1. The hardest thing about writing is...
Finding inspiration
Getting started
Conveying what you mean
Finding a plot
Not being interested in the topic
Having confidence
Not repeating yourself
Being specific
Using grammar correctly
You can't use body language or tone or inflection to convey meaning
2. The difference between writing for school and writing my blog is...
Blog writing is free, liberating, it's about what we're interested in, it's writing for yourself and not just for the teacher. It's not evaluated.
School writing is tedious. It has to be structured, and it's on a topic that you don't like. It's what you have to do, not what you want to do.
Blogs are in our own voice. School writing, the voice is formal, no vulgarity, no slang.
You can't combine blog writing with school writing because the tone will be wrong. You can't be creative when making an argument. If school tone is used on blog, the blog will be boring. Not fun. Not juicy.
If you a blog voice in school writing, it would be seen as inappropriate. Depending on the topic, the teacher would say it's okay to be more informal at the beginning but for the main paragraphs, you can't do that. You ahve to cite your sources in a certain way.
School writing isn't for everyone. Blog writing can be your own, so everyone can find a way to like it. Blog writing is more personal.
School writing is based on criteria and standards. It's more rigid, less room for exploration, tangents, questions.
School writing is graded; blog writing is not.
School writing is consistent -- it all looks the same. Blog writing is varied and unpredictable.
Reasons we don't like school writing:
A. Don't know the topic or don't care about the topic
B. Don't like analyzing and summarizing things in books
C. Not interested enough in the topic to write a certain number of pages
WAIT: We ARE interested in topics. We don't like the restrictions, the evaluations, the guidelines, the stifling. School writing makes things boring. School assignments require that we leave ourselves at the door.
3. The most important features of good writing are...
4. My biggest strengths as a writer are...
5. My biggest challenges as a writer are...
6. My top five questions about writing in school are...
A. How do you elaborate on topics? How do you know which facts to put in and which to leave out?
B. How do you come across as someone who knows what they're talking about?
C. What do professors (me) think about student writing? What does Prof Trainor think students' biggest flaws are?"
D. Who grades the JEPET ?
E. What does it take to pass the JEPET?
F. Why is the student's sense of good writing so different from teachers'?
G. Why is MLA and APA format so important?
H. Writing is subjective so how can it be graded?
I. Does learning school writing help on the job?
J. Wouldn't it be better if we had a wider audience, not just the teacher? Does writing for the teacher make our writing worse?
What's teh difference between creative writing (novels, etc) and school writing?
Do teachers really read all the writing assigned?
What are students doing wrong???
Do teachers care?
7. My top five questions about writing in general are...
Wrote this in the wrong post, copied and pasted from the 12:30 class post.
ReplyDelete"I found Thursday's discussion about writing today to be really refreshing. Ever since my AP History class in High school, writing for me has always been something derived from a prompt, read thoroughly and graded. The only standard I’ve ever had for casual writing are a few pats on the head and an informal “good job” from a teacher or peer.
My view on all sorts of writing classes has pretty much been shaped by those past experiences really. It wasn’t until Thursday’s discussion did I realize that I’ve never had a true creative writing class. Other “Creative” writing classes I’ve taken only pushed my creativity as far as how to solve the same question with the same pack of canned answers to be used by the class. It’s become a little hard to distinguish between my academic and creative writing.
The primary difference between my casual writing and academic writing is the lack of formula. As a Psych major a majority of the papers I write are super scientific and absolutely devoid of any personal voice. I get data, interpret the finding and carefully weave the sentence in the best, clearest and most scientific way possible. Not that I don't have my own fun while I do that sometimes, but after a while it gets stale and makes me feel that writing is as much a science as the stuff I write for.
The formulaic style of writing recently bled into my casual writing now as well. I find myself starting my writing with some sort of quote or ultra-verbose description of simple things. I've rarely finished any of the stories I've wanted to write recently because I get so bored and run out of ideas on how to express something. Probably the only way I've made any progress in my casual writing is in doing action sequences. I can turn the simple act of eating a potato chip or sleeping into a thousand-word long epic. A few too many science fiction books are to blame here.
Complaints aside, what I found the most refreshing was the perspective of the class on writing. With so many people on myspace and texting, I've pretty much given up on the concept of decently crafted writing being done by anyone other than me (terrible assumption, I know). It's nice to know that some people still care about the fundamentals of casual writing, especially in this day and age."
Writing has always been an element I wish I was better at. I know the basic structure and elements that should go into a formal essay but my weakest area is content, the understanding and though process that goes into the essay, rather than the formatting. I had one English teacher that I was fortunate enough to have for two years during high school that engaged me to think about the literature we were reading or the movie we would watch. He wasn’t just a regular English teacher, who taught by the book of how to write, then give us something to write, and grade us based on how well we followed the criteria and structure they taught us. He could care less who wrote it that he made us make up names when we turned in each essay, even in just my name I felt that I could be creative in my own thought process. I have yet to have a teacher such as he to make me interested in writing, until now.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the discussion from Thursday, I felt strongly in what a lot of what my classmates were saying in that in typical English classes or writing in general in school has so many rules and restrictions that it becomes unimportant and uninteresting to us as students. Of course we are students and we need to learn how to write professionally and correctly so far as grammar, making more sense, and making our sentences flow, but it more often than not gets too technical. Maybe instead of writing about what Shakespeare meant in Romeo and Juliet, the teacher could go beyond that scope and have us write about how we feel about the play, and how it might relate to us. Possibly ask a different question other than what happened and what was the message but ask how does it relate to us in our lives, is the story of Romeo and Juliet even possible? Can love be the same at the age of 14, 40, and 70? Professor Trainor did make a good point in that, why doesn’t the subject we write about not interest us in that we should make it more interesting by learning more about the subject. I believe any subject can be interesting to write about especially out of the ordinary but it’s in the question to which we have to answer that I think depends on our interest of writing. Writing a 10 page paper on sexual history should be interesting but relying on 5 separate article sources, also having to take at least 10 quotations from, takes the interest out of the writing. Having to worry about the structure of an essay is what makes me uneasy and uninterested in writing an essay. I wish more English classes were more like this one, where it asks us to write about how we feel, what we think, engages us to think, because isn’t it how it will be in our future? Don’t we have to learn how to think for ourselves and be able to explain why it’s important to us and be able to explain what we mean or why we chose to the profession we want? We should be able to write what we think rather than having no choice but to choose a side of the argument and agree to the examples that they (the JPET people) set before us.
Writing is a very difficult task. For me, it takes a lot of time to write. Writing requires thinking, creativity and organization. To write one must understand the topic and understand the material. Writing can be difficult for many people because writing requires thinking outside the box.
ReplyDeleteBloggs on the other hand makes writers to write freely and creatively. Blogging is fun, exciting and asks creativity. Blogging can bring something out of you (best out of you). Blogging can open the door to other people to comment on your blog. The difference between blogging and writing are that blogging is a free writing and writing for academic is structural. Therefore, blogging is the future and writing is the past.
Writing is a very personal subject and can be extremely difficult to come forth and explain yourself clearly. There are several issues that I have, to put forth my thoughts in a manner that interests others, to create a flow that finally goes somewhere and to embrace writing with confidence. I can see that in our discussion, an interesting topic can really change these problems. It is always easier to discuss something you have a passion for. I mean it’s easier to do anything if we have a passion for it. What about the topics we don’t have a passion for, can we still write for them? When discussing ideas in class the topic came up about boring subjects, some that I previously thought were boring turned out to be fun. The root of the problem might be the restrictions and guidelines that are set in place. Being told to do something one way leaves no room for creativity. Basically once you put rules onto something, you take the fun out of it. This makes blogging much more interesting. There is room to roam free and grow as a writer.
ReplyDeleteWhy have these restrictions made our brains rot? These guidelines and examples that are attached to each writing assignment are designed to hold our hand and show us the way. Our teachers try their hardest to engrave a small once of skill, their intentions are in the right place, but all this just results in scared little children. I’m scared now can’t you see it! The idea of not following the restrictions intrigued me though. What if we wrote what we felt about the topic, did the research and from there tried to get the good grade? Well, we know the answer, it’s called an F. Maybe there is a way to concur the fear and receive an A at the same time. With this class I hope to accomplish just that. I hope to be more confident in my writing, learn a few tricks, make a few friends and roam free around the blogging fields.
I found our discussion very interesting to see how other students felt about how teaching is at our school. All of the issues that students were having, I have still yet to come across. It is amazing to me that students believe that their teachers do not care if they attend class or even about their school work. Many students were complaining that their teachers may not even read their 10 page research paper or care about their attendance. I am appalled! I cannot believe that there are actually teachers out there that would do this. What is the point of teaching? Why are they getting paid, if they are not doing their job? I can definitely sympathize with my fellow students al though I have not experienced any of these issues since I have been attending this school.
ReplyDeleteIn my major, Communicative Disorders, I found that my teachers really care about attendance, the quality of my assignments, and if I am participating in class. I am not really sure if it is because of their nature of being a Speech Therapist or if it is because my major is not impacted with thousands of students. Majority of my teachers know me by name, which makes it hard to skip class. (haha) But too be honest I find it very sad that many students feel that their teachers are not teaching and to be frank, really just don’t care. I feel that my teachers actually care too much. I have has any encounters with teachers saying that I need to email them if I am not going to be attending class or teachers taking roll twice in one class period just to make sure students did not leave after a short 10 minute break. I am not saying that it is a bad thing that my teachers actually care but it is funny how so many students are having a totally different college experience. I can see why there why there are so many discouraged students. I would be too. Why would I go to class? My teacher will never know… right? This is what probably goes on everyday in a students mind especially if they can get away with it. This is definitely something that I think that teachers should pay more attention too. There is definitely a problem in our school system. This needs to be changed. I believe that students should feel that they are getting their money’s worth especially when it come to one’s education.
Writing has always been a tedious part of school for me, especially if I wasn't interested in the topic. When I found out our English 414 class would be mostly blogging, I was ecstatic. I was excited to actually write and feel free to express myself without following a strict formatted essay. But after my first post, and receiving feedback from the class, I realize that I was still unconsciously writing as if I was writing for JEPET.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm blogging, I still find myself trying to perfect my grammar and make it sound, well, smart. I think the problem a lot of students have is they've been under so much restriction in writing throughout school, that they don't have enough freedom to write with a real passion behind their words. Probably because a lot of papers students would have to write was about a book, or a colonial period we care nothing about. There's not much passion behind that. Now that we have the freedom to write about whatever it is we feel, we may feel a little strange in the process. But this way, we are able to actually develop our own style, and learn exactly what kind of writer we are.
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ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the class discussion on Thursday. From the discussion I was able to see that many others have had a similar, negative, experience with school writing like I have. I never really liked school writing because of all the expectation and requirements that are enforced. I do agree that when teachers gives out a format of what is expected on an assignment it’s a good way to give students an understanding and idea of how to layout their paper, but I don’t think it should be something enforced as far as it being the only correct way to write. Additionally, I think that many teachers have failed on teaching writing. Many teachers only teach students the traditional form of writing, the five-paragraph essay; an intro with a thesis, three points to support the thesis and a conclusion to summarize everything. One main thing that teachers failed to understand is that doesn’t always have to take five paragraphs or ten pages to make a point.
ReplyDeleteAs long as I could remember writing has always been difficult for me, mainly because I’m so focused on meeting the requirements or not really finding a connection with the topic. Additionally writing has always taken me a long time, I think mainly because I’ve had issues of putting forth my thoughts and being insecure of not making any sense. Which is why I like the format of this class. I like the fact that we are moving away from this traditional form of writing. I also like the way that there really isn’t a restriction in how, we as students, could write; and the fact that we could extend our imagination. After taking this class I hope to be more comfortable with my writing and not afraid to express myself and opinion in a different way.