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- The writing I did this week:
-This week I hadn’t actually done much writing. Besides taking notes like usual for my classes, I didn’t have any extensive writing I had to accomplish. - What went well this week:
-I’m happy that when I had received feedback on my Analysis Rough Draft assignment, I wasn’t off the mark on the way I had written my Analysis. Although there are many things to correct, I’m satisfied knowing my paper had met the requirements. - What went bad this week:
-Honestly my week was fine until I had realized I had made a huge mistake in my weekly blogs. I didn’t realize I had to write a writing log in this format every week. I had thought it was only the writing prompt I had to finish, thus it was a huge slap in the face when I had realized I had been doing this assignment wrong the entire time. Honestly I’m very stressed out over my mistake on this, but I can’t do anything about it since it was my fault for not having read carefully enough to the directions. I can only prevent such an error from happening in the future now. - To-do list:
-I have to start editing my Analysis Rough draft
-Start studying for a future mid-term for Modern American History.
-Re-read everything I’ve every been assigned to do for all my classes. - Where I left off:
-I don’t have anything written of last week, but going by my memory I left off at summarizing my thoughts of the work I had done this week. At the end of each week I’ll have a moment to think about all the work, readings and writings, I had done for each of my classes. I do this to understand what next I should focus on. At this moment, I have to focus on thoroughly studying for a Modern American History quiz.
-After I’ve finished with studying for American History, I will move on to thinking about how to reorganize my Analysis rough draft.
-I will also solve some practice problems for my pre-calculus class. For this task I don’t necessarily need to spend too much time as I’ve understood the lesson, and the homework won’t be due for another month. This seems to be more of a mini-task to do in-between other tasks so as not to get bored. - Honestly, I’m very annoyed and angry at myself for not having realized or, rather, remembering sooner about the first part of the writing log. I had practically thrown this memory to the back of my head thinking that I would no longer need to do anything more than the writing prompt given each week. I guess this is just another way for me to learn to re-read directions in not just the same manner, but with a different perspective on how to follow directions. So as to give insight to myself on what the directions are asking off me.
- The writing I did this week:
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Chapter: “Some People Are Just Born Good Writers” by Jill Parrot from Bad Ideas About Writing.
Society & History:
History has foretold for countless centuries that good writers were born that way since the beginning. In the past, people had believed that “good” writers were chosen in some way by God himself. If not that then they were directly inspired by God. Thus leading to this social misconception, held by all kinds of people, in which there are only the “genius” writers. The remnants of writers aren’t in this category therefore they can never be “good” writers in their lifetimes.
Such history would then create a society of people that would maintain this notion that because they weren’t born as a “good” writer, then they automatically disqualified from becoming a better writer. These thoughts will negatively impact your ability to improve as a writer, thus further propagating your decline in this endless loop of decay as a writer. The more you think you just aren’t a “good” writer, then the more you disassociate yourself from the occupation of “writer.” When that happens you can’t improve as a writer because you yourself don’t address yourself as a writer that can improve.
Audience:
The readers of this chapter are the audience being spoken to. To be more specific, the audience would generally entail the young writers reading this chapter to thus improve their own writing. Thus Parrott addresses his/her/their audience as the young writers who put themselves down because of a common misconception held by both history and society themselves.
Speaker:
The speaker of this chapter of Bad Ideas About Writing is Jill Parrott themselves. He/She/They speak throughout this chapter through their own eyes. In one section of this chapter, Parrott as a teacher/professor had made mention of how they had a personal experience of this negative misconception causing visible impacts on society. Due to such a personal experience, I would believe the speaker is the author themselves because of the personal experiences they are able to share to support their claims in this chapter. They had spoken of how students were being regarded as by Parrott’s fellow teacher/professor colleagues.
Message:
There are many messages being told in this chapter. One for example is to tell students to forget this preconceived they’ve held for years that they can’t be “good” writers simply because they weren’t born as one. Such thoughts of inadequacy will cause a student to thus fail. Rather than failing from not being born with such a talent, society fails because they have accepted failure and nothing more. Leaving only failure to remain.
Another message can be to other teachers/professors that a student shouldn’t be punished because they are inexperienced. This message came from Parrott’s personal experience of when his/her colleagues were commenting about a student’s writing because of their inexperience. Parrott’s response was to question their statements because a teacher’s job would be to help their students improve. Parrott had found it obvious that student’s wouldn’t be able to write outstanding papers because they are just students. As long as one continues to hold the title of student, then a teacher should be willing to help improve that student rather than reprimand them for being inexperienced.
Purpose:
The purpose of this chapter is to remove this horrible preconceived notion that a particular group of people were born with the ability to write. Parrott, wants to teach future writers that every one of them is qualified to improve to become a better writer than the one they were the day before. Society might tell you otherwise however they are wrong. History itself has been wrong for countless years, and so is society. Thus you, a young writer, shouldn’t believe you can’t grow to become a better writer. Like Parrott says, “Good writers are not born. They are learned.” (Parrott, 74).
Context:
Parrott uses kairos in a way that makes their story flow very smoothly. What I mean is that in the beginning Parrott had started the story with more of a calmer tone. So as not to scare you away. Parrott started his piece with a simple introduction of history/background information about the purpose of his/her for writing this chapter. After the introductions are done, Parrott slowly continues to change the tone of the chapter to keep that feel of not wanting to scare her/his readers away from continuing to read on. After he/she has done this, he/she changes their tone to be one of sympathy for her/his audience. They tell us, the audience/readers, a story about an experience when Parrott had realized how students would be punished for the inexperience. Instead of helping students improve themselves out of this inexperience, teachers/professors were reprimanding their students. This story was used to finally open up Parrott’s readers to continue on to learn of the juicier details about this topic of “being born to write.” After this little empathetic moment, Parrott is now able to start on teaching her readers the importance of improving your writing. The empathetic episode Parrott had insinuated was meant to appeal to her reader’s feelings. That way they would feel more open to the ideas they were giving out. Otherwise, some people would avert their attention elsewhere or wouldn’t truly listen to the advice they were being told. They would continue on in this daze of not being able to become a better writer forever. Parrott doesn’t want that, so she/he changes her/his tone to appear more empathetic to the audience. It’s a very good use of Kairos because it works remarkably well in instilling ideas into people. They drop their guards and allow information to make their way into their heads to be remembered rather than forgotten.