How do I feel about the five paragraph essay? I think that it’s a good place to start if you have no idea how to write a paper. But should every essay use its structure? Of course not. I really don’t have many negative things to say about it, maybe because I don’t remember ever having to do any of those weird worksheets/templates. I always just wrote the essay and moved on I guess. I think it would be easier to write about this if it belonged to another subject (like math!!); the only issue I have ever had with writing was actually sitting down and doing it. I don’t think I can blame the five paragraph essay for that, as I’m pretty sure I’m just lazy and suffer from chronic boredom (seriously, I could be bored on a roller coaster). ANYWAY, I do think that when this format is taught to students, some other mode of instruction should accompany it. Giving kids this one, dull thing to do doesn’t seem like a great idea if you’re looking for enthusiastic students. So what can be done to improve the instruction of such things? Allowing students to write about things they like or care about while teaching them how to articulate themselves and provide meaningful arguments? Assure them that this is not the only way and won’t be the only way? That seems easy enough, but is it enough? I like Stommel’s idea, “The Twitter Essay.” Getting students to express their ideas in 140 characters or less has to be a good way to practice getting their point across… and developing that thesis that so many instructors will require of them in the future. /:
Stommel’s Twitter Essay only has one true rule: incorporating #twitteressay into the Tweet. Surely this alleviates some of the pain that an assignment you don’t 100% love comes with. We’ve all had that prompt that was so detailed and demanding that we felt defeat was imminent. I have one this semester, in fact. 8-10 pages on some Chaucer topic with 3 outside sources. The class has been encouraged to study said prompt religiously and to make highlights on it. Needless to say, I am not looking forward to it and I’m not expecting an A. Defeat is imminent. I’m not sure how I would even start that assignment without some prior essay knowledge, though. And due to such assignments, I’m almost glad that I had to do those boring five paragraph essays way-back-when. I would be utterly confused if I was assigned one this late in my college career though!
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s important* to know how to write “academically” if you plan on going to college. There will always be that instructor who expects you to know how to do it and life will be SO much easier if you already do. But the way you learn it shouldn’t be pure pain, right? Let there be some diversity in teaching methods. Teach what’s “necessary,” but make it fun… or at least less terrifying, please. Now I’m going to go read the other posts and learn how to really hate this method.
*Important is subjective, fine.
P.S.,
Tried to write this using the Schaffer structure but it just wasn’t happening.

[Think about that should in the title of this post. I like to take it as sarcasm.]

So this week in class I dedicated at least ten whole minutes to thinking about what I’m good at. Still not really sure, but I ended up going with “making my cat happy,” though sometimes I do the opposite… like when I take a billion pictures of her despite her clear annoyance. That topic isn’t very interesting, so I’ll just post a picture of my cat and move on to writing instruction.

Before our discussion on Wednesday, I hadn’t really thought about how strange composition courses are. The composition class I took remains one of my favorite classes… but I don’t feel as though it equipped me for writing outside of a literature course; I had to figure the other stuff out on my own. Still don’t really know APA though! Freshman Composition (for me) was essentially a class in MLA and Classical Lit. Though it was a really systematic and somewhat difficult course, I learned a lot from it and I really appreciated the instructor. Now would I teach a class the way he did? Probably not. It may have worked for me but I watched a lot of people who had other interests and skills suffer through the strict, lengthy papers and exams. Engineering majors, psychology majors, you name it, all there learning how to write in MLA only to never use it again. They harbored a grudge against the class, the same grudge I harbored for algebra. I got an A in it in high school from cramming right before tests, then I forgot all about it and had to take it in college just to move on with my life. I had the WORST algebra instructor in college. He must have thought he was pretty bad too; he quit after one semester. He told me that algebra is something everyone should know, how it’s so important, etc., etc., etc. Guess what?? I never use that shit! Never! The same way my engineer & psych friends never write in MLA. Okay, end rant, back to Composition.

Russell asserts that “… writing does not exist apart from its uses, for it is a tool for accomplishing object(ive)s beyond itself” and that “the object(ive) of GWSI courses is extremely ambiguous because those involved in it are teaching and learning the use of a tool (writing) for no particular activity system” (8).  For many people, the goal of a class they don’t care about or really need for anything other than a degree is simply to pass it, right? I understand that there should be some sort of foundation for people who aren’t sure what they want to do yet, but Composition doesn’t seem to be it and it seems like people should have a “general” understanding of putting words to paper before college (like how to pick up a pen/pencil and write legible things/type something on a keyboard while being somewhat cohesive and relevant, persuasive even, maybe). So how should that be dealt with? I’m not really sure, but asking students what they’d like to write might be a good start. Practice doing what you like, learn how to write in your field of study, don’t kill yourself over a potentially irrelevant writing system… or something like that! I’m still working out exactly how I feel about writing and its occasional description as a “basic skill” (Metaconcept 15). It’s just too broad for that; it means so many things. 

*Also, does anyone else out there think that college general ed. might have been designed by someone who thought that everyone wanted to be a Jeopardy contestant someday? People from other countries I’ve talked about school with pretty much unanimously said they did all that stuff before college. What gives? Not sure exactly how to feel about it either. 

My Theory of Writing! Okay, I really hadn’t thought about it much until this week (or perhaps at all). When thinking of my reasons for reading and writing, I found that I kept simplifying my terms. Reading started out as being for obligation, learning, enjoyment, and boredom. Writing had essentially the same purposes listed. After staring at those terms for a while, I realized that it’s really about me feeling as though I have to do something. Even that “for enjoyment” part began to seem more and more like an obligation (think: “I have to escape this boredom,” like a “duty to thyself,” etc.). In this, I think it all comes down to necessity (… at least for me).

When it comes to my daily writing practices, pretty much all of it is about doing something that needs to be done. Whether it’s about typing up an assignment or a text, there is some sort of necessity behind it. I need* to turn something in, I need* to tell my property managers that they suck (ok, I never actually send that email), I need* to respond to someone’s message before it is confirmed that I’m not the greatest friend, and so on and so on. All of these “necessary” writings seem to be the result of appeasing an intended audience, one comprised of professors, or friends, or simply people I have to contact for whatever reason.

*”Need” is subjective, sure.

That brings me to this week’s reading. Kevin Roozen states that “[w]riting puts the writer in contact with other people, but the social nature of writing goes beyond the people writers draw upon and think about” (18). This helped me understand my pilot-self-study-writing-log-thing; I may be writing pretty much everything that I write because I have an intended audience that requires attention, but there are even more people involved than I had previously thought. A particular way of phrasing something, the degree of politeness or formality, the very diction of any given paper, post, email, or text… all of it has been shaped by other people, whether I like it or not. Something so often done in solitude is actually pretty damn social… disturbing!

So, my “Theory of Writing”: Writing is an activity with potentially unwanted, multi-layered collaboration, done out of some perceived necessity, maybe even urgency, that is used to communicate with either the self or others. Or something like that, the end.

Umm, hi.

My name’s Elisa and I don’t really like talking about myself because it feels awkward, so this is going to be rough. Sooo, I’m originally from Riverside, CA. I have a really spoiled cat and I play a lot of video games. I’ve travelled a bit and I guess I eat a lot of tofu. I’m an English Studies major, Linguistics minor, TESOL cert person (like many of the people in this class, I’m sure). I don’t really want to do anything job-wise, but since I have to, here I am on this path. I’m hoping that this class will help me to be a competent and confident tutor.

I was pretty into books until becoming an English major. Now I only read what I have to for classes, plus a forced novel every break… plus a bunch of mangas/graphic novels that might not be high enough literature for some people. This brings me to “a day in my literate life.” On an average day I wake up and accidentally check my phone after its horrible alarm goes off… or my neighbor’s unhappy dog goes off. Once a week or so, I get to wake up to some drunk texts from my old high school pen pal, lately about Donald Trump (PLEASE ARTHUR STOP SAYING “YOU AMERICANS”!!). Typically, I have some sort of extensive message from an online game friend (lol) and I skim over it before responding manyyyy hours later, almost as extensively.  [I just realized that I write an essay’s worth of script every day via text or message/email.] After reading for classes, I guess I look up a lot of random shit online. This goes on pretty much all day. After all of that school and internetting stuff, if I go to get groceries (which I do way too often as I always seem to forget something), I read every ingredient on every unfamiliar package because I’m picky as hell and hate milk etc. When I get home, I usually watch/play something that has subtitles (yay, more reading). Insert more internetting. Finally, I read manga in bed hoping that the light from my tablet will make me really tired. That’s a day in my literate life… wow it sounds really… basic. But like Szwed said, “a school might not consider all of this reading to be reading, but it’s fucking reading, ok” (423). It’s not academic dishonesty if it’s clearly a joke, right?

Through some of those painful (come on, you know they kind of were) modern literacy and teaching theory readings, as well as Peter Kittle’s 478, I’ve come to see reading and literacy a bit differently. Literacy comes in various shapes and reading isn’t a book-exclusive activity; reading is something that people from all walks of life do every day, everywhere, and teachers should encourage it in more than one form.