Insight Into a World of Academic Writing

While reading through “Teaching the Convention of Academic Discourse” by Teresa Thonney, I learned several things that we, as first-year college students, are doing wrong. Although that I am grateful that I am being introduced to these concepts prior to writing my first official college paper, it is also a wake up call and a mild slap in the face about the differences between high school and college writing.

I have heard stories of friends who have spent days on their college papers only to receive a C at best. Obviously this is not the grade they were going for, and they could not figure out what they were doing wrong. They say that after the first few papers they begin to figure out what their professors are looking for because they were never taught to write in this particular style.

This is an interesting topic because as Thonney mentions in her article, scholar David Russell believes “...there is no ‘autonomous, generalizable skill or set of skills called ‘writing’ that can be learned and then applied to all genres or activities’” (347). These scholars argue that you cannot teach students to write. You can guide them on a path and provide the tools and the basic blueprints, but we as the students are the ones building the houses. We have to overcome what we think about writing and dig deeper into the depths of the rhetoric world.

Overall, I found this academic journal article to be a fairly easy read. I am able to clearly follow along and comprehend most of the points Thonney was emphasizing. However, what made it slightly more difficult was the fact that we are not her primary audience. Her target audience includes professors and scholars, not first-year students; although, this topic is extremely relevant to us as students and we are the secondary audience. The only issue I encountered due to not being the primary audience was my lack of familiarity with some of the examples that Thonney includes.

I enjoy Thonney’s frequent incorporation of examples because it makes it easier to understand her points, but I am not as familiar with journals of psychology or cell biology or sports medicine as a professor may be. If Thonney uses examples related to technology or universities, I may have gained more from this piece; however, her argument may be weaker overall. Despite my lack of knowledge in these subjects, I do understand Thonney’s point for including them: to allow us to physically visualize what we need to learn. An explanation can only do so much on its own, but coupled with an example can make it much stronger.

Thonney mentions how strong writers often include evidence through various forms other than text including: tables, graphs, and visual images. Personally, this is different from my typical style from writing. Aside from blogging, I never include any type of image to support my work. Maybe I saw it as “childish writing” in the past, only there to take up space, but after reading Thonney’s cleverly crafted points about the effectiveness of these images, I can see the strength they hold in an argument. Usually, I include evidence in my writing through the use of quotations, but this is an interesting area to explore to help support my claims in the future.

Overall, I appreciated this work composed by Thonney as it gave me a brief insight into what professors are looking for in an academic paper. It was not difficult to break down or take note of what is expected of us. It provides information through supportive examples to aid us on our pathways to success.