[Untitled Track]
It's difficult to remember where I learned to write from. I know I started learning the alphabet in kindergarten. My Nana even taught me to read lots of words using flash cards when I was three. It all kind of went from there.
I was a bad student in high school and didn't take any fancy AP classes. I did have some regular English classes, creative writing, and journalism. But I'm really not sure when the light started to come on inside my head. The light that was guiding me and showing me the difference between good and bad writing. It was probably sometime around high school when I kept a journal. So much of my writting skills have merely been attained through practicing a lot, writing like hell no matter what it was about, lots of train of thought processes, and even sitting in a busy room and writing down random things people were saying. I had to exercise my imagination and I didn't know how to draw or play music so writing was all I had.
Then in my college career I started off taking some literature and public speaking classes. A lot of what I learned through analyzing other people's work and writing speeches (specifically in regards to knowing your audience and what you wanted them to walk away with) was really what started to sharpen my writing skills. It's truly amazing to me how even a botany class I once took helped me with my writing. So while we are all trying to learn things from wherever we can and apply them somewhere to our lives, I was applying it all to writing. All in the hopes of one day my writing coming back and applying itself to me somehow. And it has every now and again.
Most of my technical writing skills have come from English 1010 and 2010. I do believe it is important to have technical training and writing assignments. Research papers can become such monsters that get out of hand. But working all semester on them and constantly revising them taught me a lot about the way I write, my strengths and weaknesses, and even my limitations. I believe that a student should be encouraged to write as freely as they want. Yet I also believe that students need to learn rules and boundaries and be told what to write and how in order to become better writers. And rules are such funny things in the world of writing. Especially when you learn how to effectively break them. I'm not so effective yet.
The obstacles I've seen students so far trying to overcome have been sentence structuring. The 1010 students have some difficulty knowing where to end sentences or making them sound complete. They misuse commas a lot or maybe use them too excessively. With that particular problem I ask them to read that sentence out loud and hear how it sounds. And at times if it is too confusing to know how to break up that sentence, I may suggest just rewording it entirely to be safe. I don't know if that's good advice or not. While I'm sure there are more global issues that students have had with their papers, I've still not had too many sessions to be able to recognize what some of their other obstacles are.
I was a bad student in high school and didn't take any fancy AP classes. I did have some regular English classes, creative writing, and journalism. But I'm really not sure when the light started to come on inside my head. The light that was guiding me and showing me the difference between good and bad writing. It was probably sometime around high school when I kept a journal. So much of my writting skills have merely been attained through practicing a lot, writing like hell no matter what it was about, lots of train of thought processes, and even sitting in a busy room and writing down random things people were saying. I had to exercise my imagination and I didn't know how to draw or play music so writing was all I had.
Then in my college career I started off taking some literature and public speaking classes. A lot of what I learned through analyzing other people's work and writing speeches (specifically in regards to knowing your audience and what you wanted them to walk away with) was really what started to sharpen my writing skills. It's truly amazing to me how even a botany class I once took helped me with my writing. So while we are all trying to learn things from wherever we can and apply them somewhere to our lives, I was applying it all to writing. All in the hopes of one day my writing coming back and applying itself to me somehow. And it has every now and again.
Most of my technical writing skills have come from English 1010 and 2010. I do believe it is important to have technical training and writing assignments. Research papers can become such monsters that get out of hand. But working all semester on them and constantly revising them taught me a lot about the way I write, my strengths and weaknesses, and even my limitations. I believe that a student should be encouraged to write as freely as they want. Yet I also believe that students need to learn rules and boundaries and be told what to write and how in order to become better writers. And rules are such funny things in the world of writing. Especially when you learn how to effectively break them. I'm not so effective yet.
The obstacles I've seen students so far trying to overcome have been sentence structuring. The 1010 students have some difficulty knowing where to end sentences or making them sound complete. They misuse commas a lot or maybe use them too excessively. With that particular problem I ask them to read that sentence out loud and hear how it sounds. And at times if it is too confusing to know how to break up that sentence, I may suggest just rewording it entirely to be safe. I don't know if that's good advice or not. While I'm sure there are more global issues that students have had with their papers, I've still not had too many sessions to be able to recognize what some of their other obstacles are.
posted by Anonymous at 8:57 PM
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