Audience, purpose, organization, style, flow, presentation...that's a lot to handle right now, but this chapter made me think mostly about who my audience will be when I write academic papers. Just like with our blogs, academic papers should not inform. Professor Reynolds already knows all of this stuff--we do not wish to insult his intelligence by regurgitating what we read. We need to show our "familiarity, expertise, and knowledge" about the topic(s). We will be writing to an educated audience as graduate school students. So we have to tailor our writing style accordingly.
Organization means problem-solution. As defined in the chapter, 1. description of a situation; 2. identification of a problem; 3. description of a solution; and 4. evaluation of the solution. Real life example: Last semester, three boys sat in the back of my class and were very loud and disruptive...even talking on their cell phones loudly while I was lecturing! (situation). One of them was the most disruptive, and the other two followed suit (problem). I thought to individually speak to them in the hallway to try to convince them that their actions needed to change ( proposed solution). This was only a marginally effective measure to take as their instructor, as this problem intermittently continued (evaluation of solution). Lesson learned! I've gotta be tougher. Lay down the law and not let that type of behavior ruin the sentiment of the class. Or something like that.
Compared to lecturing, academic writing requires more formal words and expressions. Thus, I will have to keep my thesaurus handy in order to "reduce the informality" of my prose. I had also assumed that using "I", "we", or "you" was always frowned upon in academic writing, but it was refreshing to read that the use of "I" or "we" (if co-authoring an essay) is permissible in certain situations. Regardless, it doesn't seem right to use these nouns so often...since it's not a lecture. I'm still tossing that one around in my head.
Organization means problem-solution. As defined in the chapter, 1. description of a situation; 2. identification of a problem; 3. description of a solution; and 4. evaluation of the solution. Real life example: Last semester, three boys sat in the back of my class and were very loud and disruptive...even talking on their cell phones loudly while I was lecturing! (situation). One of them was the most disruptive, and the other two followed suit (problem). I thought to individually speak to them in the hallway to try to convince them that their actions needed to change ( proposed solution). This was only a marginally effective measure to take as their instructor, as this problem intermittently continued (evaluation of solution). Lesson learned! I've gotta be tougher. Lay down the law and not let that type of behavior ruin the sentiment of the class. Or something like that.
Compared to lecturing, academic writing requires more formal words and expressions. Thus, I will have to keep my thesaurus handy in order to "reduce the informality" of my prose. I had also assumed that using "I", "we", or "you" was always frowned upon in academic writing, but it was refreshing to read that the use of "I" or "we" (if co-authoring an essay) is permissible in certain situations. Regardless, it doesn't seem right to use these nouns so often...since it's not a lecture. I'm still tossing that one around in my head.
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