Weekly Reading Response Blog 2
What is the author’s main idea, and how is it relevant to this week’s lesson?
In “So You’ve Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?” by Corrine E. Hinton, she seeks to quell our anxiety about the complexity of our writing assignments and gives us a guideline to help us interpret what the professor truly wants from us with the assignment. It is relevant to this week’s lesson because we are beginning to brainstorm ideas for our research paper, which will most likely overwhelm us with its perceived complexity.
What did you find most interesting about the assigned reading?
I find it interesting that she uses such comprehensive examples of writing assignments. It gives me a good sense of what to expect in the future when I have to eventually write again.
As a writer, how do you relate to the assigned reading?
Just like the situation at the beginning of the reading, I get easily overwhelmed by the assignment’s requests if I forget to take a step back and breathe. Most of the time I’m able to calm myself and work on the assignment, but if there are other factors outside of my control that are affecting how I’m able to write then I want to give up.
What do you feel is the most important statement or idea in the assigned reading?
The most important idea in the assigned reading is to know what kind of evidence to use in writing assignments and how to use said evidence to effectively support the argument. If you were writing a scientific paper, you wouldn’t necessarily use anecdotes to support the argument unless it was warranted.
What is something you found in the assigned reading that you can immediately apply to your writing?
In the assigned reading, I found that you can create a table with three sections gathering what you know about the writing assignment, what you think you know about the writing assignment, and what you don’t know about the writing assignment. This helps with interpreting the directive verbs correctly (or at least accurately to what they were thinking), which is key to knowing what the instructor wants from you when completing the assignment.