Friday Freewrite!

1. Through this course, and maybe especially through the work of writing your Microtheme, what are you learning about yourself as a writer?

             I am learning a lot about myself while constructing my Microtheme. The topic that I chose was about the arts and education. I did not realize how passionate I was about music until I started writing this and all of my paragraphs were very argumentative and had such direct claims that could lead to a very bias persuasive essay.

2. More broadly, what are you learning about yourself, in general?
   
              In general, I have admitted that when it comes to writing I have a very close minded format in how I approach different topics. I feel that all throughout school it was drilled into our brains about the five paragraph structure and all the exceptions to those rules if the type of essay was changed. This I realize is the one way to ensure that a person will not grow as a writer. That is what the past two projects in this class have taught me. I was finally reintroduced to feeling uncomfortable in a writing class just because of these new forms of presenting an idea to an audience.

3. Can you say that your work on the Documentary Project and/or the Microtheme has taught you anything about the nature of knowledge and/or truth?

                 I can say with extreme honestly that my work on the Documentary Project and the Microtheme has taught me a surprising amount about knowledge and truth. Each project however has taught me truth in their own way. The Documentary Project taught me knowledge and truth by listening to everyone else who had watched an eye opening video and watching one of my own that there is so much out there. Cartel Land for example informed so many of us about this drug war that goes on everyday we are carrying on with our lives. As far as working on this project, I learned of a more objective way to write and had to restrain my own analysis of the film to remain true to exactly what it portrayed. With the Microtheme I learned of how many controversial subjects there really are out there and the safe way to teach others about your newfound injustice. After learning the correct way to write about our subjects, it opened my eyes to how much potential our seemingly insignificant words can have!

Microthemes

            So far, I am feeling really good about my draft. Initially, when I sat down to start writing this microtheme I was focusing too much on the point of view from a persuasive essay which it is not. My topic definitely works for me because of how passionate I am about this topic. I'm having trouble forming the second paragraph and making a very objective view point. I am looking at the example microtheme and seeing how the edits morphed the paper into a great microtheme to figure out what I need to do. I feel that I have a better handle on this microtheme now but there is still a long way to go. 

       

     Example Paper:

        Edits:
  - Use a different word for "Five-paragraph essay" this has become too redundant.
  - Keep it to one question in the second paragraph.
  - Change additional questions into statements: "Is it because there are so many other important things to high school students that they don't have time or interest to learn this technique?"--> There are so many other important things to high school students that they really do not have the interest or time to learn this technique.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Blog: Arts and Ideas Events

               Documentaries introduce a new aspect of rhetoric that is hardly touched on in the typical writing class. However underestimated this is, it provides a new learning experience. Documentaries reframe an understanding about how to formulate questions and problems to explore in academic writing. First, a review of a documentary eliminates the opinions and analytical writing encouraged for other forms of writing. By changing the rules for what can be talked about or in what manner they can be mentioned, expands the linear way of thinking most students are used to while writing. Second, a new objective question must be formulated to appeal to a broader audience. This audience is much different than writing an essay on a specific topic and having an idea of what kind of person could be reading it. The recent project that our class completed opened my eyes to how much flexibility and power writing has to it. An essay could be constructed geared towards one topic or audience and with a few edits could be morphed into an entirely new paper. I valued this experience and feel that documentary writing should have been integrated into English classes sooner.