250 words discusion

In this unit’s reading, you explored the responsibilities and the habits of mind of effective academic writers:

  • In academic writing tasks, you are responsible for:
    • Defining a situation that calls for some response in writing;
    • Demonstrating the timeliness of your argument
    • Establishing a personal investment;
    • Appealing to readers whose minds you want to change by understanding what they think, believe, and value;
    • Supporting your arguments with good reasons;
    • Anticipate and address readers’ reasons for disagreeing with you, while encouraging them to adopt your position.
  • To be an effective academic writer, you must take on the right “habits of mind.” According to Greene and Lidinsky, academic writers:
    • Make inquiries–observe, ask questions, examine alternatives;
    • Seek and value complexity–resist binary thinking, consider all topics open for discussion;
    • See writing as a conversation–and demonstrate sensitivity to those involved in the conversation;
    • Understand that writing is a process–a continual process of discovering ideas, drafting, and revising; and
    • Reflect on their own learning and writing.

In your initial post, use these 5 categories to analyze one of the “Becoming Academic” narratives from Ch. 1: either Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” Rodriguez’s “Scholarship Boy,” or Graff’s “Disliking Books.” Then, compare your experience as a learner to the experience of the author whose work you have analyzed. Make sure that your post does all of the following:

  • Examine how the author displays at least three of the five habits of mind; use specific examples from the text to illustrate your analysis
  • Compare your experience as a learner to the experience of the author
  • Quotes the article you are analyzing at least once, using MLA or APA guidelines for in-text citations of the quoted material

Your discussion post should be around 250-350 words and should directly quote the article you are analyzing at least once. Use MLA or APA guidelines to create an in-text citations

Gerstein is insistent when she explains, “If we don’t create a process of reflecting . . . then we are leaving learning up to chance.”

Reflection in writing can focus on different types of knowledge: (1) the content of an issue, such as how economic resources are distributed in different neighborhoods and schools or trade policies that affect employment; (2) the strategies one might use to write an essay to persuade readers that immigration policies do not affect opportunities in employment as much as trade policies do; (3) the procedures for developing an argument, such as using stories of people affected by unemployment or the failures of providing safe environments for kids in and out of school; and (4) the conditions under which certain kinds of strategies might work in one context or another. That is, stories might be a powerful way to raise an issue for a class in sociology or education, but some hard data might be more appropriate in developing a persuasive argument in economics. Making decisions like this one emphasizes the role of reflection — monitoring, evaluating, developing strategies, and taking control over your own learning.

Finally, reflection is an important habit of mind because the act of thinking and questioning encourages us to critically examine our own lived experiences. In his memoir Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about a moment in his life when he first became literate, and he explains in the following passage how literacy — reading and writing — opened up a world that he wanted to know more about. Here Coates, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” addresses his son, as he does throughout his memoir, to tell a story of a time when his mother would make him write when he was in trouble. For us, the story he conveys is about the power of reflection that comes from writing — the significance of writing to make thinking visible, to ask questions that prompt Coates to consider his actions in the present, and to envision future actions based on what he has learned.

Your grandmother taught me to read when I was only four. She also taught me to write, by which I mean not simply organizing a set of sentences into a series of paragraphs, but organizing them as a means of investigation. When I was in trouble at school (which was quite often) she would make me write about it. The writing had to answer a series of questions: Why did I feel the need to talk at the same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe that my teacher was entitled to respect? How would I want someone to behave while I was talking? What would I do the next time I felt the urge to talk to my friends during a lesson? [Our emphasis].

Coates admits that his mother’s assignment never really taught him to “curb” his behavior, but these early lessons were a powerful source of learning to “interrogate” the world. Reflecting on the past, present, and future drew Coates into “consciousness,” as he puts it. “Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing — myself.”

Researchers are consistent in describing the importance of encouraging us to think critically on our own lived experiences before we begin to think about how we can participate in a project, take action, and create meaningful change in our surroundings. The following steps can help you pause and make sure learning is actually happening.

 
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