Journal One- Ryland Hager

Journal One- Ryland Hager

• ·       What is writing—the definitions, ideas, thoughts, expressions, etc.—that you associate with writing?

Writing to me is a physical form of communication where one’s goal is to convey a message by using a familiar set of symbols that their target audience will be able to decipher in order to receive the message. Writing can be used to record historical facts or personal thoughts in order to prevent certain concepts from being forgotten due to the imperfections of the human memory. It can also be used to entertain in the sense of fictional stories or emotional poems where people can express themselves.  

• ·       What defines successful writing for you?

I believe that the only person to determine how successful a piece of writing is, is the author of that writing. Every author has their intended purpose of a piece of writing and whether it’s to properly record the date of a historical event or to convince a person to recycle, if the author feels that the work did its job than its successful.

• ·       What type of writer do you see yourself as, and why?

The majority of writing that I am accustomed to doing is informative writing for school in the form of essays but I feel that I am a stronger writer when it comes to creating entertaining works that require a lot of creativity and character. I enjoy letting my mind run free and allowing it to create whatever it wants and when I’m doing something that I’m passionate about, I tend to perform much better.

• ·       Create a list of 5-8 key terms that define writing.

Communication, Physical Message, Expression, Historical, Poetry, Story

• ·       What is the major argument that you see these authors making?

The major argument made by the authors is that the current system of education in the field of writing has put too much weight on the concept of plagiarism to the extent that students are too afraid to draw inspiration from resources given to them to create a work that is legitimately effective in place of a piece of work that is “original”.

• ·       What did you learn about writing from this text?

I learned that using other author’s or artist’s works is usually very beneficial to one’s own work and using these resources can be very effective to either get one’s point across clearer by referencing another author’s ideas and building on them or using another artist’s work as inspiration to further enhance one’s own creation.

·       Is this article “successful” according to the criteria you defined earlier? If so, how? If not, why not?

Well, according to the criteria I defined for a work to be successful, it depends on whether the author believes they accomplished their goal with their writing. If they believe they accurately got their message across and that it persuaded enough people to share a similar mindset than yes, it is successful.

• ·       Has your understanding of writing changed as a result of engaging with Johnson-Eilola and Selber's article? Why or why not? 

I would definitely say that I have a larger appreciation for embracing one’s influences and resources when writing due to the fact that I’ve been engaged in a system that is very strict against the use of incorporating outside sources into one’s writing by labeling it plagiarism. I still feel like there is a line where there can be too much incorporation of outside sources to the extent that there is no original thought brought in by the writer but if the writer expands upon these ideas and uses them to enforce a point than I believe it can be effective.

• ·       Do you want to revise your list of key terms based on this reading? Explain what you would revise (or not) and why (not).

I wouldn’t revise my list because I still feel like I have the same concept of what writing is but now I have a new mindset on how to go about conveying one’s message through writing.