Blog #8: Dominic Lopez

 



                        Here are some of my thoughts on the readings for this week: 


1.) One point that I really thought was impactful from the Borrowman and Kmetz piece is that the rhetoric we use should not be fully about either getting your audience to identify with you and your argument or fully about getting people to be divided on the topic. Rather, a balance should be maintained throughout the rhetoric you use because it encourages an open dialogue for people to consider all sides of an issue and all possible calls to action. As teachers, we can challenge our students to use rhetoric in their writing that calls for the reader to identify with them and their argument but also provides perspectives on the topic that can allow the reader to come to their own conclusion on the topic. This makes for more interesting and impactful writing because the writing isn’t an all one-sided argument and explores ideas further than a one-sided argument would do.  


2.) In the Smith piece, one thing I took away that I found applicable to teaching students writing is that teachers too often stick to writing their comments on student papers with the same kind of comments each time. They will use comments that apply to the genre of writing that the student is engaging in or to the kinds of mistakes that students often make. Teachers need to make their comments more specific and personal to the student who did the writing so that the student will respond to the comments positively and be able to better understand how to apply the teacher’s comments to their writing in the future. Students will scoff at comments by the teacher if they are always the same and not constructive, such as plain negative feedback. Teachers also should be aware of the types of comments they tend to make and look for new ways of making comments that are relatable to the student and conducive to students understanding and applying these comments to their writing.  


3.) For the Kantz piece, I liked that she asserts that writing research papers should be perceived as a way to be creative with their writing. Students have the belief that secondary sources are absolute truth and so they should basically go along with the points being made in these sources and paraphrase them to write the arguments for their papers. But what we should help our students realize that they should be writing original arguments that they came up with and should use secondary sources in a way that either supports their argument or goes against the arguments being made in these sources. Additionally, teachers should encourage students to find sources that disagree with one another in order to show the complexity of the topic and arguments they are writing for their papers. 


4.) An important idea that Kantz stresses in her piece that I could relate to is how students frequently feel that they should be able to write a piece of writing in one draft. They feel like they aren’t going good writers if their first draft isn’t well-written with good ideas and effective in its use of rhetoric and flow. I know that I try to write my papers in one shot most of the time for many reasons; one of them being that I feel like I don’t have enough time before the due date with all of the other schoolwork I have to write out multiple drafts. I’ve also felt that it can be daunting to find ways to improve your writing and add more ideas to another draft. Teachers frequently assign writing assignments with one due date instead of assigning multiple writing assignments that build on each other as drafts. So if teachers instead build on writing assignments like a research paper with multiple drafts and guide the student through the writing and research of each draft, students will feel more confident in solving the issues that come up in their writing and see themselves as capable writers. They will understand that writing multiple drafts does not reflect on their capabilities as writers; rather, every good writer writes more than one draft as writing as a process means a better final product at the end.  

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