- Think of two different writing situations you have found your- self in. What did you need to do the same in those two situations to place your writing appropriately? What did you need to do differently?
- Think of a writing assignment that you will need to complete this semester. Who’s your audience? What’s the occasion or context? What’s your message? What’s your purpose? What documents/genres are used? How does all that compare to the writing you are doing in this class?
Please Answer Both Questions in your response.
Throughout my academic career thus far, I’ve been in many different writing situations. Two of these situations have been in the last six months. For a College Now physics class I took during my last semester of high school, I had to write a 1500 word paper on any scientific topic of my choice. Another writing assignment was the creative non-fiction essay I wrote recently for this class.
The early stages of the physics paper were the most challenging. Picking a topic was very challenging, as it was very open ended and broad. I could literally choose any topic as long as it was scientific, and I also had the freedom to choose what aspects of the topic to discuss. For some people, this level of freedom is a blessing, however, it was the opposite for me. I’m a generally indecisive person, and this problem is amplified in writing. I didn’t start writing until I actually had a topic, which led to weeks of doing nothing but stressing for essentially no reason. I fell victim to the myth discussed in “What is “Academic” Writing?”, “Writers only start writing when they have everything figured out.”
When writing the creative non-fiction essay, the potential scope of ideas and topics was much narrower. Ultimately I had to draw from personal experiences and find a way to connect them. The most difficult part of this essay was the concept of writing informally. Every single essay I’d written up to this point had been very formal and critical, whether it was an SAT essay, an essay for English or History class, or a college entrance essay. This time around, I started writing immediately, and I found that my ideas became much clearer this way.
Despite these being very different writing assignments, there were similarities in my writing process. For both assignments, I had to dispose of the use of the five-paragraph essay. I also tried a ridiculous amount to perfect my first drafts. There were many differences in the process and content as well. As I said before, the creative non-fiction essay was informal, and therefore I had to use the word “I” frequently. I also took a different approach when I first drafted this assignment. Instead of trying to find the perfect topic and structure before I started writing, I instead opened a Word document and wrote everything that came to mind, restructuring only after I had a significant amount of content.
This semester I will have to attend a concert and write a report on my experience. My audience is essentially only my professor, although it could be an engaging read for others as well. The purpose of this report is to describe my experiences at the concert. I will also have to analyze the musical elements involved and relate them to topics discussed in class, similar to interpreting and analyzing texts. Writing and music are both forms of art, and are both open to interpretation. Just like in writing assignments, I will have to analyze and think critically, and then provide my own thoughts and support them with evidence.
During my senior year in high school, I had to write a college essay that I would submit to all the colleges I was planning on applying to. This task seemed to put a lot of pressure on me due to the fact that I was told a college essay can be the deciding factor for your acceptance. The school year before consisted of writing multiple research papers. These two writing assignments were similar and different in their own unique manner. The assignments were alike in the way that proper organization was vital and that there had to be some sort of voice present. There was a wider range of differences between these two types of writings. The research paper was majorly based on information and how it is put into the paper; as compared to the college essay, which required an evident voice and act as a clear reflection of your personal self. Also, it was more acceptable to use the word “I” in the college essay since it had a more personal objective.
In my communications class, it will be required of me to construct a persuasive speech on whichever topic I choose. For this assignment, I will make the individuals in my class, including the professor, my audience for interactive purposes. A potential topic for my speech is that all illegals, as long as they aren’t making any contribution towards the country such as joining the armed forces or the work force, should be denied equal protection under the law. Articles on such topics and court cases will assist me with gathering facts and multiple viewpoints on the subject. This assignment is similar to the writing I do in this class in the way that I will have a stance on a topic and, with proper reason and evidence, have to back up my claim.
Two different writing situations that I was in were a final English essay of a very difficult journey you have went through and the second piece of writing was to write a critical essay on murder for a criminology class. In my final English essays we were required to talk about a personal journey you have gone through and how we grew each step of the way, you spoke from your own personal experience. In my criminology essay I was required to give a factual essay we were required to do research and we had to present factual evidence. In both my personal essay and my factual essay we had to get our main focus across. In my personal essay I had to show the reader how I grew as a person along my journey. In my factual essay I had to get my point across that murders are not in a mental state of being when they commit murder. I was required to make an essay in a personal form while in my factual essay I had to only use facts to get my point across. In both I still had to persuade my reader into what I believe in and to be able to grab the attention of the reader.
One of my writing assignments I had this semester was a speech outline that I would have to eventually present in class. My audience was my fellow classmates and my topic was to introduce another student. The context was a communications class and my main message was to glamorize my fellow student. I interviewed my classmate and we spoke about personal life stories and accomplishments. The writing in class is very similar in that we have to really get the listener to really see how accomplished the classmate is or to get the reader to feel a personal relationship to the piece of writing.
Throughout my academic career, I have found myself in various writing situations. The two that I remember most were my college essay and the classic New York State Regents critical-lens essay. In both of these situations, it was very crucial to analyze my audience. For the college essay my audience would be very educated collegiate staff who would be deciding the fate of my academic career based on this essay, but for the critical lens it was sort of a professor audience who would actually grade my work. In both essays I was proving a certain point that I needed to clearly convey to my audience in an organized manner. However, the college essay was a lot more personal, while the regents essay was more academic; so I had to cater the tone of my writing to the topics I was writing about. After reading the piece on academic writing, I laughed to myself because I remember not being able to write anything until I had it all figured out, which is not the case anymore. As time went on I realized that you figure out what you want to say as you write, not before it.
After examining the syllabus for this course it has been brought to my attention that one writing assignment that I will need to complete this semester is a research project. This is a very specific assignment, as I will have to conduct my own research on a topic that I most likely do not know much about or am interested in. Regardless, I will complete this assignment to my fullest abilities, using what I have read in “What is Academic Writing” to guide me through the daunting task of proving my own point through research. The audience to my writing assignment would be my professor, and most likely my fellow classmates as well. The context of this assignment is to research a specific topic and to present a clear idea/argument for analysis. This argument should be a carefully organized presentation of my viewpoint with supporting evidence. My purpose in writing this is not only to inform the audience of the conclusions I will draw from my research, but to make my audience consider my viewpoint and hopefully agree with it. My research for this paper will be quite different than my high school methods of simply using google or Wikipedia for information. Instead, I am now required to use “scholarly” articles and writings from various library databases. This is because most of the information you find on google from random websites cannot be considered credible, and therefore might provide false information which in turn downgrades my credibility as a writer. All of this compares to the current writing I am doing in this class because I am being introduced to “Academic Writing”, learning to write with a purpose.
During my sophomore year in high school I was applying to a special program called STEP. The program was actually held at Baruch college, which is where I am attending college. But anyways, they required everyone to write an essay about themselves, basically a summary of their lives and why they should be accepted into this program. Now in college I am required in my music class to write a report on an experience with a concert. From the passage “What is academic writing” the author mentions some myths and one one of them was that some people just have it and some people don’t. When I was a sophomore in high school I would read some of my peers’ work and I would be flabbergasted because my work in comparison was trash. The passage tells us that no first draft is perfect and as long as I work on it I will eventually become a great writer. For the essay I needed to submit for Baruch STEP my audience was the acceptance office of Baruch. My purpose was to impress and show off my talents so I can prove that through hard work I can achieve anything. The music paper’s audience will be my teacher and I know he is expecting us to write on our experience also. These two essays are similar in that they both require personal experience. Both essays allow the use of “I” which was another myth in the “What is academic writing” passage. For my Baruch STEP essay I had to express my enthusiasm on paper which very hard to do. But instead of just stating that I was excited, I explained in detail how I was feeling, because tone is very hard to express on paper. The occasion of my music paper is to show that I have a more in depth understanding of the music and it’s not just random notes played together. For both of these essays I will have to think critically and analyze the situation along with providing my own personal experience. Overall the myths and breaking down the writing situation from“What is academic writing” has open my eyes to writing a essay
Perhaps up to now research has meant going straight to Google and Wikipedia, but college will require you to search for and find more in-depth information. Last year, two writing assignments provoked me to critically think. One prompt asked for an in depth explanation, criticism, and reasoning for criticism of an entire sub unit within psychology. The question “what is odd about odd numbers?” was the guiding prompt for the other essay. For both of these essays, it took me about an hour to write 100 words, or the first paragraphs. Generally, I write an outline of 3-6 main points that supports my overall thesis, however for these two assignments my brainstorming escapade lead me to write without an outline. Even though these essays asked for my input about the content, the content completely stumped me. I wrote the psychology essay with mainly anecdotes. But I fell short of the linking the anecdotes to the idea of Neo-Freudian psychology thoroughly because most or if not all of Neo-Freudian concepts cannot be precisely proven nor disproven. As for the odd number essay, I searched odd number essays in search engines for assistance. In the end, my odd number essay mostly resembled content from other responses to the question. Lacking my own thoughts, my paper displayed my superficial knowledge of numbers and therefore I think I didn’t write that paper well. This semester in music class, my professor assigned a response about a concert. The purpose is to write about the style of the music and our understanding of the music’s qualities. The only person who will read the essays is the professor; however, I will seek academic guidance from the writing center. Compared to the writing I have done in class, writing outside of class has also allowed me to brainstorm well.
In my 13 years of schooling, I have been assigned many different writing assignments. Two essays that I will never forget writing are my college admissions essay and a personal narrative I had to write my senior year in high school English class. For each of these papers I had to be extremely personal about myself and disclose information I was only comfortable writing about, things I would never say out loud. I also had to consider who my audience was, although the audiences were different for both papers (one was for the College Board and the other was for my peers to read) they would play a role in how my paper was written. In my personal narrative, I had to tell a story about myself, in a free write, whereas my college essay was prompted by officials. The college officials always asked the same questions, “Why should we accept you?” “What are your accomplishments?” it was always the same. I answered all the basic questions and felt like I had accomplished nothing yet, I had just submitted the essay of a lifetime, and my whole future was lying within that essay.
This semester I have to write an essay for music based on a concert I attend. The audience for my paper will be my professor, as she is the one who assigned the essay. The purpose behind these papers is to reflect back on what we have learned not only in class but also while attending a concert on our own. This relates to papers that we write in English class because we also reflect on readings and our discussions from class. I am going to attend the musical Matilda to fulfill my requirement of attending a concert, after I will write my reflection about what I saw and how the show made me feel. The Broadway musical will encase many genres of performance from acting to singing to engaging with the audience.
Through my years as a student, I have been assigned to write numerous amounts of papers on a variety of topics. During my senior year of high school, I was given the choice of three topics; social media, global warming, and foreign affairs and had to chose one to write an 8-10 page report on. Earlier on during my senior year I had to craft a college essay that would illustrate my abilities and accomplishments as well as my ability to write. Both assignments were very important for me and my future and required a lot of time and effort. In order for my audience to get a clear and coherent understanding of what my thesis was, I had to make sure my structure and organization was clear. Both papers had their own purpose and message I wanted to get through to the audience. A big similarity between the process of both papers was at the beginning, I didn’t know how I wanted to start and I had almost no idea how I was going to structure my paper. My research paper was more detail oriented than my college essay, and was intended for a different audience. My senior English teacher expected us to analyze our research thoroughly and use that to come up with an opinion on our topic (I chose social media), while my college essay was much more personal and was a better visualization of me as a writer and person.
Later on this semester, I will be writing about a play or musical that I decide to watch. This paper is intended for my music professor to inform him about what I watched and the instruments used during the performance. The goal will be to analyze the performers, the type of instruments used, how performers meshed together and things of that nature. This paper is a little different from those of this class because I am my own source and my opinions will factor heavily in my thesis. However, I will still need to understand aspects such as musical instruments and analyze how and why certain instruments are used in certain situations by professional musicians.
Approaching an essay for the first time wasn’t as scary as I had thought of in college. I had some sort of understanding of college writing before I read L. Lennie Irvin’s “What Is “Academic” Writing?” My English professor has told of the myths told in this article. Some how it’s just not as easy as it seems to follow along with the suggestions. Irvin describes this through proving the common myths of writing to be wrong.
My first writing piece for college was for my English composition class. When I write I either go straight to writing if I’m unsure of what to write and fix it along my progress or make an outline. For my first essay I didn’t know how to lay it out. The prompt was how do you read? I thought I had done an excellent job but I didn’t. Through it I learned not all writing will have a certain structure like what’d driven into a high school student’s head. Irvin titles this format as “The five paragraph essay.” The five-paragraph essay consists of a definite structure of an introduction, supporting details and conclusion.
The flaws of my essay were I wasn’t getting my point across clearly. I’ve been working on this issue but it just doesn’t seem good enough in the end result. No essay is perfect and no writer can get the first draft to be perfect as mentioned by Irvin.
Recently I wrote a non-fiction narrative. I worked on it for so long. Editing it was eternal. I wanted this essay to be perfect but once again I came across the thought that no essay can be perfect. A unique problem I had with this assignment was that I didn’t know how to well connect all my thoughts to be smooth throughout my paper.
For both of these writing situations I just keep editing until there was no more time. A writing assignment I have to due before the end of the semester is to write two essays about two different concerts I will assist. My music professor indicated two types of structures she will accept either about the concert or notes on the concert’s layout. My audience will be my professor and any others who will help edit my paper. I’m not sure what I will be writing about since I haven’t assisted a concert yet but I know I’m choosing to write about the concert. This writing is also a free write like the free writes I do in class. Except now this free write will have to turn into a little more than that. It can as be looked at as a non-fiction creative writing piece. My voice and understand have to be portrayed in this writing like in a non-fiction creative narrative. English composition has taught me to recognize my strengths and weakens and thus while doing this assignment I will do my best.
I know I will come across these situations in future writing assignments even in other classes. This shouldn’t be something to scare you off instead it should serve as determination to further improve. There’s no such thing as that’s done and settled. No, just continue editing and letting others view your writing, it will help dearly.
After thinking about different writing situations but with similar requirements, I found that my college admissions essays and the personal narrative for English class fit very well. In my college admissions essays, I had to make myself look good when faced with a prompt asking me to describe my strengths. I would include a personal example of me demonstrating determination to win a basketball game for example. In the personal narrative for English, I also had to refer to parts of my life, albeit in a much more detailed way. I included some positive experiences there too. However, since I did not necessarily have to make myself look good, I included pieces of my character and personality that I had to work on. Even though it wasn’t stated specifically in the assignment, I felt it was important to include my past experiences because it gives a more complete idea of who I am. Of course, I would never write that in a college essay, unless asked.
This semester I will have to attend a concert for music class and write a reflection on it. The purpose is to hear Western music outside of class and be able to compare and contrast it to the music heard in class. I will have to include the type of concert and the music I heard. My reader will be my professor, but since anyone should be able to read it and get a rudimentary idea of what the concert was like, I will include specific examples. Being specific is very important in writing, be it for English class or something else, in this case music.
In high school there were multiple occasions where I found myself in a writing situation. Two examples would be when I had to write a proposal for my government class and when I had to write a “This I Believe” paper for my English class. For the government proposal, I had to write as if I were in charge of making the budget cuts in a district, and acknowledge a specific group of people who would be affected. I made my decisions based on the district’s demographics. It was my job to state the decisions I made and to back it up with relevant evidence while also addressing opposing viewpoints. For the English paper, I had to choose a topic of my choice that would reflect one of my beliefs and it had to be, at most, 500 words. It was difficult deciding a belief that accurately represented me and also, writing concisely. I had to answer the following, what do you believe? Why? What experiences and understandings have led you to those beliefs? In both of these situations I had to get a clear understanding of the assignment; what were the questions I needed to answer, and to whom I am writing to (fulfilling the requirements). Answering these questions in a way that makes sense to the reader would be my goal. The process of writing was the same for both the proposal and the English paper and probably for all writings: planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. For both pieces of writing, I looked at examples of similar writings in order to get a better sense on how my writing should be; my English teacher would call this “studying the genre.” The difference between these two papers was how I wrote about each one. For the English paper, it was more of a narrative that supported my belief, while the government proposal, was more formal and I had to make a claim and support it. In my communications class we have to give an informative speech. The goal is to inform the audience, the class, about your topic. We have to research and include at least two library sources. The research can include the internet, magazines, newspapers, books, and interviews. Aside from giving an actual speech, this speech is a similar concept to what we are doing in class and differs in the actual context. The research in this class would be looking at different texts and analyzing them. The audience would be classmates or the professor and our purpose would depend on the assignment.
During my last year in high school I had to write my personal statement essay for college as well as write a shortened version of a thesis paper. On both accounts I have struggled and put a tremendous amount of time writing the papers when I felt that I could have written it in less than half the time. When writing my personal statement essay, I noticed that I couldn’t quite set on mind on what to write and that my thoughts and ideas would always waver. It wasn’t till 7 hours later that I would make an outline and after I organized my thoughts onto paper, things became more settled and writing the story would flow naturally. Couple of months later I was required to write a 15 page thesis paper where I would have to write about why there should be more laws protecting children in the entertainment world. While writing this paper I also faced the dilemma with trying to get at least something down on my paper. I felt that there were too many thing I needed to talk about yet I didn’t know how to start, this time like my previous paper I wrote an outline where I can easily figure out what I need to write next or even use it as a checklist to make sure my main points were in the paper. A difference between these two papers were the fact that I need to use many sources to back up my paper. I felt that the whole process of finding reliable sources was extremely strenuous. It was also the first time that I even tried using databases which confused me even more. But after playing around with different database I realized that it made my paper seemed more stronger than using the conventional Wikipedia or Google. One paper that I am expected to write this semester is for my communication class where instead of writing the persuasive essay I would have talk in front off the class for at least 10 minutes. I feel that that the critical analysis is similar where we would need to find information from texts to support our claim.
Throughout the twelve years of schooling prior to my entrance of Baruch, I’ve always had difficulty in writing tasks. Two of the more recent ones were my college essay, which I ended up omitting from my application, and the very intimidating DBQ at the end of the AP U.S. History exam. For my college essay, I was suggested by my teacher to write about a time where a particular event happened to my life that turned my perception to what it was currently. This was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I automatically sought about any unpleasant events that had happened to me and there weren’t any that weren’t “good”. In the end I wrote a bunch of crap and found out that the college essay wasn’t required for my application; so I ended up not using the essay at all. The DBQ that I had to do was different because it had textual evidence (10-12 articles) and you had to find direct textual evidence to support a claim you had made early on or in the introduction of the essay. The way I set the essay up was by making a claim that could be expanded on early in the introduction and using any background information I knew to support the thesis. Then I grouped the articles in categories that would prove my thesis and put each point in a paragraph to create a 5 paragraph essay. I learned now that you you don’t necessarily have to format your paragraphs in this manner, but in high school this was the way it was done. In the near future I will do a research paper and speech about the modern banana. The paper will be submitted to my professor and the speech will be given in front of my professor and my peers. The point of my speech is to inform people about how the modern banana came about and what preceded the modern banana. I will be researching the topic in the library databases and the library catalogue, and this will be the only true informative paper in this class. Other papers may be persuasive which can be informative as well, but the nature of it is persuasive.
I have found myself in many, vastly different writing situations through out my career as a student. Being a veteran of the Engineering-Robotics team, I was tasked with oversight of the engineering notebook. It is a writing task different from “standard” academic papers such as the first assignment for writing at Baruch. The similarities are that the writing required almost exclusively personal experiences, thoughts and ideas. But more importantly, how the three related to each other at particular times and places. In my paper, I often described what I thought about a specific memory and how it relates to the underlying theme. However, in the notebook, I describe the particular event but why we thought it was the most efficient and optimal route at the time. The largest difference between the two writing situations is the purpose of the piece. The engineering notebook was designed to fascinate and inform mathematicians, engineers, and scientists who are all professionals in their respective fields. On the other hand, the writing assignment was to allow me to have a deeper understanding of myself, my community, and identity. Based on the audience alone and the focus of the paper, the writing styles were different. The notebook used convoluted engineering and programming terms while the writing assignment was very straight forward.
In the future, I will be writing a research paper. My audience will primarily be the professor but the class will also factor into it as well. The occasion is a final paper meaning it is one of the most important, if not the most important grade of the semester.The documents used will be the library resources which are more accurate than Doctor Google. It’s different from writing in this class because writing in this class isn’t really researching. Rather, it is either personal experiences or interpreting a reading.
Throughout my academic career, I have been placed into many different writing situations. During my senior year of high school, two of the more noteworthy essays I had to write were a research paper for English class and my college admissions essay. I found the prior to be much easier to write, we were given three topics: Global warming, social media, and foreign affairs. We basically just had to form a thesis about the topic of our choice and then find evidence elsewhere to support our claims. Both of these essays required you to present whatever you wanted to say clearly to whoever was reading but the research paper was based on facts, you just had to find them. I struggled with the college essay a lot more, much like the recent creative non-fiction paper we just did, it was centered around personal anecdotes. I had to present myself to the admissions staff through my writing instead of proving a point. In these types of essays, you get more freedom on what you want to say, which some people say is a blessing, but I find it much easier to write when you have a strict guideline you need to adhere to. For both essays I had to develop a main point by which the paper will center on but the method of supporting that thesis differed.
Later on in the semester, I will have to attend a concert for my music history class and write a reflection on what happened at the concert. The point of the paper is to compare and contrast western music we hear outside of class to the music we hear in class. The audience for this paper is my professor and I will include specific details about what I saw and heard at the concert. When writing a paper, it is important to be clear and concise about the purpose of your writing or you will lose the reader’s focus and attention.
High school writing was not taken seriously. History research papers and science reports were strictly structured. From the topic to what goes into each paragraph we were guided throughout the entire essay. Essay writing was easy this way all you had to do was answer the questions that correlate with each paragraph. Book reports were structured the same way. The teacher would give multiple questions to answer that would fill up the page requirements. This way of writing helped us prepare for the regents essays. Regents essays follow the “typical” writing structure of 5 paragraphs: introduction, 3 supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion that is just the introduction restated. It wasn’t until junior year when our approach to an essay shifted. We began began doing more rhetorical analysis’.The difference between a rhetorical analysis essay and a regents essay was the question for a rhetorical analysis was the same regardless of the text, and all you had to do was devise an answer using the texts. When we were asked to write rhetorical analysis we didn’t have a bunch of questions following the text; instead, we were just given the text and you figure out how you think the author used different tactics to prove his/her point. Writing was no longer structured and became free. Of course grammar still counted, but you were given a different way of approaching your audience. In most regent like essays you’re just informing the reader, but in rhetorical analysis you’re proving a point and hoping you are able to convince the reader. To convince the reader you’re writing had to become more creative and outside of the box. There is nothing to guide you anymore you had to find your own idea and bring it to life using significant evidence from the text.
College requires a lot of essays and one that I have coming up is a concert paper. I assume the concert papers are similar in style to regents essays. We attend a music concert and write two pages explaining our experience. We are required to include rhythm, harmony, tone colors, and all the other phrases we learned to describe music. Our audience for this paper is our teacher we have to assume as if she’s never been to the concert (which she probably hasn’t) and explain the music so well that she can get an idea of how it sounded in her head. Like my writing in class, we have to reflect on ideas we talked about and incorporate them in our writing.