Unit 1 Final

February 14, 2011

I was lucky enough to have an English professor my first semester of college that completely changed my perspective on writing. This class allowed me to have more confidence in my writing and also taught me that writing can be used as a tool to explore ideas and make a difference in the world.  I can still improve my writing in many ways but I believe I came into English 102 with the beginning of a strong foundation in academic writing. I have been introduced to some of the skills necessary to be a successful academic writer. These skills might include such things as using a reading as a lens to examine the general cause of an important issue, being conversant with my sources, and finding my role in the conversation. This semester I plan to practice and improve these skills because I believe they are the most important aspects of academic writing.

English 102 is a chance to use the rhetorical features of academic writing I learned last semester by participating in service learning and posting my work on a blog.  With the help of service-learning I can join a very real conversation on a topic that is prevalent in the community. In “Service-Learning and First-Year Composition” Haussamen states, “Service learning is not primarily social assistance; it is a pedagogy, one that addresses not only the issue of how best to learn but also the question of the best purposes of learning;” the idea of joining a legit and intelligent conversation has made writing for school more relevant to my learning and life in general (Haussamen,414). Posting my writing on a blog will force me to consider my audience and what I say more carefully. It will also be the most useful way to put my writing out in the middle of an ongoing conversation since so many people post their ideas on the internet as well. Service-learning, researching, and blogging is about finding a “middle ground between developing an idea that is entirely independent of what experts have written on a subject and producing a paper that does nothing but repeat other people’s ideas” to
propose the problems and solutions I see in real life situations (Rossenswasser,216).

A good writer must also be a good reader. This doesn’t always mean simply reading an actual text but reading the environment surrounding them. I know a big part of my research will involve reading articles and periodicals of what experts have said about low income mothers and their baby’s health but through service-learning I will also read the environment of the Baby Steps agency and actually see mothers that struggle with finances and raising a child first hand. In order to use reading as a lens then I must first realize that the mothers at Baby Steps are a small portion of a bigger problem. In my research they represent many mothers across Idaho, or even on a much bigger scale, the United States, but that would require much more research than can be done in a semester. The periodicals I read will help me learn just how big this problem really is. There are two steps in using my reading as a lens to get to the roots of this community dilemma. First, I must literally look at the things the reading is trying to say and second, defamiliarize myself with the reading meaning, I need to allow myself the opportunity to see things differently (Rossenwasswer,213). By applying my research to different situations I can pull what I want out of any article or Baby Steps session that I attend. For example, in my research I might decide to focus on how the stress of living in a low-income family affects the development of a child under a year old rather than how agency’s such as Baby Steps help mothers get back on their feet financially. Allowing myself view things from different angles also teaches me to get rid of any bias that I might have toward the issue. 

            Academic writing is about joining a conversation with some of the most informed and well researched people of a certain genre. Writing on a blog can be tricky for this very reason. Every time I think about blogging, not just nonsense but, actual informed facts and ideas, I think of the millions of people who have the chance of reading what I write. It’s daunting to realize that my audience has just expanded from my teacher and my peers to an infinite number of bloggers and researchers; some are experts and some most certainly are not. It’s the experts on the issue that make blogging intimidating because nobody wants to look like an idiot on the internet. Someone could just tear apart every piece of information I just researched to ask me a million questions that I will have to back-up with reasonable thoughts and facts. This is why it’s important to make sure I am conversant with my sources. I need to find the “middle ground” that I mentioned earlier because “typically, inexperienced writers either use sources as answers-they let the sources do too much of their thinking-or ignore them altogether as a way of avoiding losing their own ideas (Rossenwasser, 216).” If I use other experts to prove that my ideas are reasonable and not just grabbed out of thin air then it makes my claims seem more educated. I will also have the resources to look back on should someone try to contradict what I say. Through that middle ground I can begin to create my own space in the conversation and perhaps, depending on the genre, might even become an expert myself.

There are specific tools that I can use to help make academic writing easier for me. A lot of time I find that it is difficult to find my place in a conversation when I feel like one of my sources has said everything I want to say, I seem to struggle the most in this area. Two tools that I believe would work well in helping me with this problem can be found in “Writing Analytically”, a very helpful book on writing academically. Rossenwasser mentions “reading with and against the grain” and “uncovering the assumptions in a reading-where the piece is coming from” (205). Using this information I can get a more objective view on the source by finding “what else it believes that is more fundamental than what it is overtly declaring” (Rossenwasser, 209). It would also be important to view the source and what they write as two independent things. I agree with Rossenwasser when he says “written works…are produced by authors but not ultimately controlled by them” (210). If I could just step back and see what the author is communicating without realizing it then it would be easier to uncover something I don’t necessarily agree with. I can sift through the information this way and place myself right in the middle. 

The whole idea of using writing as a way to find my place role in a conversation brings a more relevant feel to English and school too. Too many times people who attend college don’t understand why required courses such as English are necessary but I’ve learned that it’s a very good communicative tool that will be necessary should I ever feel the need to state my stance on an issue which will more than likely happen sometime during my career after college. Last semester I feel that I learned the basic rhetorical features of academic writing and even had the chance to try it out a little bit. No doubt, this semester I am simply taking what I learned and applying it to real life situations and hopefully finding a solution for low income mothers and their families.

Works Cited

Hausseman, Brock. Teaching English in the Two-Year
College. 1997. Print

Rossenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. Reading
Analytically. Print.