Reading Strategies

I already agree with the first sentence of this section when it says "Academic reading is challenging". In my opinion, it is hard to read a text book! The reading says that is difficult to pick out the main ideas because of the concepts and vocabulary. It may be tempting to skim right over it but you really need to read carefully so you don't miss anything. A good idea is to preview the text. In this case you can skim over it because you are looking at what you will be reading. Annotating is when readers highlight key words, sentences, phrases or write questions in the margins. The reading suggests doing this as if you are talking to the author. This will help you understand the text better. Another part of the reading talks about a "believing and doubting game" which reminds me of a pros and cons list. To do this, you write everything that you can believe about what the author is saying. Then after doing that, you write as if you doubt everything that the author has said.

Editing and Proofreading

In the introduction the book says that readers of resumes may reject applications if they contain just one error. This shows how important proofreading really is! That would be like losing a job just because of a misspelled word. But before you proofread, you must edit. This is when you tear apart the writing and look for punctuation errors, problems with sentences and making sure the words are spelled correctly. They give some suggestions on how to proofread such as using a ruler to read so your eyes don't jump ahead, read your sentence out loud, or ask someone else to read it.

Assessing Your Own Writing

This week's reading talks about assessing your own writing. The first section is about the writing that you do for yourself. It says that if you're just writing for yourself then just let the ideas flow. It's best just to free-write when you are writing for yourself. You can use lists, journal writing or cubing writing. The next paragraph talks about writing for others. It brings up a good point that we need to make our writing as good as possible because we are never there to explain why we wrote what we wrote. The reading says to assess writing in two stages: consider how well it meets the rhetorical situation, then study the writing itself to check it's focus. You need to check your focus, the support and the organization of the writing. The next chapter talks about revising. It says to bring it to writing-center tutors because they can point out problems that you might have not seen in your work. After they make their points, you must revise your work. Some reasons to revise are to sharpen your focus, strengthen the argument, improve the organization and for clarity.

Reading #3

This weeks reading starts off with how to start writing. It says to make a schedule with dead lines so you won't be rushing around at the last minute and throwing things together. Freewriting is a good way to start your writing. You just start writing anything, even if it sounds terrible. This will get you warmed up and ready to write. The reading also tackles the problem of writer's block. To solve this problem, it says to stop trying. Get up and do something else for half an hour. When you come back you'll feel refreshed and ready to write. The next section is about describing. You really need to go into detail so the reader feels that they are actually there. It says to be as specific as possible. Next, comes narrating. It stresses the importance of sequencing, by using chronological order. You may also use reverse chronological order or a flashback. The last reading was about dialogue and why to add it. It is a way of bringing other people's voices into the story.

How Literature Affects People's Lives

In Chapter 50 of Literacy Narratives, there are five different narrative. In the first narrative, a girl talks about how she is of Mexican decent and how she barely spoke a word of Spanish. She tried to go through her life acting as if she was Caucasian. Then, she learns to embrace her heritage. In the next story, a slave tells his story of how he wanted to learn to read and write so bad. He would make friends with the white children, give them bread, then ask them to teach him. After doing this, he finally accomplished his dream of knowing how to be literate. The third, and most interesting story, was about Malcolm X. He tells how he copied the dictionary in jail everyday and soon became a man who loved books and reading. Jail had turned him into a very wise man. The fourth story is about an author or novels, children's books and essays. She talks about how she had to use two kinds of English; the proper way and then a sort of broken English. Her mother barely speaks English, so Amy Tan had to talk into a shortened version of English. She talked very proper with everyone else. The fifth and final story tells how a boy started to become interested in science after reading. He would make up elaborate stories and tell them. He then became to love science fiction stories. All of these stories talk about how literature has affected people's lives and how in some ways, even changed people's lives.

Types of Writing

In Part One of Rhetorical Situations, the first chapter is about the purpose of your writing. There are many purposes of writing such as persuasion, informing, entertaining and many others. It's important to know the purpose so you can word things the right way. In the second chapter, they discuss audience. I think that audience is one of the most important parts in writing because if you don't know your audience, you could offend someone! The next point they talk about is the genres of writing. I learned that basically any type of writing is a genre, from letters to jokes. Another part of the chapter was about stance. This is how you come across to your reader, your attitude of the piece. The last part of the chapter was about media/design. We use many things to communicate such as the tone of our voice, our body language and all the technologies.