post midterm writing spaces

How to read like a writer by Mike Bunn

Reading as a writer would compel me to question what might have brought the author to make these decisions, and then de- cide what worked and what didn't. What could have made that chapter better or easier to understand? How can I make sure I include some of the good attributes of this writing style into my own? How can I take aspects that I feel the writer failed at and make sure not to make the same mistakes in my writing? Questioning why the author made certain decisions. Considering what techniques could have made the text better. Deciding how to include the best attributes of what you read in your own writing. This is what Reading Like a Writer is all about. When you Read Like a Writer (RLW) you work to identify some of the choices the author made so that you can better understand how such choices might arise in your own writing. The idea is to carefully examine the things you read, looking at the writerly techniques in the text in order to decide if you might want to adopt similar (or the same) techniques in your writing. The goal is to carefully consider the choices the author made and the techniques that he or she used, and then decide whether you want to make those same choices or use those same techniques in your own writing. When you read like a writer, you are trying to figure out how the text you are reading was constructed so that you learn how to "build" one for yourself. You are reading to see how something was constructed so that you can construct something similar yourself. be- fore you even start reading, is to consider the context surrounding both the assignment and the text you're reading. • Do you know the author's purpose for this piece of writing? • Do you know who the intended audience is for this piece of writing? In What Genre Is This Written? Is This a Published or a Student-Produced Piece of Writing? Is This the Kind of Writing You Will Be Assigned to Write Yourself? What Are Questions to Ask As You Are Reading? • What is the author's purpose for this piece of writing? • Who is the intended audience? . Knowing why the piece was written and who it's for can help explain why the author might have made certain choices or used particular techniques in the writing, and you can assess those choices and techniques based in part on how effective they are in fulfilling that purpose and/or reaching the intended audience. • How effective is the language the author uses? Is it too formal? Too informal? Perfectly appropriate? Depending on the subject matter and the intended audience, it may make sense to be more or less formal in terms of language. As you begin reading, you can ask yourself whether the word choice and tone/ language of the writing seem appropriate. • What kinds of evidence does the author use to support his/her claims? Does he/she use statistics? Quotes from famous people? Personal anecdotes or personal stories? Does he/she cite books or articles? • How appropriate or effective is this evidence? Would a dif- ferent type of evidence, or some combination of evidence, be more effective? • Are there places in the writing that you find confusing? What about the writing in those places makes it unclear or confusing? • How does the author move from one idea to another in the writing? Are the transitions between the ideas effective? How else might he/she have transitioned between ideas instead? Notice that in these questions I am encouraging you to question whether aspects of the writing are appropriate and effective in addition to deciding whether you liked or disliked them. What Should You Be Writing As You Are Reading? • What is the technique the author is using here? • Is this technique effective? • What would be the advantages and disadvantages if I tried this same technique in my writing? • Do you know the author's purpose for this piece of writing? I hope the purpose is clear by now; if it isn't, I'm doing a pretty lousy job of explaining how and why you might read like a writer. • Do you know who the intended audience is? Again, I hope that you know this one by now. • What about the genre? Is this an essay? An article? What would you call it? • You know that it's published and not student writing. How does this influence your expectations for what you will read? • Are you going to be asked to write something like this yourself? Probably not in your college writing class, but you can still use RLW to learn about writerly techniques that you might want to use in whatever you do end up writing.

Annoying Ways People Use Sources by Kyle D. Stedman

Reasons why people use sources in annoying ways: 1. You don't know the generally accepted practices of using sourc- es (especially in academic writing) in the U.S. Or, 2. You know the guidelines but don't care. 1. I Swear I Did Some Research: dropping in a citation without making it clear what information came from that source. *The Fix:* Write the sentences preceding the citation with specif- ic words and phrases that will tell readers what information came from where. 2. I Can't Find the Stupid Link: no connection between the first letter of a parenthetical citation and the first letter of a works cited entry. *The Fix* : s to make sure that the first word of the works cited entry is the word you use in your in-text citation, every time. If the works cited entry starts with Brooks, use (Brooks) in the essay text. Citations not including last names may seem to complicate this advice, but they all follow the same basic concept. 3. Am I in the Right Movie? failing to integrate a quota- tion into the grammar of the preceding sentence. *The Fix* :is usually easy: you read your essay out loud to some- one else, and if you stumble as you enter a quotation, there's prob- ably something you can adjust in your lead-in sentence to make the two fit together well. Maybe you'll need to choose a different subject to make it fit with the quote's verb (reader instead of read- ers; each instead of all), or maybe you'll have to scrap what you first wrote and start over. On occasion you'll even feel the need to trans- parently modify the quotation by adding an [s] to one of its verbs, always being certain to use square brackets to show that you adjusted something in the quotation. Maybe you'll even find a way to quote a shorter part of the quotation and squeeze it into the context of a sen- tence that is mostly your own, a trick that can have a positive effect on readers, who like smooth water slides more than they like bumpy slip-and-slides. 4. Uncle Barry and his Encyclopedia of Useless Information: using too many quotations in a row. *The fix* : is to return to each quotation and decide why it's there and then massage it in accordingly. If you just want to use a quote to cite a fact, then consider paraphrasing or summarizing the source material (which I find is usually harder than it sounds but is usually worth it for the smoothness my paragraph gains). But if you quoted because you want to draw attention to the source's particular phrasing, or if you want to respond to something you agree with or disagree with in the source, then consider taking the time to surround each quotation with guidance to your readers about what you want them to think about that quote. 5. Dating Spider-Man: starting or ending a para- graph with a quotation. *The fix*: is the same: in the majority of situations, readers appreci- ate being guided to and led away from a quotation by the writer doing the quoting. Readers get a sense of pleasure from the safe flow of hear- ing how to read an upcoming quotation, reading it, and then being told one way to interpret it. Prepare, quote, analyze. 6. Armadillo Roadkill: dropping in a quotation without introducing it first. *The fix* : The easiest way to effectively massage in quotations is by purposefully returning to each one in your draft to see if you set the stage for your readers—often, by signaling that a quote is about to come, stating who the quote came from, and showing how your read- ers should interpret it.

"I need you to say 'I'": Why First Person Is Important in College Writing by Kate McKinney Maddalena

The key of using "I" is making sure that your choices are appropriate for the context of your paper— whom you're writing it for, and the kind of information it's meant to communicate. Reasons to use "I" 1. Objectivity and integrity 2. Clarifying who is saying what 3. ownership, intellectual involvement, and Exigency 4. Rhetorical Sophistication When (and When Not) to Use First Person? Probably the best way to approach first person in an academic con- text is this: use it to make yourself clear. You'll need "I" for clarity when one of the ideals I described above is in question. Either 1) you'll need to describe an aspect of your personal perspective that will help the reader see (your) whole picture; 2) you'll need to make the di- vide between your voice and the scholars' as clear as possible in order to avoid misrepresenting the scholars' claims; 3) your own claim will need to stand apart from the other perspectives you've presented as something new; or 4) you'll need to guide your reader through the organization of your text in some way. Try I when... 1. The assignment asks you to 2. you are asked to "summarize and respond" 3. you're introducing a paper with a complicated structure 4. you are proud and intellectually invested in what you have to say I is a bad idea when... 1. you are writing a lab report for a science class. 2. The assignment is a simple summary. 3. you use it only once. You don't want to overuse I, but if you are going to use first person, give the reader a hint of your voice in the introduction.