Md. Islam.

English 110

17^th December 16, 2018

Instructor: Shamecca Harris

THEORY OF WRITING

Dear Journal,

Today December 17th, 2018. A few days earlier in my English class, Ms. Harris asked in English class, “what is your theory of writing?”. At that very moment, I did not have an answer to that complex questions. I have written many papers, essays, and other reports. But interestingly enough, I have never thought about how I write or what strategies I used in my writing until now. After trying to answer that question in my head, “what could possibly be my theory of writing”. I have realized that there is something unique to my writing process and I now use very often while writing. I believe that us humans are not perfect and can always improve from where we started from. I apply this concept to my writing. A perfect writing to me is the process of revision. We can be our best at writing, through reviewing our work and improve. The revision process gives us a chance to judge our own work and perfect our current ideas in a complete form.

 

 

Now, I must also mention that the process of revision was not always the writing strategy that I have come across in my writing experiences. Without realizing, I have used many techniques in the past. The other day, I was looking at my previous English assignments, and have come to realize that my theory of writing has changed since the beginning of this semester. Not many of us go to our old paper or the assignment that we have done previously but it was worthwhile to look at. While I look at some of my old work from the be beginning of this semester, I find many differences in my writing style and my way to delivering the message to my audience.  Since writing multiple drafts is a good way to pursue the revision process, I have decided to compare my first source-based essay to my final draft and find how I have improved over the course of this semester. When I discuss my second source for the source- based essay, here is how I state my audience in the draft “ The specific audience of this article is the people of England that have jobs because in this article the author mainly talks about the issues of gender discrimination in the workplace in England”. I compared the same part of my essay to my final draft and it states, “The audience of this article is the customer of the Guardian newspaper because this article is published by the Guardian news and their newsreaders would most likely read this article.” This evidences how effective the revision process may be to a writer. On my draft, my statement was very wordy and also wrong, and my actual audience was different. On the other hand, the final draft had a complete sentence and states the actual audience of the article with reasoning. Therefore, I believe that to me the system of revision is the single best thing a writer can do to improve their writing.

 

Through looking at my old papers, I believe that my theory of writing before entering this class was just fulfilling the requirement of the assignment and answering the prompt. Beginning of this class, my writing was less concise and the writing style in terms of language was very different in my opinion. As I look at the very first assignment I have done for this semester, I look at my first essay draft and I began it with, “Throughout history, Sexism/ gender Inequality had been a really big issue throughout the world and I still affect many.” I think this sentence could’ve been a lot better. I used the phrase ‘sexism/ gender Inequality’ which shows my use of repetition and makes this sentence less concise.

 

Just like we change as a person over time, our theory of writing also changes over time through more writing. Sometimes we don’t notice these changes. Throughout the course of this semester, I have done about three papers and I believe that in all three papers my theory of writing had changed and have affected my writing style overall till today. In my first composition, my theory of writing was to be more structural and the format, as I have really good headings and subheadings that separate each section and well organizes in terms of the format and makes it easier for the reader to understand. In my second essay (the Inquiry-based essay), I believe that my theory of writing was more about the quoting/ citing evidence and in-text citation properly using the MLA format. As found in my Inquiry-based essay, when I was talking about the benefits of raising the minimum wage to decrease the gender pay gap, “Having some extra money would really make a difference in their life and can be able to provide a better education for their children. (Think process 2013).” This shows a good use of citation that I have not been using earlier in my writing. This sentence was taken from an ending of a paragraph, and the whole paragraph was referenced from the article think process. Therefore, I put in parenthesis Think process 2013. In addition, in my third essay, the composition in two genres, I believe that my theory of writing was to be more analytical. In this assignment, we were required to choose two genres to deliver our message to the audience the best way. I drew one political cartoon and one advertisement. I believe that I provided analysis because we were required to explain how these two genres will help us to reach our audience and explain them. As stated on my composition in two genres essay, “The purpose of this genre is to gather more supporters for this issue. To make the nonsupporters to see this issue from a very different viewpoint.” This shows me being a writer of this paper to be analytical as I am analyzing the advertisement and presenting to my audience purpose for creating an advertisement.

 

It is very clear as of to now that my current theory of writing is very different from the ones I just mentioned from my previous essays. There are many aspects that contribute to my current theory of writing which includes the practice of doing the draft for each of the essays and the peer review activity in class. Through doing the draft, I am able to judge my own work and see where I can improve. Through the peer review, I can get others opinion on my work and recommendations to improve my paper. This was really important to my process of writing because I have got new ideas and thoughts that I can add to my paper and helped me to make dramatic changes to my writing.

 

Similarly, the relationship between my theory of writing to how I create knowledge in my writing is again the process of multiple drafts. The draft helps me to realize my mistakes the first time and give me a chance to bring out the better version of myself in the process. This helps me to create knowledge because as I review my draft I happen to find a lot of mistakes that can be fixed or things that should be taken out from the paper. It also gives a sense of what I should add more to make it better.

 

I believe my theory of writing may be applied to other writing situations both inside and outside the classroom. Writing situation in class because I can apply that concept of an in-class writing assignment or test which requires me to write an essay. I could apply my theory of writing outside of the classroom such that it can be helpful when doing any homework that requires some writing. Since I am an engineering major, I might have to write lab reports and other reports, and I think my theory of writing (revision process) would really come in handy. This would also be helpful to my work if the job requires some writing tasks.