Eng 319 blog

Paper 1 Final Draft

Katie March

Essay 1

Word Count: 1,209

The Importance of Presentation in Reaching Your Audience

My father has always told me that one of the most important things in life is presentation. When I was a little girl I would get in trouble for whining and screaming to get my way; after I calmed down, my father would explain to me that people would be more likely to listen to me if I presented myself more positively. My dad, a lawyer, implanted the belief in me that without changing anything but my presentation I would be much more successful in my endeavors, and in life. This lesson has been life-changing for me. Learning from my father’s advice, I stopped throwing temper-tantrums and learned to express my desires politely and eloquently. More recently, I have applied the same techniques when asking teachers for higher grades, bosses for raises, and when I go on important job interviews. I have also transcended his lesson into my academic endeavors. Proper presentation in my writing has helped me to focus on my audience so my work is well-received and enjoyable. In order to produce this kind of quality writing a writer must have an audience that appreciates reading his work. Although the importance of audience and presentation is debated by composition scholars, the fact remains that writing holds no worldly importance without adequate presentation.

            Peter Elbow discusses his opinions about how being a writer is preferential in his piece, “Being a Writer vs. Being an Academic: A Conflict in Goals.” One of the differences Elbow points out between the two positions is the importance of audience. He argues that writers need time away from their readers to improve their writing, just like parents sometimes need time away from their children.[1] Writers, according to Elbow, should take time to write only for themselves without considering their potential readers. Elbow advocates for a classroom without teachers where children use freewriting exercises to improve their writing. These specialized freewriting exercises focus on continuity of thought and prohibit any stopping or editing of the student’s writing. These exercises try to encourage creativity and voice and lift writer’s block by allowing students to simply write what is on their mind.[2] However, these exercises also encourage bad writing behavior from students such as misspellings, poor grammar, and rambling, run-on sentences.

The sole purpose of Elbow’s freewriting exercises is to encourage thought and expand their writing potential, but this is something that could be accomplished by a class discussion, topic list, or simply thinking in a different direction. While practicing writing is a necessity in order to become a proficient writer, the practice should be in crafting comprehensible and quality writings, not incoherent drivel. Freewriting encourages bad habits in writing and sets a mental precedent that allows grave mistakes in the work. Students should instead spend their time practicing writing quality work on a variety of topics. This writing does not have to be stringently structured and stifle creativity; it can be in the form of essays, stories, poetry, scripts or anything the student can think of. In elementary school, I hated writing structured work; in third grade, I wrote a “recipe book” with the ingredients I believed were necessary to live a happy life. My work was always creative and expressed my thoughts and whims, but it was also edited, coherent, and each piece I wrote improved my proficiency in writing.

 Good teachers are necessary to teach students how to use their writing to address their audience, a challenge for a writer of any age. Without being able to manipulate their audience, students are unable to write sufficiently for their teachers, and professional writers are unable to find a publisher. Writing only for yourself may be useful in the form of a journal or grocery list, but unless you are Anne Frank or have a nosy little brother, your personal writing will not hold any importance after you remember to pick up your milk and eggs. Journaling may allow you to de-stress after a long day or vent about an over-bearing boss, but contrary to the thoughts of Peter Elbow, it does not make you a better writer. If a writer wants to hold lasting importance and have their work read, taught, and reviewed they must write something that an audience would enjoy and could relate to. If a writer does not learn how to do this, through teachers and experience, they will never find success in either the writing or academic realm.

            Writers need to be taught many different techniques to present their writing well and please their audience. One of the most important and irrefutable skills a writer needs to possess is proper spelling and grammar. No audience, especially an educated audience, wants to read something that is poorly-written and indecipherable. The well-respected and well-known writer David Bartholomae writes about revising his own work in “Against the Grain.”[3] Bartholomae writes that he still does a lot of revision in his own work, completely changing his writing between the first draft and the second. Bartholomae says that before he learned to revise his work he had great ideas, but he did not present them well, his dissertation was even rejected because it was written poorly.[4] Teaching students to revise their work will instill good habits and make their writing easier to understand and less distracting. But to Bartholomae, revision is much more than fixing simple grammar and hitting the spell-check key. Students also need to learn how to make their writing more convincing and more interesting. To excel in their writing, students need to improve their word-choice, hone their ideas into arguments, and use their voice to make their writing attention-grabbing and persuasive. Many scholars discuss the importance of voice, but personal voice needs to be tailored to make writing more readable. Great writers are like salesmen; they must use their voice to interest the buyer, craft their arguments convincingly, and speak eloquently in order to sound refined and educated. All of these elements combined persuade buyers, and readers, that what is being stated is true, important, and worth their time. Neither a teacher nor a publisher will praise or purchase a work which is poorly constructed and uninteresting.

            To be considered a good writer in the academy, among the community of writers, and according to the public a writer needs to possess a multitude of qualities. To impress the academy writers need to have an impeccable writing style, good grammar and word choice and unfaltering spelling. To be accepted by other writers a writer needs to have new ideas, a creative approach, and a convincing argument or story. Most importantly, to be read by the public, a writer needs to possess the quality of being a clear, comprehensible, and enjoyable writer. This skill does not come from unrestricted ramblings which teach bad habits, but from practicing good writing skills in all writing situations. All writings which intend to benefit your writing style and ability should follow the rules of good writing. Freewriting can be effective, but only if used to improve writing styles and techniques. Successful, impactful writers learn to present their writing in a way which will please their audience, the truest test of a good writer.