1. In a few sentences, explain the main idea of this article. What is it about? (pretend you are
explaining it to a friend.)
a. The main idea of this article was to give teachers an insight into why students are having
such a hard time learning and improving their writing skills. The article gives data taken
from surveys around campuses about students writing patterns and what writing
activities they generally participate in. This data of students writing habits is then used
to create a showcase of what a teacher expects of a student, this being more a formal
writing like essays or term papers whereas students tend to write more in informal ways
such as social media. Many teachers want to blame social media for the lack of formal
writing knowledge. The writer of this article presents the idea of using social media or
more of the writing needed to participate in social media and create lessons that
students will be able to want to participate in. The writer wanted to bring awareness
into the disconnect that many teachers have with their students and create ideas that
teachers can use to improve the skills and knowledge base that their students possess.
2. Did this article get you to think about yourself as a writer and writing in college in general?
Explain.
a. When starting as a writer in college I believed that I was well equipped to write at a
college level for any assignments that I was given, just as stated in the article, I was part
of the majority. Looking further into the article, I also fell into the category of
overestimating my writing abilities causing many problems when needing to write a
formal paper. My experience loosely mirrors what this article states as I fell into nearly
every stigma that was stated. The techniques that the author suggested to try and help
students to learn more formal writing were used by teachers that I have taken, and used
to help me break those same stigmas and lent to me being a better writer than when I
entered college.
3. What problem is this writer trying to draw attention to? Why do you think this?
a. The problem the writer is trying to draw attention to is the disconnect between the
education level of students, mainly incoming freshman, and the expectations of a
student to grow and learn more advanced writing techniques. The writer was pulling
data from surveys taken on college campuses about the type of writing that many
students engage in weekly, some even saying that they write 25 hours a week, with over
half of this being for formal writing. The large amounts of writing that students
participate in of their own volition creates a sense of mastery over a subject that is ever
growing so when these students enter college they are not ready for the lessons and
expectations put on them by teachers who expect them to improve.
4. What audience is addressed in this article; in other words, who do you think this writer is
“talking” to? Explain.
a. I believe that the writer was talking to teachers. The writer has data taken from various
colleges on the same phenomenon of students believing that they have already reached
a mastery of their writing abilities. Along with these surveys the writer also talks about
how teachers are set in certain ways and should consider changing some of the ways
they teach and use more informal writings to spur more growth in a student’s writing
potential. The writer used all these sets of data to create an informative article for
teachers to read and take inspiration from in their own lessons to try and create a better
learning environment that was more harmonious and broke the disconnects between
teacher and student.
5. Since all writing can be improved, what is something in this article that you might tell the
writer to work on more? Why?
a. Something I believe the author could improve on is the depth for which information is
presented. Most of the data that was presented left me as the reader wanting more.
While I was not the expected reader of this article I believe that if the writer wishes to
see some of these changes that were presented the data would need to be displayed in
a more comprehensive manor. This would be my only improvement for the writer of
this article, while the data was very good It just left me wanting for it to be more
comprehensive to form a more educated opinion.