Latin American Short Stories

12 responses so far ↓

•   Madeleine // Aug 29th 2014 at 3:21 pm

  Knowing the different writing styles for different disciplines in college stood out to me as a skill I need to learn in order to succeed in college. I have not had much experience writing lab reports or scientific papers, so it will be crucial for me to discern the differences and talk to my professors, advisors, or writing resources about scientific writing to prepare for my biology class this semester and then future science classes.

  I also think that I can use the technique freewriting that the reading discussed. In high school, I would revise and create a second or third draft a majority of the time, but I tried to write my essays as perfectly as possible the first time. Based on free writing concepts, I think I need to learn to get all of my ideas down on paper first in a looser way and go back to change wording and reorganize later. I think this will help me in the long run to finish rough drafts more efficiently and then have a concrete paper to read through, edit, and take to someone for advise.

  I have heard that one of the most challenging parts of college academics is keeping up with all the reading assignments. I was trained in high school to highlight and take notes as I read, so I will carry this habit with me to absorb as much information I can the first time reading.

•   applegsa // Aug 29th 2014 at 9:43 pm

  Today’s reading made me realize that there are many aspects of my writing techniques that need work and that I should try to change. Since my writing in high school was mainly analytical, I think I benefitted most from the first few sections of the chapter which focused on analytical essays. Until this reading, I had never been told to abandon the five paragraph structure when writing an essay. All of my high school teachers were “defenders” of this technique and so like the reading suggested happens with many students, this structure has become a habit of mine that will be hard to break; however, I do now see the need to break that habit and will try to do so throughout this course and throughout college.

  Similarly, this reading taught me things about the process of writing which my teachers never taught me. In high school, when teachers wanted me to begin the process of writing an essay, they would assign certain due dates for outlines, rough drafts, etc. I never preferred this kind of structure because, as this reading pointed out, the writing process is “nonlinear” by nature. When I was required to write an outline by a certain date, followed quickly by a due date for a rough draft, I didn’t allow myself to develop my outline far enough because I was always rushing to complete the next task (the rough draft). I think that this habit may have hindered my final products, so this is something I would like to change. I will still write outlines and rough drafts, but even during writing my rough draft, I will know that it is okay to return to my outline and continue developing it, if need be.

•   Cassie Jimmink // Aug 30th 2014 at 1:41 am

  After reading the chapter, I came to realize that I have a lot of things I need to improve on. I think after reading the section, “What Do Faculty Want From Student Writing?” I have a basic understanding of how I need to approach my college writing. The skill of being able to more than just reading text and spitting it back on a quiz was not one of my strengths in high school. After something was taught, I took the quiz or test and then I completely forgot about it. I will need to work on that in college in order to succeed in the course and pass the final. Another part that stuck out to me while reading was allowing yourself to write a bad rough draft. Many times, it would be hard for me to keep going on a paper because I was stuck at a certain spot. I will use the tips of just writing whatever is on my mind and then going back to revise it later. I also like the tips of keeping multiple copies so that I can look back at the different stages of my paper. To be a bit more positive, I believe that I was skilled with using academic writing when necessary. I will use this skill in college frequently. I understand that there is a time for nonacademic writing and a time for academic writing. In terms of researching skills, I am a very organized person so researching different topics is interesting for me because I know how to categorize my new research properly. In college, I know that the research will be a lot more extensive but I am sure that I will be able to uphold the work properly. I am both nervous and excited to be at the college level. I am sure that I will grow with my skills but I am also nervous that I first I may struggle.

•   jacobsoh // Aug 30th 2014 at 1:45 am

  When it came to reading in high school I would usually start out the reading process strong by annotating and highlighting the reading. However, I would often times go overboard highlighting too much and reading into each idea too much. One day in English class after turning in an annotated reading my teacher said it looked like the sun because it was covered in yellow highlighter. As a result of my frequent highlighting and annotating, I would often get burnt out. Towards the end of the reading there would be little annotations and highlights due to the fact that I solely wanted to get the reading over with. In college I will need to better identify the important parts of the texts and annotate those, rather than thinking all the parts are important.

  When it came to researching in high school I often had the same problem, thinking each piece of information was super important for my paper. As a result I would become overwhelmed when it came to actually writing the paper because I felt like I needed to fit each piece of information in. In college I will need to better spot the important pieces of my research that will allow me to show my ideas in an understandable and analytical way.

  In high school the majority of my writing was done in the form of free writes. I would often just jump in and try to get all my thoughts on the paper. This reading taught me that it is okay to do this and it is important to keep writing. The part that I struggled with was that I would stop and think about what I was saying and then get lost in the paper. This reading showed me that it is important to not reread as you go and just keep on writing. This reading also taught me that it is perfectly fine to get your ideas out and not worry about whether it is grammatically correct. It is okay to have a rough draft and go back later to fix the syntax and grammar. Knowing these techniques will help me to excel in college writing.

•   grandam // Aug 30th 2014 at 2:01 am

  Reading Fourteen Short Takes in Writing and the Writing Process cemented my belief that while high school writing and reading strategies provided me with a strong base, the way I think about, plan for, create and reflect on my writing will need to grow in college. My notes in the past have been a repetition of facts, possibly paraphrased or re-organized but still basically the same ideas re-written into my notes. I know that I will have to move away from this way of digesting readings by focusing more on the analysis of the text, or “the why” as my high school teacher would say. What used to be a few sentences at the end of a five paragraph essay needs to grow into a full examination of the text. I will need to think not just about what the words mean themselves, but also what they mean in context. Why does the author choose to include this piece of information? Why does he/she have this view and what types of bias may be affecting the situation? Finally, why is this important in the larger context? Blind memorization, or “banking,” will no longer provide a satisfactory quality of insight.
  One part of the reading that I found most interesting was the categorization of writing as a “mental activity”. This seems obvious enough at first glance but essay writing often becomes more of a mental conveyor belt than an activity, the beginning, middle and end falling into place in much the same way every time. Treating writing as an activity allows for more creativity and playfulness with the concepts. In this kind of thinking, the point of the essay is the writing, not the finished product (although this is important as well). One way I will try to accomplish this is by following the third part of the definition of analysis. I know that I often fall into the trap of allowing preconceived ideas about a reading to color my interpretation of the topic and so I will have to try to limit my visceral reactions or at least try to think about the topic without bias. I thought that one helpful way to do this was to practice freewriting. This will allow me to process ideas without limiting them by over thinking my response. Writing in college, while undeniably more strenuous, will help me to understand my ideas and those of others to a deeper, more meaningful level.

•   medinaeg // Aug 30th 2014 at 2:22 am

  There will be many differences in my reading in college compared to high school. The first improvement will be is allotting myself enough time to read the passages given. Also being willing to reread the passages to refresh my mind will be difficult. Reading and understanding the passages is my norm with annotations of the texts. I need to learn how to research and find text to help my essay. I plan to go to the library for the resources we have available at the campus and ask for help when needed. Banking is what will hold me back as I am not strong in English and go off what other people say and I build off of them. If I do wish to get better I would have to free write a lot more in order to get my own ideas going without stop. The five paragraph structure has been taught to me many times and is engraved into my mind and will have to be forgotten in order to see both sides. I believe once I see good papers it will help out in seeing how an essay got started and the process, which was used to portray their argument. Grammar will have to be put into the end as I usually do focus where the comma goes, this will deter me and my ideas.

•   chicasi // Aug 30th 2014 at 2:35 am

  In my time in high school, I was working on a lot of essays in my literature classes. I would generally try to write something that I understand well to explain to the reader what is the point of my essay. In AP Language and Composition, I learned about many different elements to approach essays and the writing techniques to accompany them, such as ethos, pathos, and logos. I tend to use the five paragraph format as instructed, even though I write very long paragraphs. Furthermore, I usually start essays from the introduction to the conclusion, even though it may be easier to start with the body paragraphs or conclusion first.

  My problem is that I sometimes don’t think about certain writing techniques to include in my essays. Instead, I just write whatever comes to mind that sounds right. What I must do to improve my writing is to try and relearn some techniques to incorporate. I also tend to repeat certain ideas rephrased, so I need to avoid that and find more ideas to make my essays worth reading. This relates with researching because if I need to find sources to explain a certain viewpoint in an analytical essay, I might terribly explain the reasons. This includes reading texts and citing a select piece that should help me. I need to improve citing sources and correctly use them to assist my argument or explanation. I also need to break out of the five paragraph essay rule from high school, which is possibly going to be a very difficult transition for me. I need to be able to fix these habits and learn more sophisticated strategies that can help deliver my message in my college writing.

•   Estiven // Aug 30th 2014 at 2:52 am

  In high school I was used to having a prompt and not having to come up with ideas in order to create an argument. In college I have to get use to reading a text and having to creatively come up with an argument. Not having a prompt will force me to create my own argument and further my critical thinking skills, while in high school we all had the same prompt so our arguments usually were very similar. For reading it’s different because I will have to annotate a lot more and get use to having to connect ideas from different texts. I have to adjust to the banking method because for 3 years of high school we eliminated the banking method from the classroom, in our classroom the student was able to elaborate his opinion on the ideas from the text and their opinion wasn’t labeled as incorrect or correct. Actually a lot of the power in class favored the student because the class was student led. In high school, I wasn’t very good at researching evidence for research papers. I would organize too many ideas and it led me to have a thesis that wasn’t focused. In college, I will have to get better at organizing my ideas for research papers in order to make them potential talking points in my research paper. This will allow me to eliminate unnecessary ideas that I won’t need to include in my research paper and avoid writing a weak paper.

•   Hannah // Aug 30th 2014 at 4:33 am

  In high school, our reading was probably very similar to college reading. My teacher required active reading notes for all of our reading assignments, which was very helpful because it forced us to take a step back and think about what the author wrote. This also helped with essays because we already had some notes on the subject we were covering. However, a major difference is that most of the papers we wrote in high school covered topics that the teacher proposed. We were reading with the intent of finding evidence for a specific question already posed.

  This, in turn, affected our researching. For an analytical paper, since my teacher usually gave me a prompt, I spent most of my research trying to find evidence only for a very specific question. This was not really independent or self-designed research. Although I do believe the actual researching process will be quite similar in college to high school. This is because I found the active reading process to be very effective for me in comprehending analytical assignments.

  Writing in college will be much more independent as whole than in high school. As previously stated, I will have more independent thought. Also, I will probably put more thought into the rhetoric of me papers in college. In high school we thought about our intended audience and appropriate tone and diction for this audience, but it wasn’t as in-depth as it could have been. Also, the idea of free writing is also very new to me as a writer. I have never approached an analytical assignment with freestyle writing, so I may have to broaden my horizons with that. I also thought the discussion on deviation from standard form was interesting. My high school began with teaching the standard, five-paragraph form, but towards the end of AP Literature we started moving away from this.

•   Cailin Smith // Aug 30th 2014 at 5:12 am

  Cailin Smith
  Blog 2- Writing
  Chapter one of Writing Analytically summarizes strategies to strengthen students’ writing, which will be discussed in more detail later in the book. Though I have heard of all, and actively practiced some, before arriving at Dickinson, I know that my writing can definitely be improved by continuing to practice with them. Some areas that need the most strengthening are exploring all sides of an argument, experimenting with structure, and taking risks in theses to make papers more interesting. I have used freewriting before and want to continue to strengthen this skill, especially to ensure that I explore all sides of the essay’s argument.
  Bridget Jones’ essay explores both the side she is supporting and the contradictory argument. While she argues that these female characters are both complex and less feminine than their surface appearance suggests, she does explore the superficial appearances that make the characters bolder in the end. She does not equate the characters, either, and recognizes their differences rather than only comparing them. It is clear that, with all her points connecting in intricate ways, she must have practiced some of the techniques mentioned in the chapter. For example, freewriting was probably used, since that technique helps to discover which possible directions an essay can take, and then the author can connect them later once there is a clear idea among all the ideas in their head. She also analyzed the characters before arguing her thesis directly, which gives her ethos as an author because she presents the facts before shoving an opinion onto the reader.

•   Kienan // Aug 30th 2014 at 12:14 pm

  After years of being taught to use the five paragraph format, I will have to break from that habit in order to dive deeper and explain my thoughts. Also, when it comes to the analysis aspect, I find it interesting on how many times I have used the method of being negative toward a party to give my belief more weight without knowing what I was really doing. After reading the chapter, I realize that what I was doing was simply creating fluff to take up space on the paper while trying to reach the minimum amount of pages assigned by the teacher. I have read many novels that are two hundred pages but are “heavier” than a five hundred page novel because the author took their time to think about what they were writing and to present them on to paper. For example, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston took care to make sure that every line had a deeper meaning, even though it is not as long as other books. While reading that book, I annotated a long the way and by the end of the book, every page was filled with comments, questions and connections that I had observed. It is this type of care that I will need to take in to every assignment in college in order to fully grasp what I am reading and researching.

•   Aden // Sep 4th 2014 at 3:56 pm

  In reading this chapter, I gained a number of new and useful insights into elevating my writing. In high school I often used a five paragraph system for writing essays. The essays came out clean and basic, but they lacked deeper strength. I have never written using multiple view points before. I can see how that would give a fully rounded essay, focusing on presenting facts and not simply trying to win for one side. My reaction and opinion papers in high school revolved around arguing for one point of view, and discrediting the others; as if I were tasked to change someone’s mind with my writing. I need to completely change the way I see and approach writing after reading this chapter. I have never located the middle ground in an essay, nor have I delayed evaluation. My theses have always argued for one way or another. They have never developed both sides of an issue. My research has always been one sided as well. I found a point and I developed it fully, without searching for much about the other side. I will need to start looking at all the possible angles of an essay, and how I can demonstrate all of the evidence I find without passing judgment.

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