To Read, or not to Read

When you sit down and read an article, do you ever wonder about how you're reading it? Do you have a particular strategy to the way you read and understand information? Believe it or not, you read and interpret different types of texts in different ways. You wouldn't analyze a newspaper article the same way you would analyze a science text book. In order to have a better understanding of the way we interpret articles, the Norton Field Guide gives many clues and helpful tips on how to read different texts with a "critical eye."

When you first go to read any text, there are a few ways you can proceed to evaluate the text efficiently. As stated in the Norton Field Guide, it's best to start by previewing a text. Look at it, evaluate it, skim it, and think about your initial response to what the reading is about. By doing so, you can get a fresh look at the text and start the mental process involved in evaluating the text. Another strategy that can be used is annotating. This strategy requires the reader to highlight key words, phrases, and sentences and then connect tehm with how they work in the text. This particular strategy is good to use because everything that you feel is important is highlighted and noted for future purposes.

After you have initiated the first steps to analyzing the text, the next step is to think about what the writer says in the text. Explain his point to writing what he wrote. After you correctly analyze the situation, then you can move on to analyze the argument and figure out what the writer is arguing against. Find out what his motives for writing the text was. Who is the writer arguing against and what side does he present in the text?

Once all of these steps have been followed, you should have a deep understanding of the text. These particular strategies noted in the book realy help me to evaluate a text. Some of the strategies I, personally, have never heard about, and it's always nice to find new ways to help make life a little easier. The book helps to explain that the best way to analyze a particular text is by having a "critical eye" to watch for everything stated in the paper. With the information listed in the book, the reader will have a better understanding of what the text is really explaining.

The Joys of Analyzing a Text

Every type of writing has its tricky attributes. When writing a rhetorical analysis, there are more than a few detours that can easily pull the writer away from the main focus of the paper. In order to write a rhetorical analysis with ease, it helps to know some guidelines or key features when writing the paper. Even if you know these guidelines, how do you get started? The Norton Field Guide to Writing helps to answer that question.

The text states, "If you must choose a text to analyze, look for one that suits the demands of the assignment-one that is neither too large or complex to analyze thoroughly nor too brief or limited to generate sufficient material." When writing a rhetorical analysis, it helps to have the perfect text. Like the book explains, it shouldn't be too big or too small. It might take some browsing and time, but it will make life easier once you find the perfect text.

Once you stumble upon the text you desire, how do you go about analyzing it into a paper? There are a number of features to follow when analyzing a paper. The most important feature is summarizing the text. When you're writing a paper, the text should be summarized in the paper because the reader doesn't have the text to view. Without a proper summary of the text, the reader won't understand what the paper is about. Also, pay attention to the context of the text. Like the book explains, the text is usually influenced by controversies, debates, or even conversations and it helps to know about these contexts when writing the paper. The book also states that the writer's goal is to lead readers through careful examination of the text. Which mean, detail and explanations of the text need to be in the paper. Along with those explanations, the writer must show support of what they are explaining.

Writing a rhetorical analysis can be complicated if not executed in a proper manner. However, if the book is followed and the writer pays close attention to the text, then the paper will practically write itself.

Your Writing Speaks Volumes

Everyone has had to write a paper at some point in their life. Whether it was for school, a newspaper, or even a job, a person's writing says a lot about who they are. As stated in the Norton Field Guide to Writing, "Your ability to produce clear, error-free writing shows something about your ability as a writer and also leads reader to make assumptions about your intellect, work habits, even your character." If you have a paper full of errors and mistakes, whomever your reader is will not think too highly of you or your writing. Therefore, what can one do to make a paper better and advert this problem?

The answer is simply editing and proofreading. Along with the book, I agree that a person's writing says a lot about who they are and what abilities they bring to the table. It would be a shame to turn in a paper to your potential boss with many punctuation and grammatical errors on it. Most likely, you will not get the job by taking that approach. Instead, carefully read what you are writing. Take the time to read it over, and over, and over again. When you think your paper is perfect, give it to multiple people to read, and I guarantee someone will find an error that you have missed. It's hard to find every error in your own work because once you have written it, you are automatically biased with your writing, and you tend to skip over small little details that might make or break your paper.

Follow a few easy steps and ask yourself questions. Is there enough detail? Does the beginning catch the reader's attention? Is the paper free of punctuation and grammatical errors? Once you have written, read, read again, passed on, and corrected it multiple times, then your paper should be ready to turn in. It might take longer and it might be a tedious process, but the results of having a quality paper is both rewarding and gratifying.

Assessing and Revising an Essay

One of the major reasons that students do so badly on their papers is because they don't know how to revise or edit a paper properly. Not only is it because students don't know how to find grammatical errors, but it's harder to find any type of errors in your own work. To help with this problem, English classes have peer reviews. However, even your own peers may not know what to look for.

In the reading about assessing your writing and getting a response and revising, there are some simple steps to follow to properly assess and revise a paper. The book does a good job listing questions to make sure your title, thesis, beginning, end, and even transitions are done correctly. I found the reading helpful because I think I will be able to now properly help edit a paper. As stated in the book, the paper needs to appeal to the reader's senses and add visual context. If you are having problems following any of these steps, the book suggests to try a different outlook on the paper by rewriting it from a different audience, stance, or genre. After reading this section of the book, I feel I can now edit a paper with more confidence because I now know what steps to follow to make it a better essay.

Guidelines to Execute a Narrative

A narrative is different to write in comparison to other forms of writing. A narrative tells a story, and as stated in the Norton Field Guide, "A good narrative can lend support to most kinds of writing." In essence, there really isn't a wrong way to write a narrative just as long as certain guidelines and grammatical rules are followed. These guidelines include being descriptive and using as much detail within reason, properly using dialogue, and telling your story in some type of chronological order.

The book talks about how to include detail in your paper. They mention that it should cause the reader to have images in their head, but not to be over done to where they feel overwhelmed and they story loses its main focus. As far as detail, it's a balancing act to get just the right amount. They also talk about using dialogue, which is still confusing to some people. When writing using dialogue, a new paragraph has to be started at the beginning of every new person talking. Their dialogue also has to be closed with quotations and proper punctuation. To have an easy to read narrative, the reader must be able to follow the sequence in which it is written. The sequence can be chronological or it can even start from the end and work its way back.

Personally, I see a narrative as a simple paper to write. As long as you have a good topic that is easy to write about, the paper should fall into place. One thing that I really like about narratives is that they tend to give a lot of freedom as to how the writer can write it. As long as the paper is told using a descriptive story with detail, proper dialogue, and in some type of chronological order, the narrative won't have many flaws left.

Turning an Idea in Your Head into a Story on Paper

Every story starts out from an idea, vision, or even a problem. It's how the idea is presented to the audience that turns it into a story. To help gather these ideas into a well-polished paper, certain techniques have been established to help gather ideas. These techniques include freewriting, looping, listing, and clustering. There are also other activities such as cubing and questioning that can help a writer think of the topic in new ways. Once those activities are completed, you can use outlining, letter writing, or discovery drafting to help you begin your paper.

In the book, one idea states that "Some writers do best by jumping in and writing." I follow that quote from the book more than any of the other ideas. I sometimes will put together an outline to help start off my writing, but usually I just begin writing and then go back and edit. As the book implies, there is really no right or wrong way to begin your paper, but there are many techniques to help someone who has a mental block, or just needs a way to organize their thoughts. I think the book does a good job of stating and explaining these different techniques that people might not ever think to use.

All About Writing a Narrative

In this section of the book, they explain how to execute a perfect narrative. They give examples of narratives and even follow up with a multitude of questions to use as a checklist when writing one. I found this information to be very helpful and will come in handy when I begin to write my narrative.

They say, "In general, it's a good idea to focus on a single event that took place during a relatively brief period of time." I agree with that statement because when executing a polished narrative, it shouldn't be too long because it will cause the reader to lose interest. The ideas written in the paper need to be clear and interesting. However, if overdone, the paper will be too wordy, boring, and confusing.

The text that was assigned is an eye-opening and informative guideline to writing a narrative. It has more than enough examples and even questions to use when reviewing my paper. Hopefully after reading this, I will be able to accurately and effectively write a narrative paper.