Importance of Academic Writing (Essay Example)
During my secondary school years, my literature teacher never considered me as a person who was good at writing. Hence, I always spend a lot of time thinking about the word choices and grammar in my writing. I became very meticulous and always had high expectations on my first draft. But that is my failure in writing. Also, taking a writing course in a foreign country is a challenge for me because writing methods are different. In Vietnam, our writing usually depends on our memories of what the teachers tell us in class. For instance, instead of referencing many readings and coming up with my own expression in my paper, I was mainly told only to use the teacher's expression. They read, I write their words, and copy those into my paper like a parrot learning how to talk. It limited me to express my own thoughts, discover a new direction during the writing process, and relate the knowledge to my own experience. It also consequences many Vietnamese students, including me, facing trouble in order to convey their messages by writing. And of course, we were never told to cite, and our readers will read the teachers' demonstration but not ours. Upon the three readings, I learnt how to express my opinions through the paper, utilize sources to create my new meanings, and discover the new paths from my failure in writing.
Writing in college is the purpose of developing students' thinking skills further, fostering new insights and interpretations. It is also the tool to create and analyze an argument in terms of appropriate evidence. From that, ask students to interpret their ideas. In short, academic writing is based on my ideas and how often it helps me formulate them. The essay "What is Academic Writing?" depicts that academic writing is the transmission of my messages and knowledge across papers.
Academic writing is always a form of evaluation that asks you to demonstrate knowledge and show proficiency with certain disciplinary skills of thinking, interpreting, and presenting (8).
From the quotes, I could conclude that my writing must have the ability to manifest my insights clearly, coherently, and fluently. As I mentioned at the beginning, I used to write essays based on my teacher's expression. But I am now absorbing the change in perception and thinking. The reading helps me realize the importance of writing my paper in my own compelling and realistic dialogue. To do so, I need to consider the context and the audience that determine my writing purpose and how readers can condense the main ideas I want to convey. Because it not only helps the readers to understand my works, but also an essential element for my later intellectual work. I can use writing as a tool to hone my problem-solving skill and the ability to synthesize, systematize, distinguish main and secondary ideas, and arrange the ideas in a logical and persuasive order.
Going to college, I realized academic writing is more complicated in comparison than general writing and any other types I had interacted with in high school. College writing is the combination of creating works from ideological and artistic value. In the reading, Haller mentions the metaphor of writing and describes how to analyze source-based assignments and integrate source materials. The "cooking" metaphor explains the drafting process of the paper. The reader will "taste" the original information when I quote.
When you cook with sources, you process them in new ways. Cooking, like writing, involves a lot of decisions. For instance, you might decide to combine ingredients in a way that keeps the full flavor and character of each ingredient (Haller, 203).
When writing an academic paper, I need to fully organize information and present the relationships between sentences logically. Because the readers not only "taste" the original sources but also have a "taste" of my paper. To apply in my writing, the elaborate and creative combination of my thoughts and the author's information will represent how I "eat" the information from the text. In short, it means how I process the information. My texts have to appeal the readers' senses to make them see and experience the subject. For instance, when I combine the included source with my statements in some parts, it enhances and adds depth to the description of my paper. The reader will understand the part that changes me and will comprehend the new meanings I make from reading the sources.
However, no one was born with the ability to be a good writer. Similar to cooking, to create a new dish, the chef needs to try multiple ways; if they fail, they try again. So does writing. I usually caught on to the myth of turning in perfect first drafts. For example, whenever I was assigned an essay, I first created an outline and attempted to acquire as much information as needed. Then, I would sit down and write my first draft at once. I was always so assured that my paper would become the best; however, after I acquired my work back, it never be the grade I had expected. I started having disillusion thoughts that I had not dedicated enough time to that paper. I became more comfortable with failure after reading the text "Failure is Not an Option" by Allison Carr because failure is now a learning tool for discovering my new "potential" in writing.
We aren't born pen in hand, fully primed to write sonnets or political treatises as soon as we get a grip on those fine motor skills. Writing is learned slowly, over a long period of time, and with much difficulty, and anybody who says otherwise is lying or delusional or both (78).
Failure is an option that should be used in college writing. As a writer, I should know up front that in writing, where I'm working through several drafts, accepting mistakes and failure are essential. Thus, I should not try to avoid it or feel down whenever I encounter failure because I will learn from that experience. Failure in writing is the presence of creative, risky thinking, and an opportunity to explore a new direction. Hence, it is crucial to realize that it is not the end, although the first draft is not perfect. I am now learning that writing always needs process, patience, and the willingness to improve is a must to get the best version of writing.
In conclusion, the three readings help me understand that writing is a process that denotes my expression. Writing begins with an idea and implementation of all related skills and processes. Especially in academic writing, now I know how to express the idea by applying the reading in my paper. In addition, I learnt to arrange and organize my idea with the sources in a logical syntactic order. So that the written text becomes complete, understandable, and persuasive. I also need to be willing to discover typical characteristics of the language, face failure, and not be dampened; therefore, strengthen my academic writing.
