Practicing in Argumentative Writing - Essay Example

Lecturer: Reflective essay Introduction Writing present challenges to non-native speakers of English due to several reasons among them being grammatical accuracy issues that remain a constant focus. Argumentative writing is essential both in school and beyond because a literate person is supposed to elucidate a position regarding significant matters in order to persuade colleagues. Academic argumentation aids a student acquire knowledge, promote scientific thinking and enhance comprehension of history and social studies. Moreover, written argumentation leads to an increase in motivation and problem-solving performance within the academic setting. Thus, it is essential for a student to understand, evaluate and construct written arguments in various areas. Purposeful writing Writing ability plays an essential role in student learning since writing creates an environment for developing cognitive and organizational strategies where a student can link fresh concepts with familiar ones, as well as synthesizing knowledge, exploring relations and implications. As a writer, I have been motivated to write and maintain positive attitude regarding the writing process. Moreover, I have learned to bear certain goals when writing thus, I have been able to hold the view that results of my writing is worth the time and the effort used. As a writer, I am able to draw upon the long-term memory and have topic, linguistic and genre knowledge in developing a written text. Moreover, I have been able to ensure that as a writer I understand the audience to whom I am writing to; nevertheless, I have a weakness in understanding how to alter a topic and apply linguistic and genre knowledge. In purposeful writing, long-term memory represent three core elements that underlie cognitive processes essential in writing: which include reflection commonly regarded as planning; text production which involves generating and drafting text and then text interpretation also known as revision. Effective functioning of an individual’s memory is essential in the writing process since it may require a writer to retrieve information from the memory. Argumentative writing demands various cognitive processes; thus, as a writer I am aware of the several elements that are specific to certain genres. In developing a purposeful writing, I essentially keep the audience in mind since failure to adhere can irritate the audience. Thus, in striving to be a strong writer I strive to be competent and confident with the use of various techniques in order to engage the audience. Collections of my previous writings have strong organizational plan with clear sentence sense and variety. Moreover, I endeavor the selection of vocabulary which is appropriate for certain writings and ensuring few spelling and conventional errors. As a writer who enjoys the pursuit of independent writing I like to show originality, liveliness, humor and excitement in engaging with the audience and sustaining quality throughout. Thus, being a comfortable writer helps in developing skills and confidence, this in return aids the use of techniques in engaging the audience; therefore, as a writer in Purposeful wring I have a high degree of confidence. In academic setting, prior knowledge of a context is essential in understanding a text, which is useful in considering academic writing because reading and writing relate closely in a school setting. Writing is powerful since it matters to me and has the chance of affecting others; moreover, writing is pleasurable since putting pen on paper to shape sentences, paragraphs and essays involves tone, rhythm and texture of language. Many people never write unless there is absolute a reason therefore, an individual works on a text because of an explicit purpose one tries to accomplish. As a writer, the purpose of writing is to inform others regarding a certain topic the audience needs to know. Therefore, as a writer I have been ensuring that my writings are persuasive enough in my academic essays since being a composition student my writing may include changing people’s minds. However, it has been easy to over the audience who already have a mind of their own; therefore, I embrace the challenge of convincing the audience that my opinion is reasonable regardless of whether it is agreeable to the audience. It has been difficult influencing the audience without enlightening them of the available new information. However, the effectiveness of purposeful writing diminishes its purpose if an individual loses sight the purpose by including wrong information. Therefore, I always endeavor to make sure that my purpose is clear in mind, which aids in writing a text that is coherent toward a planned conclusion instead of meandering aimlessly and ending without force or clear meaning. Revision and the Writing Process As a writer, I consider revision crucial in writing even though generation of ideas and planning happen before writing the first draft, where I spend considerable time working on what I have written which slowly reshapes the piece into a final form. Therefore, the fore form may look quite different from the first version since during the revision, I think deeply about the subject resulting in new ideas, eliminating contractions and finding improved ways of achieving purpose with regard to the audience. Nevertheless, being a student sometimes revision means re-visioning the text and making major changes to come up with a new version. Critiques offered by the instructor and fellow students can act as a basis for revision to make minor or major changes to a given text. Since my instructor values a good content, he inevitably gets irritated when he encounters consecutive errors when reading a composition. Therefore, I work to ensure that my instructor is not in a bad frame of mind when he gets to the end of the composition, which would obviously not bode well with me when he makes a decision regarding the grade to award the composition. The purpose of revising is to improve word choices, certain sentences as well as short sentences. Therefore, in revising and writing I ensure that I look for places where word phrases are unclear, ugly, and wrong to the audience, wordy, inconsistent with standard word usage, ungrammatical and having wrong tone. Revising and writing for clarity is crucial and though I have a weakness in this area, I strongly focus on clarity with the obligation as a writer of ensuring that my audience understands me. When clarity is fixed, then the issue of revising and writing almost disappear since I strive to make sure that the meaning in the mind makes its way into the page. Revising for correctness is often hard when a person does not understand when something is ungrammatical since the individual is not in position to notice the problem. To avoid this, I often read the paper aloud paying attention to phrases that do not sound right and when I find such spots, I revise the phrasing to make sure it sounds right. Though, correctness is not a problem I can completely solve in high school, I believe that learning correct standard English is gradual over time partly through unconscious reading and listening to education speech and as well through conscious effort. Critical Reading The basic principle in writing require that the audience know where the writer is leading them because the audience is less likely to be confused when they know where the writer is taking them. As a writer I do not only focus on the topic because I continuously focus on the audience thus adjusts the text in order to helpfully lead the audience along; thus, I often use topic sentences on paragraph level since it is a way of ensuring continuous audience interest. Nevertheless, topic sentences in paragraphs are not the only way of ensuring that writers organize writing to achieve coherence or offer guidance; therefore, this a main weakness to me as a writer. This is not surprising since long essays developed on strict topic sentences appear ridiculously mechanical. Nevertheless, my instructor during the course introduced topic-sentence method, which works well in short pieces. Since topic sentences are generalizations, which are later developed through concrete sentences, make paragraphs not as interesting since they are under-developed. During the revision process, I often ensure that the text has coherent organization that develops and is shaped by text, therefore, if the topic sentence appears to be appropriate, then as a writer I compose one that relates to the text. Moreover, at this point, I integrate similar ideas, eliminate repetitive statements and include signpost sentences that aid the audience along since I know where the piece is headed. Therefore, critical reading helps me apply various strategies in comprehending, evaluating, interpreting and appreciating texts drawing on prior experience and interaction with different readers and writers. Critical reading aid me perform research on various issues by generating ideas and posing problems, as well, critical reading is crucial to gathering and synthesizing data from various sources and communicate in ways that suit the purpose and audience. Moreover, critical reading is essential in participating in knowledgeable, creative, reflective and critical members within various literary communities; thus, critical reading is essential in inquiring, learning and communicating. Read More