Ten Core Concepts More Than Good Writing

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.

I have been a student at San Jose States University for second years, English 1A was my first regular English class, and over the course of my stay I have grown and learned a lot. As Hospitality major, I do not know whether need my writing skills for future job, but I know the great experience in English 1A class would help me to improve all my writing weakness.

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

Writing varies from a text message to a novel. Writers often have a difficult task in creating a piece of work that truly identifies the meaning of good writing. Every good writer usually starts with the basics such as genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and reflection of the piece. Throughout this semester, we have gone through all of these key terms in great detail with each new assignment that has come our way. In doing this, not only as students but also as writers, we have come to create our own theory of writing. Every writer has a different theory of writing though most are very similar. Now, at this point in the semester after doing countless journals, in-class exercises, and final assignments, I think I have figured out my own

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.

As I look back into my high school years, I thought I wrote papers well. But then coming into a college environment, my papers were mediocre. By overlooking at my past papers, I found that they were unorganized, sloppy and had bad use of diction. From now on, I will use the tools I learned in English 1100-40 as a foundation for the future papers I intend on writing in college. Following the criteria of organizing ideas so that they flow, impacting the reader with diction and also by being creative, will help become an ideal writer. Following the criteria of staying motivated in short and long term goals, taking responsibility for actions and finally the ability to study well will help me develop into a supreme student.

Throughout this class I have learn many different writing styles. We used APA form of writing to type our paper and essay. I have also learned that it’s good to take your time and spend more time thinking about what to write, other than just righting a paper right off back. I have learned that it’s not a good idea to write a paper on the day it’s done, that’s more like a ruff daft. My teacher have helped me understand different point of writing. Which all writing deal with an ethos, pathos and logos, either one or all of them will run through anything that tell you anything in writing. From what emotion are there to who have the rights to speak at the moment to what are the facts to agree with this person. As a class we have read articles, bio from many people to understand that it’s more then what the person is writing. Reading between lines and analyzing a part of the story can tell you more then what the writer is saying. Working together to understand something and work better than being alone thinking about a situation you can’t understand.

The most difficult part as a writer just beginning is the use of proper grammar, and punctuation. Grammar can affect the entire essay if it's not used correctly. Improving my critical thinking will enhance my writing. The writing process isn't always the easiest thing to accomplish. Drawing attention to the essay is important. There are several ways to drawing attention, and accomplishing a overall good essay.

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.

Rowan University’s five core values of the first-year writing program are something that is unfamiliar to me. Although I have completed my intensive college composition 1 class last semester we never went over this information in the course. After reviewing many of the core values I can still see how they can relate to my past experiences with other classes I may have taken. This semester I hope to use this as a prompt to guide me whenever I am writing to ensure that my essays’ are well written.

Core value three, “Understand that writing is shaped by audience, purpose, and context”, helped me use my words to tell so much more than a story but a purpose. I learned how purpose and context can add elements to a writing piece that make show meaning. they bring up the past and people and cultures that are long gone. In regards to audiences and being knowledgably of who you are writing to it is also important to have information literacy. Core value number four, “Understand the role of information literacy in the practice of writing” which is having “the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively”. This core value has aspects to it that help improve a writers judgement by making them more skeptical of which information to use and when. This core value helped me while revising paper two to incorporate free thinking, questioning, as well as demonstrating

It didn’t take long for my attention to be roused, Linda Spencer speaks about writers and inventors in the Introduction to her book, “Writing well in the 21st century: The five essentials” (Spencer, L. 2014. Pp2-3). The example she gives is of an inventor working on an inventions. He doesn’t stop at his first model, typically that model will be revised many times over to get the perfect creation before it is put to use. This brought to mind Steve Jobs, he didn’t stop after he made his first computer. He reworked it again and again until he felt that it was perfect. Then he continued to develop more products, even revising these products over and over again. After a few minutes of thinking on this, I realized what she was meaning about writers working on their own works of art. Yes, they will need to be reviewed, revised, and edited multiple times before it could be called a final project or paper. When she mentions that a sentence can be re written at

From this course there are a few things that I would like to get out of it. I have always had some trouble being able to convey thoughts or ideas clearly to the audience I am writing to. I get a sort of word block and just cannot find the words to be able to describe a situation the way I would like to. I usually end up settling for a lesser version of the thought. I would also like to overcome “writers block”. This is a big deal to me on some topics because I have been given a prompt or guidelines for a writing assignment and I would either have many ideas, or none. My brain will start thinking about the best thing to write about that is new and exciting to myself, but I just cannot seem to figure it out and end up settling with a topic that I have already done or is a popular subject in society so I know I would be able to find enough information about it so I can conjure up a full paper.

After reading “The 12-Step Program to Good Writing” by Michael Gartner, my journalistic knowledge has been expanded and molded all thanks to a journalistic legend. However some of the knowledge came as a surprise. For example, in the second step, Gartner said to read everything including trash. I was taken back because I thought reading an awfully written piece would teach me to write like that. Yet his reasoning proved that it teaches you to identify why that piece is so awful, so you won’t make the same mistake. The second piece of advice I found shocking was in step seven which is to experiment. As a journalist, I thought you were supposed to have the same writing formulas for all articles, but Gartner begs to differ. He taught me to try

The importances of writing and becoming a great writer was stressed both in the reading “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words” and also the film clip “The Essentials of Writing”. Both stressed the importances of making sure you have a clear direction on where you want your paper to go. Making sure you write down all your ideas and to insure that you indeed make your writing flow in a certain manor. Both the film and the article both talked about the importances of not wasting words and time to make a point to use the best words to describe or say what ever you are trying to say. One point that was bought more then one time on both the film and also the reading was to make sure whatever you are writing is something different then what others are writing make sure writing is able to stand out because you never know how the person maybe feeling who is ever reading your writing and also if he has seen multiple papers one the same subject saying the somethings. They both had great knowledge on how to create a better writer and steps you should take before starting a writing assessment I plan on using the writing techniques learned from both the film and the reading to help improve my writing skills.