Writing as we know it has been fixated into our brains. Years of learning what academic writings should look like has made us not think differently about writing. Most of the time, we tend to believe that what we read is what is correct and cannot be challenged in any way. According to Penrose and Geisler, thinking this way demonstrates how most students tend to write without authority. In their experiment, the studied two different students (Janet and Roger) and asked them to write about the same topic of “paternalism.” The difference between the two of them was that Janet was a college freshman and Roger was finishing his doctorate.
How do we observe difference in authority?
The way the papers were going to end up like completely depended on the authority Janet or Roger gave to the paper. This mean how each of them is going to interpret the information that is presented to them when they are reading it. In “Reading and writing without authority,” Person and Geisler mentioned, “Roger seems to operate with an awareness that texts and knowledge claims are authored and negotiable. Janet’s approach was consistent with a more traditional information-transfer model in which text are definite and unassailable.” To put it into simpler terms, Roger has the experience to look at the text he is reading as something that can be challenged and that it’s not necessarily correct. This allows him to look into different perspectives on paternalism and get a different point of view. On the other hand, Janet follows a more traditional method that most students follow when they are first writing their papers. This methods block Janet from challenging the text she is reading since she believes that what is written in an article is accurate and should not be challenged. This does not allow her to look into different perspectives and will completely rely on the articles to get her whole argument for the paper.
What can I do to write with authority?
As we were able to observe from the example above Roger is better at writing a paper than Janet. The reason for this is that as it was mentioned, Roger allows the articles or information he is reading to be challenged and find different opinions about it. The way that Janet, and everyone that is writing a paper for class, can improve their writing methods is be open to interpretations. In Penrose and Geisler’s views, “… she needs to believe there is authority to spare–that there is room for many voices. She needs to understand the development of knowledge as a communal and continual process.” In other words Janet needs to understand that she always can learn something new when it comes to writing. She needs to stop second-guessing herself. I believe that it’s important to know that there is never an article that shouldn’t be challenged. Articles are papers written by humans and therefore there is the possibility of mistakes. For that same reason, Janet and all students should look into different perspectives and interpretations to get a wider idea of how to interpret the information you are reading about.
Leave a Reply