Essay #1 Final Draft

In the book Ways of Reading, Bartholomae and Petrosky talk about how students interpret readings into their own thoughts and writing. Bartholomae and Petrosky show an example of a student writer who was given the task to write his own experience of the “banking” concept, as told by Freire. He writes a well thought out paper of all the things he could relate to after reading the banking concept one time through. He uses good examples and the paper is very easy to follow, especially coming from someone who has not read the original banking concept from Freire himself. When the student was asked how he prepared and carried out the task of writing the paper he was quick to respond, “I read through the Freire essay and I worked with what I understood and ignored the rest.” (p. 13). This leads me to the basis of my discovery.
Bartholomae and Petrosky were completely fine with this process for writing the paper, as long as it was for the first draft. They then spoke of how the student writer wrote the passage as an individual example, but Bartholomae and Petrosky argue that “…Freire argues, is bigger than the intentions or actions of individuals.”(p. 14). That quote shows that while the student wrote some of his own individual examples, Freire was talking about the education system as a whole. Bartholomae and Petrosky then asked the student to re-read the passage and focus more on the sections that were complex to him. The revision was astounding to me. Even though they showed only a small portion of the revision, it showed that he had really taken Freire’s words to heart and that he was manufacturing his example more into a sample, backing up Freire’s claims rather than just an individual example.
Bartholomae and Petrosky gave praise to the student from the beginning. They stated that it was a good paper before I was able to read it and formulate my own opinion. To them, it was a good start for a first draft. It was not until after we had read the passage that we were able to get the full input from Bartholomae and Petrosky. I tried to soak it in the first time I read it before I had someone else’s opinion in my head, and before long I was dreading what would come next because it seemed like a replica of my writings. Luckily Bartholomae and Petrosky praised it afterwards, but stated that it needed a lot of revision. As it has been recommended throughout the Ways of Readings, they wanted the student to go back and re-read the text, focusing on the more difficult parts. This showed that Bartholomae and Petrosky really felt that the student had left out the importance of the argument and was just going with the basic facts. This is where I had to take Bartholomae and Petrosky’s advice into my own hands and re-read their comments on the paper to see what the real meaning was that was hidden inside their complex vocabulary which I breezed through the first time.
Bartholomae and Petrosky noticed that the writer did a good job at quoting Freire and using it in his paper for the parts he understood. They claim that doing this can give the appearance of understanding the paper but takes away the writer’s need to do any real in-depth look at Freire’s text. According to them, it becomes “unnecessary.” (p.14). This is a looked down upon because it prevents the writer from moving out of his comfort zone.
While reading this excerpt I found that I really agreed with it for the most part because it hit so close to home. As I said earlier, while reading this short essay I felt like I was reading a paper of my own. This lead me to be skeptical of what would come next when Bartholomae and Petrosky critiqued it because I felt as though I put great effort into my papers and nobody wants to believe that they do things the wrong way. However, I am still glad I read it because Bartholomae and Petrosky opened my eyes to an entirely new way of writing, a way that nobody had ever shown me before.
The first thing I learned, even though I’m not happy about it, is that when comprehending a difficult reading I must re-read it a second time to get the full understanding of the paper. Bartholomae and Petrosky found a quote by I.A. Richards which drew my attention… “Read as though it made sense and perhaps it will.” (p.10) I tried this out for a little bit after that and it actually helped a little but not enough to only read it only once. However, what it did help me with was getting the flow of the paper a little bit so that when I re-read it and focused on the tougher parts it helped bind the reading together for me.
Another one of Bartholomae and Petrosky’s points was that the writer just went with the undemanding parts of the reading and what he understood, and dumped the rest. This sounded like me exactly, even so much that before I started writing the paper I was just going to go with the parts I understood, until I brainstormed my paper and realized what I was going to write about. I realized that I could not just write a paper on the parts I understood the first time if those main points contradicted that approach in the first place. I now have realized how important it is that I pay close attention to the book when I realize that I am getting lost, rather than just spacing out until I get to the next part. I must re-read those sections slowly, pausing between each sentence and re-word it in my own head to make sure that I understand it, just as if I were taking notes in class and not just mindlessly copying things down that I didn’t understand. By taking what I have learned from Bartholomae and Petrosky I have now enacted my own rule, combining some of the advice they gave me. The first time I go through a passage I will re-read the sections I don’t understand slowly until I understand them. Then, once I am through the passage I will be commentating on, I will re-read it in its entirety so that I can get the whole flow of the paper together, helping me glue the pieces together without any rough edges. This will not only solve the problem of going with the easiest parts, but it will increase the knowledge and information that I put into my papers as well as store into my brain for overall increased intelligence.
Now, after all this re-reading and focusing we are finally finished with our…gulp…first draft. This next quote is where I could really relate to past experience. “It may not be as finished as it might need to be later in the semester, but it is writing where something is happening, where thought is taken seriously.” I have never really had a teacher tell me to take my first draft and then re-word it completely, but I really like how this student essay turned out. It showed so much relation to the context, even though I had never read the original context. It explained that no draft is a bad draft, just as long as it’s not the final draft. Sometimes you just have to start somewhere to get the mind working and then you can work with what you have, revising and rewording your original ideas.
I learned a great deal from reading the beginning of the book, Ways of Reading. I am glad that I was issued the assignment to write about my finding because if I had not written this paper I would have never analyzed the advice that was given by Bartholomae and Petrosky so closely. While researching my main points I was forced to use their own advice to critique and analyze their own writings. It showed me that I not only had to understand what they were talking about, but turn it around and use it myself to complete the assignment. It really challenged my brain to put the advice to work, which in turn caused me to better understand the findings. I hope that I can use these new techniques in the future to better my writing and hopefully you can as well.