In chapter one of ABW I found that some of the content he discussed about formulating a good thesis statement, topic sentence, body paragraph, good transitions, ect. was useful but a bit confusing. Some of the chapter was very well laid out and I could understand the details, however, for me, a lot of it was hard to keep up with. I was able to succeed in understanding the material, it just took longer than I had originally anticipated. One thing that stuck out to me in the chapter was how he explained the writers perspective, how a writer analyzes the readers about an array of things. However, the biggest thing that stuck out to me was how as a writer, cares about the audience he is writing too. Writers have to be knowledgeable, and almost appease the style of writing they are doing to captivate the audience and make them care.
In The Discourse of Academics, I found that Mike Rose didn't necessarily write his article with a direct thesis. He used an indirect method by jumping right into the article with a statement giving information about his background. This method still caught my attention as the reader, but still did it without directly pointing out the thesis or topic matter until later on in the article when he actually begins writing up front on the discourse of academics at the the third paragraph. An interesting detail was the ending of his article, leaving the reader with a question. This is a very effective way for the reader to consider the topics how students can improve their professional speech/writing. It makes us wonder, contemplate, and hopefully then to do something about it!
Reading about someone's background or personal experience is certainly captivating. Isn't that why we read memoirs? Reading about a specific experience also makes that instance real in a way -- I don't think I can explain it more than that.
ReplyDeleteQuestions in conclusions can be provocative, but perhaps there are certain _kinds_ of questions that work best?