Writing Response 5: Thinking Well - Essay Example

It meant that we do not understand the principles or process of how to write effectively. We appreciate good composition but cannot learn it because we do not exert effort to avoid the mistakes and learn the rules of good writing. Trimble explains that a beginning chess player “has no idea how seasoned players think at the board” and that they “can certainly appreciate the effects, but the actual thought process is a mystery” (4). How is this concept pertinent to an English 2010 classroom?

That statement best describe our situation as students in an English 2010 classroom. We appreciate what good composition is but does not know how to write it. So we go to class to learn from our teacher who has a good “writing sense” in the same manner that a good chess player has a good “board sense”. I believe that this is the experience of every student when he or she is still learning to write. Learning to write after all is a conscious process. We are first focused on ourselves on how to write down our thoughts and as such, egocentric at first.

But when we begin to have a “feel” on how to write, we then consider the audience and our intended effect as well. As the word implies, its symptom is the tendency of the writer to focus merely on himself. It is the notion of a novice writer to assume that writing will already be clear to the reader once it is clear to him. So he writes without due consideration to the rules of good writing nor even bothers to edit or polish it. This kind of writing is egocentric because the writer assumes the understanding of his reader based on his own understanding.

He thinks that if a composition is clear to him, then it follows that it should also be clear to the reader. I have many flaws as a learner of writing but the assumption that the reader understands my composition just because I thought I understood them is not one of them. I am always critical about my writing and knowsit needs a