Process? or Product?

As some of you who already read my last blog promt about "voice" might notice, my process is insanely complicated, which doesn't always mean "well-organized." To answer the question "how do you write?,"I do outline what I want to say on a piece of paper as much possibly detailed as it could be; I divided into several blocks for introduction, body, and conclusion, and with one deep breath, I start to fill those blanks out. Sometimes, I get lost in the middle while thinking if this idea is strong enough to support that idea or if that one is overlapping the other one. When I feel the outline is specific and supportive enough, I start to type with my laptop. I don't know why, but I prefer working with my own laptop to working with the desktop in my office. Writing following the outline, I go back a lot and try to see if I miss or skip something or if I use certain sentence structure repetitively. This makes my work delayed so much more than I always plan beforehand. I know I shouldn't do that, but honestly I'm still doing that(even now!). Other than that, I think my process is similar to others. Finishing up the writing, I move on to proofreading and editing. Then, work is done.



I'm not sure if I say this here, but I think myself as an unskilled writer. I'm even confused at the definition of what is skilled or unskilled writer, but when I read about the process of unskilled writer in the previous essay, I was able to be sympathetic to the process of whoever it was. It doesn't mean I hate writing(I used to hate, but I don't any more). So, I could pretty much assume how they feel when they write and what they think about their works. Especially, I was surprised at some of the commonalities they have in writing such as they don't like to express themselves out in the writing since I felt the same way before, or maybe I do somewhat even now.

When thinking of the experience, with my hand not really moved for the next sentence, my head full of the nameless ideas, and my heart beating trillions times a minute, it's not that happy to be "critic" grading kids' assignments. Some of them might not even care writing, and some of them might be born with brilliant talents making impeccable stories. Still, there are students short of breath, biting finger nails whenever they grab pens to write something and try to find "the word." They might spend days and nights to figure that out and get close to the writing that sounds fabulous enough to say "I'm done!." However, it doesn't necessarily guarantee that they will have "A"s since it is too difficult to evaluate papers considering how much they devoted to this work or how well a student follows the thinking process. After all, it's all about the product; all we see is a piece of paper and letters. My question is, how can we evaluate individual efforts and process?

One of the approaches that I came up with is to really "know" the students. As doctors cannot cure the patients if they don't know what their patients' symtoms are, if you don't know their expectations and needs, there is no way we can help them to get better. Therefore, I think we need more intense composition class in terms of the relationship between students and teachers. Once you get to really know your students, what they are weak at, or how their processes are, I think it will definitely make it easier to consider the process. On the other hand, it could also be controversial when it comes to the fairness. Anomousity might prevent unjust assessment and help fair evaluation, but it shouldn't do harm on the very essence of what they need: consistent attention and constant value on what they work through.

Voice

Now I'm taking a risk in an experiment: the risk that I've never imagined myself in. Actually, it's not a big deal like peace talk over the deactivation of the nuclear weapon or espionage sneaking into the hospital that the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jung Il, had his brain surgery. I'm just writing my blog prompt without any outline, which I've never done in my life except for cases like emailing to friends and writing the journal. The reason why I am doing this is to see if this works better in expressing my own voice or not.



I just read my blog prompts that I've been writing, and some of those surprised me because I couldn't recognize my voice; I couldn't remember what I was planning to tell or what I wanted to express. Recalling the situation that I was about to write in, I came up with this idea that I might raise my own voice better if I put myself at the moment "shaping at the point of utterance" like Britton said.



Anyway, back to the point, let's talk about "voice." Basically, I don't think I have my own voice yet, but if I could define the voice as something that I believe in or am rooted in, I believe that individual "voice" could either enhance or decrease "academic voice." Your sincere and genuin belief permeated through your voice could help you to improve and develop your academic research or specialization. If you want to express what you believe in and raise your voice, you would be more likely to find the way to prove its validality and veracity. Playing the most effective weapon in claiming your opinion, "voice" seems essential virtuosity when it comes to writing. This finding leads me to another question. As a teacher or a grader, how can we approach to this concept for students? There could be a lot of answers, but I think this question is hard to find an answer because having my own voice is a matter of establishing identity, which is not a quick process. Acknowledging your own identity takes lots of time, and it is different from people to people. Some students already mapped out their next five years, but others might even know what they want to do tomorrow. As a teacher, I think, one way we can help them is to provide great amount of different reading. Experiencing various reading, they would find themselves in idosyncratic situations, having their own ideas. This might help them to lay the very foundation of their identity.



Meanwhile, individual voice could worsen your "academic voice" when you are too engrossed in certain belief and stop doubting about it, which is very dangerous therefore should never happen in the academic world. We've been admonished and urged to stick to our own position but in moderation. If the writing is too subjective, it is not valued any more because of the surpassing the normal extent of restraints of academic writing.

Then how should we balance out having authentic voice to the extent that add more power in your own logos in the academic world? Well, I think it is important to try to have both sounds; showing what you trust, but at the same time being a devils' advocate. This way, we can prevent ourselves from being too prejudiced or biased. Maybe we could stop being too dependent on the facts that I believe by, or we might be able to cut out ourselves being overly emotional.

So far, I've been trying to speak out with my own voice, but I don't know how much loud it was.
To me, the answer sounds more like for typical doesen't-have-any-anwer-right-now question.
It just takes time to reach there.

Take 20? why not 30?

To be honest, one of the reason that dragged me to watch take 20 was I didn't expect much from it. I believe that anyone can make progree in writing through endless practice, but I still think that to be a good writer takes natural knack. So, before I put the disc into the DVD player, I was thinking "hmm.. professors like you teaching how to write must be born with some kind of supernatural talent and ability, and how do you know what others are struggling?" Soon, I felt strange relief and genuin sympathy by listening to them saying "I was total stupid." And, by the end of the video, I found myself taking the note pressing the pause button on the remote control every once in a while.

One of the things that made me feel guilty recently was grading 1301 assignments. To me, every writing is a product of the students' creativity, which I could dare call "art." So, it sounds horrible that I give scores to their "art" with meaningless characters, which became everything to students. Also, I can't spend too much time on each assignment because I need time to study my stuff, too. Then, I feel even more guilty about not being able to fully respond to those papers and moving on. The thing that I learn from this video regarding to my issue was what Nancy Sommers said; try to think the purpose of reponse at the point. Her remark helped me to think that even if I feed their mouths full with an awful lot of comments, realistically thinking, it might not be effective and efficient to students. What if their stomach get clogged? Or what if they choose not to eat any more? And this answer led me to another question; to what extent can I expect from my students and how can I adapt various students' needs and expectations?

Why do we teach composition?

I used to hate writing. I really did. This apprehension used to make me end up thinking why I should write. To my surprise, however, the more I write, the more I feel I like writing. That's probably because I learned new things about myself as well as about the world through writing; in personal narrative, I learned what I like, and I became aware of how to argue through argumentative essay. Also, I got to know why people are getting obssesive to their appearance from my persuasive essay in communication class. Like my experience, people learn a lot of things through writing, and in this sense, I absolutely agree with the mimetic, one of the philosophies of composition.

As you can assume, what "mimetic" means basically "imitate." In other words, we can imitate the real world under the name of writing, and we can put ourselves in so many different shoes. In the mimetic, therefore, good writing means good thinking, that is, your writing is totally contingent on how you think. In this thinking process, we are exposed to various possibilities, which helps broaden our perspectives through logic and reasoning. Thus, we might be able to say to teach composition is to teach students how to live since life goes on by making a decision at every corner of our lives, and we can do this better by thinking critically. That's why we have to teach composition.

3 important points in teaching composition

Writing is a process that delivers your own idea to others. There are so many things that we consider when we write, but I think that 3 most important things in composition are critical thinking, audience, and grammar.

When you write, you are expected to express one coherent main idea, so-called topic. To address your topic effectively, it is essential to have critical thinking. Critical thinking helps students to go further into their subjects,contemplate, and organize their ideas. If you do not have critical thinking before you begin to write, it is as if you begin your journey without plan; you do not know where to go next and even your final destination. Supposedly, it is not easy for students to have this concept and keep it in mind. Therefore, we need to help students to delve into the topic and not to digress from the subject that they want to talk by critical thinking.

Moreover, it is important to consider your audience when you write. The purpose of writing is to
deliver my own opinion to the world, and this has meaning only, at least, has a possibility, when it affects something or someone. That is, no matter how you think you express your thought well enough, if your audience do not understand or catch the idea, we cannot say that it is a good writing.

Lastly, I want to emphasize technical aspect of writing. Even though a writer satisfies two conditions above, it still should be expressed in a sophiscated manner to be professional. Sentences with grammatical errors and improper word choices could degrade the credibility of the writer as well as the quality of the paper itself. Thus, it is imperative that students learn and use correct grammar and word, and we can let them achieve this, as teachers, through either reading or grammar lesson.

To conclude, writing is not a simple process in which you can just ramble on whatever you would like to talk about. Students are required to think in a careful and logical manner, and they have to concern about how and to whom their writings would or want to affect. Also, it is crucial to have certain degree of linguistic skills such as grammar. If students are well aware of those three points that I mentioned above, they are off to great start to be good writers.