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My question is, can Megan and I have an ‘A’ for our presentation, please? Just kidding.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about something that we have been discussing as we prepare to present to the class, on the topic of journals. Neman suggests that teachers should check students journals every so often, which is not necessarily a bad way to do it, but is it necessary? The only time I’ve been required to keep a journal was in my senior English class, and that teacher simply walked around to make sure we were actually writing something, and I felt more comfortable with this. I felt more at ease to write whatever I thought about, instead of just what the teacher might be okay with, and I feel that part of journals is extracting one’s feelings. I’m interested to hear what others think.

I have a question that would probably annoy myself if I was the teacher and I was teaching prewriting: Do you HAVE to prewrite. I am not saying that ignoring this stage of the process is the way to go for every student, but honestly I have produced some work off the cuff that was pretty darn good. As I said, I would probably discourage students from doing this, and it doesn’t always work for me – only if the muse is really working on that day. However, it is a question that we will likely get from students at some point and one that we should, as teachers, be prepared to answer.

A section of Chapter 2 that really had a lot of meaning to me was the section on page 44 titled “But Why Must the Organizing Idea Be Arguable?”. This is something that I struggled with greatly as I got into high school and had to start writing research papers. As Neman states, “Our students may be relectant to accept the rhetorical – persuasive – function of an organizing idea.” She may as well have been writing about my ninth grade self. Generally all writing done at earlier grades is focused on being informative, not persuasive. It was difficult for me, and I’m certain I wasn’t alone, to go from talking about something to actually saying something about it, if that makes sense. I know I resisted this, and it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I really felt any comfort with the persuasive paper. I guess my question is then, how do I make students like me more comfortable with this transition earlier in their career as writers?

Why don’t we call it “writing process” anymore? Is that just a reference to the strictly regimented steps that many of us went through as students? As teachers of writers, should we be moving away from these steps? What confuses me about this statement is what exactly is being described when we say “writing process,” and is calling it “writing” just a change in terminology or is it moving towards actions more helpful in the teaching of writing?

On page 139 Neman discusses the use of colorful language and rythmic syntax. This is something that I have considered a lot in my writing since a paper I wrote my sophomore year where my professor told me that, though my writing was fundamentally solid, it was very dry and boring and should include more of my personality. Now when I write, I try to use a number of things to “spice up” my writing. Sometimes this are structural things like rhyming or alliteration. Frequently, I try to make things livlier by injecting a lot of humor and colorful words and imagery into my papers.

On this topic, my question is – how much is too much? Is there a point in which the content of the writing is overlooked because it is overshadowed by stylistic decisions that were made?