Assignment 3

Colleguide: The College Guide to Writing

Getting Started:
We’ve all been there, you’re sitting in front of the computer and as far as your concerned the English language seems more foreign to you than tribal noises. Nothing seems to make sense and sentences are not being formed. This is where you begin writing those things down. That’s right you read this correctly, write them down. According to Shitty First Drafts, by Anne Lamott, you must begin writing somewhere, and because you will be revising later it is good to start writing because it will make your brain start to work and you will not only get some good sentences out of it but you will have made a blueprint to go back and build later.

Time:
Although this goes without saying, allotting enough time to thoroughly write your paper is the first step to successful college writing. I have learned that cramming the night before does not conduct creative writing. Sometimes it may be difficult but if you can start early you will be rewarded in the end.

Revision:
Now is where you graduate from middle school revision to real world revision, at least that’s how it felt for me. If you have the same basic understanding of revision that I had then you are under the impression that after you write your paper you run it through spell checker. Then you re read the paper and amend any wrong words that you used that the spell check may not have picked up, and if you have enough time, throw in a couple educated words just to spruce things up. This is a good start but you are nowhere near completion. As I stated in the previous section titled Time (please read first if you have not already done so), you have written only the first draft to your paper, using only your initial ideas and thoughts. Experienced writers claim that your first draft is just a starting point where your ideas form. From there is where you can respond you your ideas and elaborate on them so that you can restructure your paragraphs entirely.

Voice/Audience:
Say that you are watching your favorite television program and all of a sudden the moment you’ve been dreading has arrived, the commercial break. All of a sudden, before you can find the remote, this deep powerful voice comes on and you are immediately hooked. It is soothing, yet stern and keeps you relaxed the entire time. Before you know it you have just watched an entire All State car insurance commercial and for some reason you are tempted to follow the company even though you don’t know why. Well, I can tell you that it has a lot to do with the voice.
Even though you cannot auditorily express yourself through writing, your voice is equally important and you can express it through your tone and involvement in your writing. Nobody would want to listen to a screechy or monotone voice in person, so why would anyone want to read something with no personal involvement. When writing you must make the reader feel that he or she is actually listening to you speak. You must engage yourself in the writing, show emotion and interest. If you are not interested in your own writings, what makes you think they will be. This is not to say that you should not use sophisticated or academic terms, just throw in more common phrases every once in a while.
When writing I suggest that you try and get yourself into the topic and that you want to personally teach them or tell them a story as I am now. Show your passion and give your opinion every once in a while to show the reader that you are still there with them. A reader can feed off of your emotions so you need to use them to draw them in, this will make the reader feel more interested strictly on the fact that they are sharing an experience with you.

Interpretation:
Throughout college you will be asked numerous times to write papers on different subjects or readings, most of them will be unfamiliar to you and to fully understand them you must research and be able to comprehend the readings. As I am sure you know, this is not always that easy. However, I have learned a few things I would like to pass on to you. When reading an article it is very easy to stick with the parts you understood and skip over the rest. This may be comfortable, but a world of comprehensive papers await you if you take the next step. When reading a passage you must re read the sections you did not understand, pausing after each sentence and rewording it in your head as if you are taking notes to show yourself that you understood it. If you can slow it down like this and decode the complicated sentences you will gain a better understanding of the readings. When you are through, re read the article in its entirety so that you can get the true flow and cohesiveness of the information. This may take an extra thirty minutes, but when you are through you will save double that time when trying to put it on paper. You will have a full understanding as well as a connection with the author and his thoughts, which will make things much easier when it comes to the analysis.
I truly discovered this when I wrote a paper on a chapter of Ways of Reading, where Bartholomae and Petrosky gave me advice similar to this. When I wrote about it, it actually forced me to practice the act and I was able to come up with my own strategy, putting together many of the things they told me. A quote they used by I.A. Richards which really drew my attention was… “Read as though it made sense and perhaps it will.”(p.10) This helped me not get as caught up and when I would re read the section I would have somewhat of a pathway pre formed in my head.