The Importance Of Writing Badly Analysis

As I began to read in week one Unteaching the Five Paragraph Essay by Marie Foley, I was reminded of the importance of how writing lends to reading, which in turn infers absorbing the content. Writing is essential to not only education but in connecting through this form of communication as well. Appropriately, this was addressed again by John Dewy in Democracy and Education in 1916. I found it interesting that this subject matter written about so long ago is still prevalent today.

The piece of writing which I felt was unsuccessful for me was the Rhetorical Analysis of an article relating to a topic from our course book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. This piece of writing was difficult for me to organize my ideas around. The article that I decided to use for my rhetorical analysis highlighted mass incarceration among African American and the effect of civil liberties being are taken away from these individuals. I had a lot of repetition because many of the examples I used demonstrated more than one type of appeal. I found myself repeating what the purpose of the example was and how it demonstrated proper use of ethos, pathos, and logos. This also made it difficult

McCarthy’s findings contribute to the notion, “learning to write… is not only a developmental process that occurs within an individual student, but also as a social process, that occurs in response to particular situations” (236). Although McCarthy only documents Dave as he takes this “journey across the curriculum”, her study is addressing the college student body as a whole. She declares that the success of a student is determined not only by their intelligence, but also their ability to adapt to a wide range of social and academic settings without any negative interference towards their

Emotional, ethical, and logical appeals are all methods used in writing to perused you one way or another on various topics. Mike Rose used all of these techniques in this essay, to show how student who are pushed aside, distracted, or fall behind and fail. In this essay Rose describes that students who have teachers who are unprepared, or incompetent majorly contribute to student failure. He is trying to show that many children have potential that is overlooked or sometimes even ignored, by authority.

There are many writers that affect our emotions or that make us think that his or her statements are reasonable, whether they are authors of books, or script writers for a movie or a play. In Morgan Spurlock’s film, Supersize Me, he uses three common rhetorical strategies: ethos, pathos, and logos. He uses all three effectively, however pathos has the greatest effect out of all three rhetorical strategies.

In her essay "Does Texting Affect Writing?", Michaela Cullington presents her argument that texting does not impact formal writing written by students. She discusses the concerns presented by many people about how texting language can transfer into writing, but through the use of personal experiences and credible sources she discusses how this is not true. Her use of multiple different studies and situations help boost her argument and allow the reader to truly see how students actually do formal writing. She presents a strong argument as to why those who believe students don't have the control and knowledge to write formally, instead of with text speak, are wrong.

In 1741, Jonathan Edwards delivered a sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut. This sermon was so influential and poignant that today it has transformed into a piece of literature that many study in classes. This bit of literature is so utterly jam-packed with the use of rhetorical appeals, often referred to as ethos, pathos, and logos. These three appeals are derived from ancient Greece, or more precisely, the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Ethos appeals to the audience’s sense of trust, pathos, to their sense of emotion, and logos, to their sense of logic. The use of ethos, pathos, and logos in any type of writing or speaking can create a commanding and arresting effect on the reader/listener.

When it comes to writing, the hardest part is getting the audience interested in what you have to say. Four techniques writers use to attract readers are the use of ethos, logos, pathos and Kairos in their text. Ethos is a method used to gain trust in the author. Logos uses facts and statistics to add credibility to the author. Pathos is used in stories or experiences to connect the readers emotionally to the text. Kairos is used to determine when is the right time to release your piece of literature. Eric Schlosser, author of “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good”, properly uses these four techniques to persuade his friendly audience to keep on reading.

I find that the wording and presentation of an article or essay influences my opinion of the writer, and it affects how I receive the idea they are trying to present to me. Craig Vetter uses a blunt approach to convey his idea that writing is nearly impossible to teach, and describes writing as “A blood sport, a walk in the garden of agony every time out.” He presents writing as an arduous task that no one can ever perfect, and he presents this view in a harsh light that makes you realize that what he says is a cold hard truth, that you suck at writing, and that there is next to nothing that you can do to change that.

In “College Pressures” by William Zinsser, leader of one of the residential colleges at Yale University, the author describes the different amount of pressures that students struggle with in college. Because of his position at the university, he constantly noticed the students around him and the anxiety that was radiating off them. He believes that economic pressures cause students to feel anxious about paying back student loans after college. However, parental pressure leads students to make decisions that their parents would be happy with because of the feeling of guilt and wanting to please them. Peer and self-induced pressures are also mentioned in Zinsser’s essay. Because students always worry about accomplishing more than the student

Transitioning from high school to college can be overwhelming. Before English 1301, I did not worry about preparing for college. I quickly realized that my little background in writing essays was not enough for college courses. Writing is not just a skill that I will need for English classes. In college, I will have to use effective writing skills in all my classes to complete research papers, essay tests and communicate with professors. Throughout my education, writing strategies persisted to be a challenge for me. I dreaded writing because I could never find ways to transition my thoughts from my mind to the paper. Ironically, a class that petrified me due to the amount of required writing ended up helping me in numerous ways. English 1301 and my professor prepared me for college and real life by giving me a foundation of effective learning strategies.

actually affects our brains and the way we use them. Many people would argue that technology has more cons than pros, however it’s quite the opposite. We use technology in our everyday lives and it helps us to gain more knowledge than we’ve ever been able to before. The technology we have today is one of the greatest advantages we could have.

Writers do their job because they want to express their ideas to make an impact on the readers. Sometimes they want to convince their audience through persuasion. They can do it using different rhetorical elements such as logos, ethos, and pathos. These are Greek words that mean logic, character, and emotion consecutively.

The article by Donald Murray entitled, “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts” provides readers a better understanding of the writing process and argues that writers learn to write, by writing and rewriting. Murray also contends that writers must learn to be their own best enemy. Well, I believe I have this trait covered! I will confess, that I purposely saved this course for last, due to the number of years between my last structured learning experience and returning to school to complete a BSN degree. After many years of writing as a nurse, using short, concise statements, academic writing was my greatest concern.

Barry Alford, the author of Freirean Voices, Student Choices is an English professor at Mid Michigan Community College. In this specific piece of writing, he states that “particularly when they find themselves following some formula organizing the topic instead of the trail of their own thinking” (P. 280). Meaning that students just do exactly what they are told to do instead of venturing out and making it their own writing. Alford talks about how students need to have more in depth and creative forms of writing rather than being boring. A major thing he believes is that students need to hear themselves and their other classmates before they start writing. Some methods Alford uses is he has classroom discussions using the schema Shor outlines