Reading the article Understanding Writing Situations, I understand that writing is a social activity and is a connection between readers and writers. Readers read the writer’s work to join in the conversation. Even though they do not meet each other in reality, they do build an invisible connection with each other. Besides, I also learned the considerations of writers and readers on each side.
Here is an excerpt from my reflection:
Both of them have their purposes to read or write. On the back of these purposes, some factors influenced them to do this, such as knowledge, interests, values, beliefs, etc. Writers should know these reasons to better write their articles. If someone who had never read this article, I would say this article can help you to improve your writing skills since it analyzes what the author needs to know when writing the article. Writers need to know the perspectives of readers and themselves to write the article perfectly.
Caring from both sides makes the writing communication easier and more effective.
The main content of the article Higher-Level Integration: They Say / I Say and Writing as a Conversation is talking about strategies for incorporating sources and choosing sources. Amy Guptill introduced the way "they say, I say model” to select sources. I learned to find various sources and combine them into their own opinions by using different strategies. She listed five strategies and I agree they are all practical and useful. Since undergraduates will not have their findings to establish their own opinion, viewing others' work to build their ideas will be a good way. She used a long passage to point out how to effectively incorporate sources into the writer’s work. Writers need to be precise and clear to embed the sources. All of theses knowledge are important for me while writing an academic essay.
Here is an excerpt from my reflection:
I never heard of this, "they say, I say model" before. But I know I need to “transfer” others' work into my own with credibility. “They say, I say model” gives me the name of building my opinion based on others’ work. I need to listen to what the sources said, and then turn it into my own sentences.
I like the idea of “listening to other sources” since it endowed sources life by implying that they are not only words. The articles showed the importance of sources played in the writer’s article. As a result, I learned that way of listening to sources first and then writing down my words.
This is the essay in which I combine three articles I have read in the UWP 007 course. I used them to support my opinion that academic writing is a conversation and there are three methods to help to enter the conversation. The conversation contains three types of people. In each type, there is a way to help them easily enter into the conversation. I put myself in these three types of people because I will be each of them depending on the different circumstances. By putting myself in, I can find out the best way to join in the conversation. For example, if I am a writer, the way way to participate in the conversation is to understand the desire of readers.
In the writing process, I learned many rhetorical devices, such as metaphor, combing sources, listing examples, etc.
Here is an excerpt from my synthesis essay:
In the reading process, readers are walking in the castle that writers create and make. Even though they might not be a person in the story, they are engaging in this big castle. “We [readers] see the choices the writer has made, and we [readers] see how the writer has coped with the consequences of those choices... ”, written by Mike Bunn’s How to Read Like a Writer. Reading one’s work is putting readers into a conversation with authors. Although both of them have not met the other, they can have an encounter in the article. No matter what conversation topic these two kinds of people will have, they are going to come up with a common topic and study each other.
From the paragraph above, I included several rhetorical devices. I combined sources into my article by using the quotation mark and changing it to the correct form to better fit in my sentence. I also use the metaphor to represent reading other's work is walking into other's world. Writing the synthesis essay does give me a chance to put theory into practice.