Using Sources Summary and Response
The reading “Using Sources”, by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz, is about identifying the most useful sources and integrating them into your own piece of work. It is important to note that finding information is easy but knowing how to turn them into “credible information that will be persuasive to your intended audience” is what makes someone a good writer. The authors further explain the whole idea behind the term “infotention.” It is simply a fancy word that explains how to collectively use your brain and web to identify the sources that don’t only provide you with the most valuable information but also comes from a well-known source. Moving on, the authors differentiate between paraphrasing and summarizing information, using quotations to emphasize the author’s precise words, and utilizing signal words to “characterize the author’s or source’s viewpoint as well as your own.” The latter part of the reading talks about employing sources in a correct and a proper fashion that would further develop your argument, instead of making it sound like a cluster of unorganized information. In my opinion, having guidelines to do all these things was really helpful because as much as the argument made sense, but if I couldn’t use it properly then there wouldn’t be any point. So having guidelines that I can follow gave me a physical sense of direction as to how and where to improve when using sources.
Introduction to Refining Your Writing Style Summary and Response
The reading “Introduction to Refining Your Writing Style”, by Lisa Blankenship, gives its readers important notes to keep in mind when writing a paper. For one, when you write a paper, whether academic or popular, discourse communities should always be part of your conscious. It is a fact that for academic writing certain disciplines, values and styles should be given special consideration for your point to go across. What is also important to consider is the audience. If one is employing the use of conventions that are not persuasive to the intended audience, the argument wouldn’t be persuasive at all. When a person understands what his/her audience’s style is, he/she gains “cultural capital” over its audience. In response to this reading, what I found really interesting was how learning different styles give one flexibility in approaching different kinds of audience. Not only this, if he/she intend on improving their respective styles, they also can get the attention of a more professional audience in that field.