Conclusion
As I have mentioned so many times before, this Writing Class was a whole new learning experience for me. The things I learned in Writing 2 I will take with me when I go on to upper division writing courses, when I am faced with difficult writing tasks, or when l am faced with life decisions in general. Many of the things I can take away from this class don’t just pertain to writing. They pertain to many life situations that I will encounter in my college career and in the real world beyond that. This class created a whole new perspective on writing for me. Before calling my writing “project’s” I realized that I was so accustomed to the word “essay” which is a word that I’ve grown to an aversion to. The term “project” made me think a lot about what exactly that meant and what it meant about the writing that I was going to be doing. Writing isn’t just always an “essay” it is a project that you create. When I think about the word project, I think of an individual taking initiative to complete this bigger, systematic task. I see myself undertaking these writing assignments with a goal of learning about myself through them and learning about myself as a writer. I really liked the idea of calling my writing a project because it makes it my own and makes it something that I have worked very hard to accomplish. The aspect of my writing being a project couldn’t have been rendered without Mahara.
Mahara allowed me to be able to present my writing in an entirely different, new and innovative way. It was so different from what I have done before because it allows you to be able to work with actual pages that you can follow across a webpage. A blank word document with plain text moves in a linear way and vertical through pages. On the other hand, Mahara moves in a nonlinear way and writing can be read horizontally across pages. In Mahara, you can easily insert videos, texts, html files, pdf files, and so many other external media directly into your pages that enhances the quality of the writing and also enhances how the reader is engaged with the writing. According to Akpem, these types nonlinear narratives “gives them incredible flexibility, and makes them the perfect vehicle for how we explore online, jumping from one piece of information to the next” and that is the great part of Mahara: its movability. The readers “deepen their experience” and can actually interact with your Writing Project, it creates a whole to meaning for writing and learning from the writing (Akpem). Mahara makes me never want to go back to word documents again, but it’s all about transferring this new knowledge about presenting your writing that I can take with me into the future.
Something that I can really take away from Writing 2 is the importance of using the first-person pronoun, I. In the past, I have been told how to write and which words I am allowed to use. A person’s writing is so restricted because of this. However, this writing class really taught me about the importance of the individual and owning your work. You should be your own boss when it comes to your own writing. Using “I” is the first step to really taking ownership of your work. Maddalena argues that using pronouns “I” can be useful for giving the “whole picture” and even contributes more objectivity, honesty, and completeness (182). Using pronouns lets you define your perspective and gives context for you claims and opinions. It can help you express better your opinions and distinguish them from other scholars or other claims besides your own. Even in a science research or lab report that is “I-less”, the conclusion is likely to include “I’ because it is your own interpretations and they may not be entirely correct but the pronouns indicate that it is your own beliefs. When you put together your own interpretations or generate new insights about the scholar’s work, you may realize things that you did not realize before and this helps you to learn. In the real world, scholars and researchers communicate their ideas to generate new ones and then they combine the ideas together. Using pronouns like “I” and “we” during experiment reports allows you to acknowledge yourself as a variable as well. Maddalena advises to use “I” for clarity, to distinguish your claims from other scholar’s claims, and to map out the organization of your entire writing (188).
If there is anything that I can take away from Writing 2, it is the importance of metacognitive reflection. Metacognitive reflection includes the awareness of your thoughts and understanding your learning along the way. I did a lot of metacognitive reflection throughout the entire quarter with writing journals. I would asses where I am with my writing and whether I needed to do more first-order thinking or move on to more second-order thinking. I would assess what I’ve learned from doing the writing projects, what new insights, and what new understandings I have come to. For all three projects, I gained new insights on the type of writer I am. More importantly, I learned ways to attack any prompt that comes my way. Writing has many contexts, however something that can transfer to all types of writing is first-order and second-order thinking. Elbow taught me about the importance of using your creativity to develop ideas and then critical thinking to code your information and make meaning of it. This type of writing process allows for plenty of metacognition and according to Elbow, “since we are trying for the tricky goal of thinking about our subject but at the same time thinking about our thinking about it, putting our thought on paper gives us a fighting chance. But notice that what most heightens this critical awareness is not so much the writing down of words in the first place, though of course that helps, but the coming back to a text and re-seeing it from the outside (in space) instead of just hearing it from the inside (in time).” (Elbow, 58). Elbow mentions “re-seeing” your writing and this happens when you revise your work and look at it a second time. Revision is experimentation with your words, sentences, and ideas. This process of revision, I’ve learned, is extremely important to better yourself as a writer and to learn about the processes of completing a writing task.
After reading many examples, works, and different articles, I have practiced the art of reading like a writer. Bunn points out that it is necessary to ask yourself questions as you read such as the formality of the writing, asking yourself what the author’s purpose and who the audience is, ask if the writer was effective or not, and ask how the writer did what he or she did to be effective. (72). When you focus in on how each sentence was constructed you can learn how to carefully construct a sentence of our own that is as effective as the author’s was. Bunn stresses the importance of asking yourself these “how” questions when we read like writers so that we can construct similar writing that is effective and avoid the type of writing that isn’t as effective. (76). Reading like a writer is something that I had been doing subconsciously for years because my eighth grade teacher required then class to use techniques from authors that we read. However, now, I can put a label to reading like a writer and consciously think about what I am doing when I borrow sentence patterns from real authors. It is all about communicating across your message to your reader in the most effective way possible.
Writing 2 has been an very interesting adventure for me intellectually and emotionally. A whole new perspective on what writing really is began for me and I will continue to take these new applications I have learned into my future writing tasks and into my own person journaling. The task of really having to dig into your past and write about yourself requires courage and requires you to step outside of your comfort zone. Similar to how you need to step out of your comfort zone when you are learning something new. It is definitely a hard task but one that I have completed and feel like a different person coming out it.