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Reading Together

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Enter title here… oh wait, post-its.

Enter title here… oh wait, post-its.

So initially I was going to be writing about a certain passage in Russel’s article but to be quite honest, I am not very comfortable with that… Although, I will say the certain idiom he used was definitely something I could agree with. When learning one form of writing compared to another, it can be complicated. There are many types of writing and honestly I don’t even know what types there are myself. I suppose I just know the general writing style? Crap its even hard for me…

Anyways, I’m finding it very very hard for me to write anything for this blog at the moment… I suppose its because I don’t really want to write about any of the ideas given… But, I’ll try my very best to connect this somehow to at least one of the ideas.

Writing is not a formality but rather a gift. It’s usually seen as a formality, yet I’d like to imagine that not everyone is capable of writing in a said specific way. Even though throughout my years of schooling they taught us how to write in 5 paragraph structures or certain formats, I don’t feel as if that is something critical to know in certain ways you would attack writing. If I wanted to write a narrative or a quick write, it wouldn’t be in any certain structure because it’s usually just how you want it to be. Like for instance, I really love writing these blogs because of the freedom of structure we have. I choose to write this however I’d like. As for writing being a gift, I say this because it takes a very long time to actually understand what you are writing and how to portray your ideas. My Japanese roommates are only watching and attempting this as they go along but it takes a while to fully grasp the full intention of what they wish to say.

Now yes I know I didn’t include any Easter eggs this time, but you can’t always expect the same thing out of someone every time, can you?

I might have failed at something “better”.

4 Replies to “Enter title here… oh wait, post-its.”

  1. “As for writing being a gift, I say this because it takes a very long time to actually understand what you are writing and how to portray your ideas. My Japanese roommates are only watching and attempting this as they go along but it takes a while to fully grasp the full intention of what they wish to say.”

    I feel you. I was talking to an English major who’s taking some tech class as part of his upper division GE, and he was struck by his classmates reluctance to “spit ball” over broad concepts and risk articulating anything my friend would call “awesome” for fear of saying something that might be wrong of “factually inaccurate.” I think my pal was talking about brainstorming and envisioning solutions to technology that aren’t yet grounded in facts but desire, and that to me indicates one role comp. courses more catered to the exploration of writing in other disciplines might take. By exploring a history of writing in a field maybe we can show certain discipline times when “speculation and discourse” was fruitful and productive, and perhaps times where the rhetoric behind an idea was so strong that in hindsight we tend to think of the push and the direction as an error.

    All that to say the articulation of an idea is hard. Believing that you have the right and the warrant to engage in speculation that may not yet be grounded in fact is something that isn’t always easy either, and that’s something I’ve even seen in English.

    Maybe one of our goals then should be empowerment through articulation and communication?

    Also the comp. portion was always the hardest part of any foreign language class for me, so I get where your roommates are coming from. Best of luck to them!

  2. I think you have some good ideas here. Writing definitely can seem like a gift in your usage of the word gift. I wish I had knowledge of the “general writing style” you kind of described. Usually I have no idea what to write or what format things go and I 90% of the time just wing assignments. I’m usually pretty good at winging it, but some classes it just doesn’t work. I really suck at conveying my ideas usually so I totally agree that spending more time on articulation in classes would definitely help with writing. Not only that but as you said we look at writing as a formality, were I think, and you hint at, it should be seen as a form of communication. An example: we look at essays as a homework assignment, but it really is a form to communicate our thoughts to our professors. I think seeing it in that light can help us write in a more functional way to get our ideas across the board as students.

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