Blog #6: Conventions of Academic Writing

           

            Despite that Teresa Thonney’s academic journal, “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse,” is written by a scholar for other scholars, it was easy to understand and agree with her points. It was an easier read than expected. Being an academic article, I assumed that there would be a sizable amount of advanced vocabulary, but I only had to search up a handful words. Although, it it was challenging a number of different senses.

            I found it hard to read through all of the provided examples. Thonney included at least one sample for every point she made about her conventions of writing. Although its beneficial to the reader to provide examples, I began thinking that she was listing too many. Because I am not responsible for teaching any of this information to anyone, I felt as through Thonney provided too many models for seemingly simple concepts; but I am sure they would be useful for and appreciated by scholars who are looking to pass on the knowledge to students. I also thought that Thonney’s writing style was very dry—as expected of an academic journal intended for her fellow scholars. The journal article was a difficult read in the sense that it was repetitive and generally uncomplicated.

            Other than those small details, I mostly liked Thonney’s piece because I agreed with the points made in her introduction. I strongly agreed with the statement that there is no “autonomous, generalizable skill or set of skills called ‘writing’ that can be learned and then applied to all genres or activities” (Russell qtd. in Thonney 347). I agree with this idea because it did not seem as though my high school English teachers realized this. Despite taking advanced placement English classes my junior and senior year of high school, I never felt as though my writing skills improved. My teachers would typically focus on one style of writing at a time and transition to the next as if it were a completely new concept. My teachers would make us write self-evaluations throughout the school year, explaining how our writing skills improved and what we’d like to work on. But I could never think of how my writing skills changed or if I even acquired any news skills that I didn’t have in the past. I like how Thonney acknowledges that writing cannot be taught as a set of guidelines to be applied in every situation, but approaches teaching writing skills from a very broad perspective.

After reading through Thonney’s conventions of academic writing, I realized that what she is teaching varies from a number of the skills I was taught in high school. In her second convention, described as “Academic Writes State the Value of Their Work and Announce the Plan for Their Papers,” Thonney states that most “students think the main claim in an academic argument must be an assertive, polemic statement”. Instead, academic argumentative claims should be stated “mater-of-factly” (351). My senior English teach taught us that being angry about a topic makes for a good argument. She encouraged us to use “heated language” to express our opinions in a forceful manner. Despite being taught this way, I think Thonney’s approach makes for a better argument because it has a sense of professionalism and composure that anger can overpower.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Thonney’s academic journal article because I never felt as though my writing skills improved throughout high school—making college writing seem very intimidating. So hopefully Thonney’s general pieces of advice will help me better my academic writing skills.