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What Is College Writing?
Writing is a tool that is universally known and used as a primary source of communication. It is a process that is taught, practiced, and perfected throughout the course of one’s life. The process of learning to write begins in your early school years and continues to develop all the way through high school, college, and even beyond college. However, once you get to college writing tends to become a little bit more challenging and is typically more articulate. Writing can help you gain more knowledge and also help you to explore and discover new ideas. In terms of college writing, it is the process of being able to express your thoughts and ideas in an intellectual and effective way.
Whether it’s the students, professors, staff members, etc. in a university setting everybody uses writing. Writing, especially in college, is assigned to teach you the skills necessary to appropriately communicate in the workplace and in classrooms by using critical thinking. In order to obtain these skills you must practice, being asked to write different assignments about different situations is good practice. Sometimes you will have teachers who will be unclear with what their expectations from you are. Some will tell you what they want you to read, what to think about while reading, how they want your paper to be organized, etc. There will be some teachers that will simply just ask you a general question, ask you to write about it, and just see where you go with it, giving you your own rubric to go off of. Sometimes your teacher will define assignments and topics for you and at other times ask you to do the defining. It is important that you are able to think critically in situations like these. If you have a teacher that ...
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...rtant to be able to know how to use all of the sources provided to you that allow you to be an adequate writer. If you are not able to effectively express your thoughts and ideas in college, it’s really hard to be able to complete anything. From my experience, writing itself has never been much of a challenge. I found that the standard college essay is at least 3-4 pages. Some classes even require 1-2 pages. I’ve found that despite the length, the most important factor about a paper is its content. As a writer I hope to develop better time management. I tend to have writers block a lot when I write, but I think that’s mainly because I’m so picky with the way I want to sound when I’m trying to express a point or an idea. I know that the writing skills I have learned and developed are skills that will be used throughout my college career and even outside of school.
In Downs and Wardle’s article, they argue and identify the flaws in teaching writing in college. Demonstrating the misconceptions that academic writing is universal, but rather specialized in each case. Citing studies and opinions from esteemed professionals, Downs & Wardle state their points and illuminate the problem in today’s many colleges.
Writing essays was never my forte, it just never came easy to me like it would to others. Since other subjects came easy to me and I had to focus more than others on writing, I had a negative attitude toward the process as a whole. During this summer semester, I was able to grow as a writer, and gain a more positive attitude toward how I write and a better feel for writing in college. Writing a paper is a process in which there are many different stages. In high school I would never write outlines or any sort of pre planning work. Other struggles I encountered in my writing were my theses, and framing quotes.
As I look back into my high school years, I thought I wrote papers well. But then coming into a college environment, my papers were mediocre. By overlooking at my past papers, I found that they were unorganized, sloppy and had bad use of diction. From now on, I will use the tools I learned in English 1100-40 as a foundation for the future papers I intend on writing in college. Following the criteria of organizing ideas so that they flow, impacting the reader with diction and also by being creative, will help become an ideal writer. Following the criteria of staying motivated in short and long term goals, taking responsibility for actions and finally the ability to study well will help me develop into a supreme student.
Academic writing is a very discouraging topic that most young writers do not even want to begin to think about or imagine doing. Throughout college everyone will be asked to write multiple academic essays regardless of their major. We have read two sources in class that have helped clear up some common myths and also helped make academic writing not seem so foreign. The two sources we read were “What is Academic Writing?” and the first chapter of the book “From Inquiry to Academic Writing”. Many young students seeking a college degree are fearful about the amount of work needed to be done in order to survive their college courses. Academic writing is a challenging topic that many young people struggle to get a grasp on. Once the skill of
Learning to read and write are both considered to be fundamental human skills, that we begin to learn from the day we start school. As time advances, as do our minds, and we are expected to evolve in our reading and writing skills. Finishing high school is a large milestone for the lives of young adults; however, there is so much to learn in order to reach the next big milestone. To be a writer in college can challenge our preconceived thoughts on how we write. Although some skills remain unchanged, high school graduates are faced with overcoming new ways of doing a skill that seems so simple that it is practically innate. The definition of writing skills for college students is much different than high school. However, considering we have come so far it is time to go over the information we already know and challenge ourselves with ideas that we are yet to learn more about.
I had always been a strong writer in high school; I know how to form an argument and support it fully, but this did not prepare me for the writing at a college level. I expected to be reading long and boring books about topics that did not pertain to my life; as it turns out, this assumption was completely false. All of the three essays that we were required to read in class were fairly difficult to understand, but after a second reading, the essay's meaning became clearer. I also feel as though their messages and key ideas are captivating. I definitely thought they would be extremely dry and difficult to understand.
I started the semester not knowing how I would adjust going from a high school writing class to a college level writing class. I felt my writing was above average, but writing was never one of my strong suits. I had no way of knowing if my writing competency could hold up to college academic standards. I took expository writing with Professor James Brady. Over the course of the semester, multiple learning objectives were learned through my essays. These learning objectives were subject matter knowledge, writing process knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, genre knowledge, and meta-cognition.
Transitioning from high school to college can be overwhelming. Before English 1301, I thought that I did not have to worry about being prepared for college. I quickly realized that my little background in writing essays was not going to be enough for college. Writing is not just something that I will use in English classes. In college, I will have to use effective writing skills in all my classes to complete research papers, essay tests and communicate to professors. Throughout my education, writing strategies persisted to be something that did not come easy to me. I dreaded writing because I could never find ways to get my thoughts down on paper. Ironically, a class that petrified me due to the amount of writing that was required ended up helping me in so many ways. English 1301 and my professor prepared me so much for college and real life.
At the start of the semester, my oblivious state of nature associating with the Chinese culture reached an unacceptable level. Implementing a necessary change, I decided to educate myself on different cultures starting with China. I failed to ponder that such a rich, deep culture existed outside America. Encompassed by this country’s unique yet suffocating melting pot culture, my outlook believed ideas such as uniformity between American Chinese food and Authentic Chinese food. After this course, my bigot perspective widened as I witnessed diversity in the world. Before this class, when I thought of Chinese food, my connotation jumped to thoughts associated with chop suey, but as I progressed my education, my mindset gradually pondered foods like steamed buns or “New Year Cakes” with authentic Chinese food.
Over the past semester, I have found the most challenging part of this course to simply be the transition from high school composition classes to college. Because writing expectations are so different in college than in high school, even with AP and Dual Enrollment “college level” classes, I first found myself being overwhelmed with the pressure to write the perfect first draft. The pressure came from knowing how much a final draft of a paper contributed to my grade. This left me sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time with thoughts of what I wanted to say racing through my head, but unable to deliver these thoughts into organized, structured sentences. I learned, through writing my persuasive essay, that instead of trying to write the paper start to finish and already in its perfect form, it is easier for me to look at the paper through its different components and focus on them individually, then work to best organize my ideas fluently.
This semester was my very first semester as a college student. Being the first, it was probably the semester I would learn the most in. I learned the expectations for writing that I will have to live up to for the next four years of my college career. Though my high school teachers were usually demanding because I was in the Honors English section throughout high school, writing in college has still ?raised the bar? for me. Also, in high school, we would have weeks to pick a topic, create a thesis, outline the paper, write the paper, and then revise the paper. In college, the time restraints are not quite as lenient. I?ve had to learn to manage my time and be more productive with what free moments I have. Strangely enough, I?ve found the college English experience to be much more rewarding and enjoyable than in high school.
Writing is an important part of everyone’s life, whether we use it in school, in the workplace, as a hobby or in personal communication. It is important to have this skill because it helps us as writers to express feelings and thoughts to other people in a reasonably permanent form. Formal writing forms like essays, research papers, and articles stimulates critically thinking. This helps the writer to learn how to interpret the world around him/her in a meaningful way. In college, professors motivate students to write in a formal, coherent manner, without losing their own voice in the process. Improving your writing skills is important, in every English class that’s the main teaching point; to help students improve their writing skills. Throughout my college experience I have acknowledge that
Writing courses act as a fundamental basis for most other classes; they teach you basics such as learning how to speak and write properly. Writing helps students learn how to think quickly and gather ideas into a well-developed format. For example, usually when a student is asked to write a paper, they are only allowed a certain amount of time to
Lately it seems as though more and more students are unsure as to whether or not they would like to attend college. With the huge cost of college, low employment rate of recent graduates, and many people achieving success without a college education make it so that many young people wonder if they should even spend the time and money to attend. The big question many prospective students ask themselves is what is the true purpose of college? So what is the purpose of college, is it simply to get a degree in hopes of one day getting a better or higher paying job? Better careers or more money may be a good enough reason to attend college for some but the college experience as a whole is what is more important to so many people.
Another critical strategy is to write with a clear sense of purpose and audience. Each academic field presents the college writer with specific writing styles and unique writing expectations. As stated by Johnson, “College level writing involves more than collecting information from sources and inserting information into your paper” (2009, para. 4)....