Brooks-Dupla 1
Brooks-Dupla 4
Cordale Brooks-Dupla
Serda
1301
10/18/17
Word Count: 1,019
Writing for Academics
The process I take for an academic setting is on a opposite spectrum from the way I write for self-satisfaction. Writing is derived from within yourself and the process you take to compose a piece is merely the way to express your thoughts to the appropriate format. I tend to have a form of writers' block that actually may be beneficial in my case. When I write for a class, I have to come up with new ideas in my head and this is sometimes challenging. Ideas generate in my head so fast that it causes me to become numb to the point where I can't put my words into writing. Yet, this is beneficial in the sense that I can always think of new ways to write. With deliberate practice, my writers block and the anxiety I feel from that will essentially disappear.
I would not label myself a "basic writer" (Kellog and Whiteford), I have been given the skills to compose an up to par essay because my past school teachers took the time to teach me the fundamentals of this challenging process. This may be due to the fact that I was in early AP classes until my senior year. That is where I noticed that students that did not take advanced English really struggled to create an essay that is satisfactory. I was curious why could they not correctly put together a simple essay by the time it was senior year. Knowing that I have an issue myself, but I still have the knowledge to adhere to all the guidelines for an essay, it troubled me. To cure my curiosity, I began to simply ask a few students that experienced this what was causing them to not perform well. I started off by receiving background information on how they were taught in regular English and how often they wrote. I was surprised when the majority of the students had little knowledge on the basic foundation of creating an essay well. This for me made me think on how they have been deprived of the most valuable part of academic success. Yet, of course it was already senior year and the teachers are given a curriculum that is geared towards students that should already be able to do this, and most of them could not.
I have been exposed to the task of writing more often the kids that took regular and it is true that "students who write more often might be expected to demonstrate higher self-efficacy and performance" (Martinez, Kock, Cass). I had never written as much as I do now in 1301, but I feel this has had a major impact on my learning and writing ability. My confidence in my writing was never strong because "[I] may have entered college behind the curve" (Kellogg and Whiteford) with taking my senior year of high school a little easier. As a result, the grades I received lacked the desire I wanted out of myself. With minimal practice in writing averaging around one essay a semester, my skills slowly faded away. My fear of not succeeding or performing well is where my anxiety comes fr...
