Dear writing center tutors,

My name is Emily, I am a secondary Education with a concentration in Mathematics major.

As the argument goes, English is not a subject that comes easily for me. I am in my second year at
NSC, third semester. I decided to follow a traditional route and go to college after finishing high
school. I am taking 5 classes this semester and now have a part time job in retail at the Galleria mall.
Something else that is new for me this semester is that I have moved out of my Moms house and
do not have Wi-Fi. I am left to fight over the Ethernet cord to get online and get homework done. I
also do not have much free time between school and work. Even though I was encouraged to read
in my free time growing up it never really caught on. I do not read much more than interesting,
short news stories or blog type pieces from the Internet.
The idea of reading the right thing has been a subject I have not been able to avoid. Even
now that I am writing about writing in my English 102 class, reading is still a topic of discussion.
Not necessarily in my class in particular but for the paper I am writing. For my paper I was required
to interview a professor who is related to our degree and reading the right things was his main point.
It is clear to me now that reading improves writing in so many ways. I interviewed Dr. Gleason
whose main issue with student writing could be summed up to the fact that not many students read
the correct types of material. His thought process is that when students read they can begin
developing ideas. Moreover, when many people read the same literature a phenomena is created, a
common shared experience. This experience is shared between peers and instructors and in broader
terms between the author and audience.
When students have this shared experience and are able to develop ideas and writhing
becomes more natural to them. When the writer feels more confident because they can relate to
their audience they will have more confidence in their own ideas and be able to develop them
beyond the basics, or what is asked. People learn through observation, grammar and and
understanding of audience becomes natural to an avid reader. Having confidence comes with
developing your ideas and being able to discuss then with your audience.
Students often find it hard to have confidence in their ideas since they do not read often.
The supplementary instructor in my English 102 class read all of the diagnostic papers we turned in
that were about what we struggled with in writing. Paige found that confidence was our second most
concern. With 61% of students writing about it, 14 of the 21 students. Not only is it my class who
struggles with confidence but students from our same class from a few year ago. In the student
papers that were provided I noticed that in 6 of the 8 papers the writer seemed to struggle with
confidence in which they failed to expand their idea or even share an idea with their audience. I will
admit that I struggle with expanding ideas because I fail to find confidence in them. What I
describes is exactly what Dr. Gleason told me in my interview with him. He gets a lot of papers with
little or no new ideas in them, his students just repeat given information with sources who prove the
given ideas are correct. I do not think that students decide to not be confident in their ideas but
perhaps they have trouble writing their ideas down or they get too distracted with correcting
grammar.
Not only does confidence help one expand their ideas but grammar also allows the writer to
expand their ideas as well. The students in my class expressed that grammar is their 3
rd
biggest issue
facing writing according to Paiges tally. With 48% of the class claiming that grammar is an issue
when writing, 10 of21 students. I myself find it hard to focus on content when I am constantly
worried about grammatical issues. The student papers I looked at had grammatical issues even after
the students, I am assuming, reviewed their papers. Since the students left incorrect grammar it
could be because they struggled to correct it and gave up or that they did not think their words and
punctuation was wrong. Dr. Gleason talked about his students papers saying that they struggle with
homonyms such as steak and stake. He also said he often gets papers that suggest students
communicate verbally more that through reading. An example is when a student hears for all
intensive purposes and writes it out the way they have heard it instead of the way in which it is
written, for all intents and purposes. Since students communicate more verbally instead of
reading, students have trouble with involving a thesis in their papers as well. One needs to have an
idea and be able to expand on it to be able to formulate a thesis. Not only do I struggle with writing
a thesis but there are papers about how to write a thesis. In Looking for Trouble the author is
trying to get the reader to ask fruitful questions to form a thesis. Writing a thesis and the rest of a
paper can be easily detoured by constant editing during the drafting process. In Composing
Processes of Unskilled Writers the observed student struggled with grammar and it interrupted his
drafting process. When the drafting process is interrupted flow is also hindered. Grammar affects
so much of the drafting process such as; confidence in ideas, formulating a theses, and the flow of
sentences and ideas.
Having the correct grammar can help the writer to connect with their audience. The way in
which one writes to different audiences, or tone, is an issue I face as well as my class. Paige found
that tone is the number 1 most reported issue when writing. 66% Of my class reported that tone is a
struggle of theirs. In the student papers that I looked at I noticed that about half of them failed to
write correctly to their audience, the grading professor. One student in particular did not use
academic words which can relate back to grammar. While another student jumped logic instead of
bridging between different ideas. Dr. Gleason talked about students sometimes jumping logic or
describing the correlation in too much detail. He describes his students as audience agnostic, they
do not have an understanding of the audience they are writing to. In one of his classes he tells his
students to write to him, so that they know who their audience is and can focus on the content of
their paper.
Students can create great content when they have confidence in their ability to write to their
audience. Having confidence in their grammar helps the writer to reach their audience as well as
being able to communicate with their audience by having confidence in their ideas. Having a shared
experience enhances ideas which is why reading is so important. When students read sustained
argumentative novels and persuasive pieces they will improve writing at the same time. Students will
naturally pick up grammar and audience when reading. Reading will also help students have
confidence in their ideas. Lastly a shared experience will be created when many students read the
same material as their peers and instructors. Dr. Gleason brought up an important observation.
Encouraging students to read the correct material is the first step to improving writing.















Reflection of my writing process
I started out this assignment the way I almost always start out my writing assignments, by
procrastinating. I was not until the class before the in-class peer-review day that I actually began to
get inspired to gather all of the provided materials for the paper and begin to digest them.
Eventually I gathered all of the materials and wrote a little about them but then took a pause. Then
came my meeting with the professor I had chosen to interview after the peer-review day and after
my SI. Dr. Gleason gave a new insight to what I was writing about and I decided to change my
paper altogether. What I was going to write about became clearer, what and how often students read
became what I would base my whole paper on, thanks to Dr. Gleason. After seeing a students
outline in class I decided to construct my own outline which I found to be very helpful at organizing
my ideas and having an idea of how my paper would present my different ideas and how I would
flow between them. Simultaneously I also began a brain storm type paper which consisted of
word written in different areas, any provided materials, and lots of arrows. Because I did scrap my
entire first draft and started over I was a bit discouraged and did not get the opportunity to get this
paper peer-reviewed. Since I had my outline and I knew what I was basing my paper on I began to
write in my English notebook and start a new first draft. I wrote it fairly quickly and added sentences
and edits after writing it. Next I took my first draft and typed it up into a word document. By typing
it I began the grammar editing process with the help of spell check. After it was typed I read my
paper from my notebook first to find any awkward sentences and fixed them on the word
document. Then I re-read my paper off of the word document to make sure I did not miss anything.
Once I felt confident in my paper and with my wording I was ready to submit my paper.