Reading And Writing Without Authority Analysis

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Writing has always been a pastime for me. When I was younger, I loved writing stories just for fun or to have something to share with my family and friends. I remember being able to sit down for hours on end and write full pages worth of writing. Whether it made any sense, had proper grammar, and even if it was legible didn’t matter to me. It was writing that I could truly say was my own and be proud of. In fact, writing has never been really significant for students like me up until middle school. That’s when my English teachers introduced structured essays and their “right way to write”, which was supposed to work for all students. I didn’t have a problem with this, since all I had to follow what the teacher said and I would get a good grade. …show more content…
Penrose, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University and Cheryl Geisler, an associate professor of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, performed a study to assess the effects of authority on writing and wrote “Reading and Writing without Authority” based on essays about paternalism written by a first year college student and a doctoral student. They argue the ability to write with authority and establishing a sense of identity depends on your position, how comfortable one is with conflicting sources, and how they apply this knowledge towards their overall views on the …show more content…
I don 't care how you do it, just put it in the paper." And that is what we do. In order to receive credit, we find any random book, website and article and stick it into our papers. “Janet 's outsider position was also evident in her use of examples. While Roger continually tested authors ' claims through the use of examples and test cases, Janet used examples only to clarify or illustrate.” (P&G, p. 513) Roger was able to connect the sources, turn them into a conversation, and contribute towards the conversation. As opposed to Janet, who accepts them as the truth, understand their meanings, but she doesn’t go any further than that.
In looking over the concepts by Penrose and Geisler’s article “Reading and Writing without Authority,” I can see the similarities between my writing and Janet’s. I am guilty of the information-transfer model. While I would love to be able to write like Roger, I believe that writing doesn’t only take a level of confidence, it takes expertise as well. I do not believe that Roger 's writing is something that happens overnight, or that can be rushed. I will, eventually, and unknowingly, begin to write like Roger, with more authority and knowledge on the

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