years ago I purchased an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite I have found it easier to read challenging books. It makes books easier to read because, of the in-text dictionary I can look at the definition of an unknown word inside the book, it takes the words I have searched and, makes them into flashcards that I can go through later. By virtue of this technology I was able to read many challenging books such as the Three Musketeers, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, a quarterly synthetic biology journal, and many other challenging books. Fiction books I read mainly for pleasure, unless assigned or if it's a fiction wrote in an historic time period. I appreciate historic books because they offer an insight on the thinking and way of life of the people of that era. I also think that reading books written in an classical style influences your writing style. It is my opinion that some of today's literature has become more simply worded and not nearly as descriptive as previous eras. I found that in Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne there were many outdated theories that I had never heard of this gave me an insight into the ways people thought. I have two mediums by which I read first of which is my Kindle Paperwhite which has almost every

The most interesting aspect I discovered about my writing this semester is my ability to read, appreciate, and interpret a piece of literature and write analytically about it. In this course I’ve grown to change my reading process completely. I had a tendency to read

Learning how to effectively grab my audience’s attention is a big task for me to tackle this semester. As previously learned in week one’s archived workshop “The Hallmarks of Effective Writing,” the basic components of what effective writing strives to convey are “awareness of purpose, audience, and form” (Hood, 2012, slide 5). For example, if I am writing a paper for a topic that would be intended for children, I cannot use sophisticated vocabulary that the audience may not understand. If the audience is unable to decipher the vocabulary words in the essay, they are more likely to lose interest in reading the paper. Sentence structure, grammar, and learning how to effectively reach my audience have affected my ability to communicate effectively in the past due to the difficulty involved in maintain proper writing etiquette and keeping the reader’s

Though many people nowadays disregard the usefulness of literature in modern society I belong to the opposite sect of folk. Reading and literature is more than just words and writeing, its ways for the dead to speak and advise those to come through understanding of common feelings. Whether the author meant to mean something through metaphor or more literally is not important, what is important is that us as the readers are able to communicate and interpret needed information from the subject and author. Something that I sometimes think is lacking in todays society is not just this communictation but understanding. Furthermore reading it gives us a way to understand and invest in lives other than ourselves. Secondly reading and understanding what we read allows us to feel empathetic towards the subject thus allowing us to share our own story of feeling and ideas. This is

No one is quite sure at what exact time reading became more for pleasure than for knowledge, but today, novels are expected to be entertaining and used to relax the mind. What an author cannot do to make their writing entertaining is to sit in their offices all day and churn out page by page of material. Authors must first feel the emotions they describe in order to enable the reader to relate to the text. In order to write an effective piece of writing, an author must first experience and understand their own lives and apply it to their writing in order to be engaging and of use to their reader.

The first day of my freshmen year in high school English, I was so assured that I would do excellent in that class. It turns out I was wrong because English has been my worst subject and I failed it, but in that experience I learned a very valuable lesson

Comparative Analysis Over the past month, we have been studying the concept of reading and writing in different communities. To assess this, we have read two different texts. Richard Rodriguez’s the achievement of desire”, from his autobiography “Hunger of Memory”; and Lucille McCarthy’s “A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing across the Curriculum” from “Research in the Teaching of English”. Both answer key questions regarding what it takes to become a great reader and writer, however, from the reading that I have done, each one only answers one part of the question. Rodriguez’s main focus is in the aspect of reading, whereas McCarthy mainly focuses on the writing portion. Both do a decent job of analyzing and putting forth a view of how they believe a person can best perform in these environments. This then allows us to use their concepts and create our own version, based on their points of view. But why should we care? Most people at this level of academia will have developed a system of writing that works for them, and will have a difficult time breaking from it if they’re process doesn’t meet the criteria that Rodriguez, and McCarthy put forth. The reason it’s so important is because of implications these ideas have. Both authors put forth concepts that are indirectly related to one another and that are highly beneficial to all who will apply them. They will force you to conform to new environments in order to succeed, this in turn will make you more

Raymond Mar, a psychologist at Your University in Canada and Keith Oatley a professor An The University of Toronto, they both say that “individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathies with them and view the world from their perspectives.” I agree that reading certain types of books can help people further understand and see things from a different point of view. Reading helps to open people's eyes and to teach life lessons or to show there are other things to believe in and know other than what they have always been told to know. Getting different types of books, types that are not always the same as the books that you normally read can help you to view things differently. For example from personal experience a new book can help your imagination grow, readings helps me a lot when I need to come up with new ideas for an art class. The new places a book takes you the new images you see while you are reading the new stores you hear and the happy ending your book might have can change the way you are feeling it can brighten up your day.