As a composition teacher, I discovered that my students were most frustrated by assignments that failed to give them some sort of context in which to situate their own writing. Too often they felt that academic writing was isolated and irrelevant. As a result, they had been writing rather uninspired essays in order to simply earn a mark. Certainly they had a solid understanding of writing; however, that solid understanding had also somewhat limited their potential to grow into better writers.
What follows are the three considerations I often shared with my students in order to help them better relate academic writing to the greater activity of their lives. I hope these considerations may be of some use to you as well.
1 Consider Your Purpose
Of course, you write in order to earn academic credit, but that’s not the only reason you write. You must also keep in mind that you write in order to explore an idea, to communicate an idea to an audience, or to persuade someone that your idea is worthwhile. If your professor asks you to analyze a speech, then your purpose is to show him that you understand specific rhetorical techniques and can explain how those techniques operate by using textual evidence. If your instructor asks you why grammar is important to the study of language, then you must compose an argument and support that argument with reasons and evidence.
Each prompt requires a certain task, and your writing must match that task with a certain purpose. Think of your purpose as a student: to improve as a critical thinker. Writing aids you in that purpose.
2 Consider Your Audience
As you complete your assignments, try to think of the audience for whom you write. Try to think of an audience that’s more specific than a general academic audience. For instance, your professor makes up part of your audience. As do your classmates. These people participate in a learning community, of which you are an active member, so thinking of them as an audience makes sense.
The knowledge that these people--with whom you often interact--will read your essay should help you write honestly and carefully. And such awareness will help you in the future when you put your communication skills to use in your career.
3 Consider Your Genre
While many genres of academic essays share similar characteristics, you’ll still want to consider how genre affects your writing. Return to the examples I suggested earlier. Both a rhetorical analysis of a speech and a persuasive essay on the importance of grammar make arguments in some way; however, how they do so--what expectations of genre they meet--will vary. A rhetorical analysis will heavily rely upon extensive quoting and interpretation of textual evidence, while a persuasive essay might use many kinds of evidence in order to appeal to an audience. If you turn in a rhetorical analysis with few quotations excerpted, most likely you have not done enough to achieve your essay’s purpose.
This guest post is contributed by Olivia Coleman, who writes on the topics of online colleges and universities. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: olivia.coleman33 @gmail.com.
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