Reading and Writing with Authority by Ann M. Penrose and Cheryl Geisler is an article which explore the concept of writing with authority. The article explore two students different in age, gender and credentials exploring paternalism in writing. Janet was a freshman in college, and Roger a college student in the doctoral program. Although both were college students one student was in the beginning of their college career while the other student was in the end of their career as a college student. Over the years Roger has had experience with academic writing while Janet was now beginning. The author investigated both Roger and Janet’s writing, looking for comparisons, differences and quality of the writing then they decided about which paper help more authority.
Personally, I didn’t think it was fair to compare a freshman student to someone in the doctoral program, because you would just assume that the freshman student would have less experience. But the entire purpose of this study was to examine how this authority would play out in academic writing. There were some notable differences in the writing which was to be expected. The author states, in Janet’s writing she “barely mentions the authors or the articles” which she read.
One the other hand, Roger saw the “knowledge he gleaned from texts as claims to be argued for. “Reading was a process of identifying, sorting, and evaluating the claims made by the various authors”. Roger knew how to do this because he had prior experience. He dissected the information to form solid facts to prove his point of view, he even challenged some of the information which he read. Janet on the other hand was having some difficulty challenging the authors, she simply agreed with one of the authors because it was easier to align herself with that author than to create an original thought on her own.
The authors were interested in how the lack of authority within literature shapes the reading and writing practices of students. They concluded that confidence of a student’s authoritative writing is assumed to expand with age and experience, and influence this development.
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