WJ #1

Writer's Journal #1 - Outcomes Reflection 

OVERVIEW

The writing outcomes in this class help to define what “academic writing” means for our English 101 community and for many academic writing communities. They help us understand what academic writing and writers should aspire to, but they can also help us compose in other contexts, for other purposes, and with other audiences.

DIRECTIONS

For this first Writer’s Journal assignment, please think about what you have learned this week, and answer the following questions:

- What do you find surprising about the course outcomes?
- What do you find confusing about the course outcomes?
- What do the course outcomes tell you about academic writing, and how is this different from or similar to writing you do in other contexts of your life?

Be sure to be as detailed and thorough as possible, and use examples to help explain your response.

• What do you find surprising about the course outcomes?

    I was surprised to find out that the course outcomes put a great emphasis on the writing process even more than on the composition itself: reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading and editing; especially, I was not used to the concept of collaborative and social aspects of writing process, so that it made me amazed.
    In addition, the consideration of digital technology into this course outcomes was something unexpected for me. From my college education experience, most of the classes did not explicitly consider leveraging the technology into course syllabus or outcomes.
    In a nutshell, the course outcomes varied from my expectation- a writing course will be a writing course. I will have tedious writing assignments and that is all- rather up-to-date, collaborate and social works are awaiting for me.

• What do you find confusing about the course outcomes?

     I am diffident whether I fully understand the term Rhetorical knowledge. I have written many emails, reports, journals, memos and so on; but It seems that I have never been conscious about rhetorical concepts while I was composing. 

• What do the course outcomes tell you about academic writing, and how is this different from or similar to writing you do in other contexts of your life?

     When it comes to writing I do in the most of the contexts in my life, it seems very different from academic writing. I am mostly unconscious about who is going to read this or why I am writing this while composing memos or daily journals. Because those are written solely for my own benefit and no one is going to read them carefully and criticize about structures or contents.
    On the other hand, as I am working as a public accountant (CPA), I made lots of auditors reports and had them published. In this context, I went through several levels of review procedures, reread, revised, rewrote the reports. Moreover, I always considered who is going to use the information the reports contain and how the clients and stakeholders would think about the contents so that I was prudent and cautious about tone, voice and structure of the reports. Therefore, auditors' reports seem to have a lot in common with academic writing.