Wow. Another interesting University reading. Perhaps my ideas about how and why uni functions is slightly misplaced, but lets save that for another post entirely.
There isn’t much to say about this reading other than, it makes so much sense! In high school I often questioned our english teachers of why we had to write in a certain way that did not seem natural and why we had to adhere to a bunch of rules and topics that skewed all our writing into some random argument that we weren’t entirely sure why or how we were arguing. One time an english teacher simply said to me, “look you have to do it, I think its outdated and stupid but unfortunately I do not write the syllabus.” Blunt…
I liked how the article discussed things like real essays should contain answers, surprises, be more engaging and story like than anything else. This is REAL writing. If you can only write in one way, what is the point? Are you really going to email a potential boss with a topic sentence, two sentences of analysis, linking sentences and a conclusion? No because no one would want to read that and its wwwaaayyyy too much effort. A friend of mine said he was struggling with this blogging assignment because he could only write in essay format, and that my blogging sounded more conversational whereas his was more boring to read. We soon found out that after a bit of trial and error he was easily able to establish a fun, engaging and comedic writing style, but it was more interesting than anything that his default style was that of high school essay writing and that was something he just jumped straight to and wasn’t happy with. Food for thought teachers out there 😉
Flash