Week 1 Homework: Discussion on the Readings

After reading all assigned materials for week 1, respond with at least one thorough paragraph (7+ sentences) here with your answers to the below questions: 

• What is your experience with first-person writing in your past school essays? Do these articles confirm or contrast what you were previously taught about first-person?
• What was helpful/useful or confusing/challenging in “What Does the Professor Want?” Point out a specific part and give your response.

After you post, respond to at least two classmates: one who you think gave thorough, on-topic, well-edited, and logical responses; and also respond to one who might not have a post that is as thorough, well-edited, or on-topic as possible (or maybe missed a question). In both cases, comment on their responses and give feedback on the responses’ strengths as well as where they can improve. This is practice for future peer reviews! You are also welcome to comment on the content of the reading if you would like. Your peer responses should also be at least one paragraph (5-6 sentences or more).

reply discussion 

no.1.    

· My experience with first-person writing in my past school essays is to never write the letter “I” when I want to state my opinion. This is for formal academic essays is to never write the letter “I” to never use first person. These articles do confirm what I previously have learned in my past English classes. In more formal academic essays I’ve always been taught about the tone I am writing the essay. It’s important because it develops the style of voice you are using. Using first person is only appropriate for researched writing. 

· The information that was useful in this article was sharing information from a professors point of view. Such as valuing academic freedom. It gave us a contrast from high school teachers and college professors that the professor has the flexibility and the privilege on deciding what topic should they focus on vs the high school teacher has to follow an obligated curriculum. What is challenging when reading this is relating to a question from the student asking “what does the teacher expect from me?” or”why did she give me this assignment?” These are things a student needs to take into account and can be challenging at times to answer. In this article what was helpful were the tips given on how to approach a assignment you are going to write about. Reading a new assignment is the hardest part for most and understanding what is being asked of you can be hard. As written, focusing on the verbs can be helpful. 

I genuinely enjoyed reading the articles about adding the first person to school essays. In the past, I have always felt like adding the first person to an essay could leave a noticeable impact on the reader. However, I was taught that you should never use the first person in a school essay. Reading these two articles almost gave me a feeling of relief.  I am looking forward to experimenting with this in our upcoming essays.

Reply discussion no.2

The article, “What Does the Professor Want”, really opened my eyes to the perspective of the professor. It made me realize that the majority of professors actually want you, the student, to succeed. Surprisingly, I never thought about it that way. In the fourth paragraph, the author writes about how giving out written assignments is on of the most tedious and hard things for a professor to do. I never sat down to think about the work that a professor goes through to grade an entire class’s worth of papers. It definitely helped me understand why some professors are better than others; putting in that much work for one class must get exhausting. Overall, I really enjoyed this article, and it really helped me realize the purpose of papers for an academic class.

The First Person

Using First Person in an Academic Essay: When is It Okay?

http://www.stevendkrause.com/tprw/introduction.html

http://www.stevendkrause.com/tprw/chapter1.html

What Does the Professor Want? Understanding the Assignment