For this week, I’d like you to tell me about your experience as a writer and reader just in the last 2.5 weeks. I’ve offered you three questions to guide you, though you can also approach this from a different angle if you choose. However you approach it, write your entry as a post — not as a set of numbered answers.
For this post, I encourage you to be as specific as you can, and to use concrete examples — a specific paper, the vocab quiz, or a blog post. I would also encourage you to try and talk about your writing in terms other than “good” and “bad.”
Sometimes, students think that I give them this assignment because I want them to prove that they’ve “drunk the kool-aid,” and are working to become “better” writers, where better is defined primarily by my directives in class. On the contrary — I’m not interested in that at all — I’m assuming that you’re all interested in becoming better writers, and that you are, at the very least, actively considering what I tell you. I’m also quite confident, just based on the assignments, blog posts, and class discussion, that you’re becoming better writers. Instead, I’m really interested in the specific steps that you’re taking at the beginning of the quarter, and what your state of mind is right now. Research suggests that students who take time to think about how they’re adapting (whether slowly or quickly) are more successful — so I want to give you that space. Also: feel free to whine and disagree. I’m unlikely to do anything different because you’re whining, but I also commit to accept your complaint, and your right to voice it.
1. What directions are you being given (in this class, or in other classes where you’re asked to do writing assignments); and how do you see them as encouraging, changing, or conflicting with your own concept of your writing style, and what writing is supposed to do?
2. How are you dealing with these directives? Are you attempting to conform to them, or choosing to not-learn, or a mixture of both? (And however you’re dealing with them, why are you choosing that course of action?)
3. Writing directives are likely to affect the way that you approach reading — so I’d be interested in hearing how your reading process/habits are changing, too — or equally interested to hear that they haven’t changed?
Leave a Reply