Response Blog #3

In order for writing to be effective and well-developed, a writer must blend their personal life with their academic knowledge. In “Writing What Matters: A Student’s Struggle to Bridge the Academic/Personal Divide”, published by Young Scholars in Writing, author Emily Strasser highlights the belief that “device of grammar and rhetoric remain superficial skills until a writer employs the to express important and powerful feelings, thoughts, and ideas” (Strasser 146). Throughout the work, Strasser utilizes different perspectives on the topic of the intellectual vs. emotional writing factor when writing to express her thoughts and give the readers other visions people share about the topic, she also makes use of anecdotes and part of a narrative style to tell her own story about why she believes her argument so strongly, I believe her claim to be true but it lacks practicality.

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As I read this piece I tried to interact with it from the author’s perspective and analyzed rhetorical context that was helpful throughout this piece. Instead of looking for obvious devices such appeals, I focused on a more general sense, firstly, the purpose of this piece. Strasser used many ideas that led to believe why she wrote this work, for example she argued that Graft believed “the academy creates a division between public and intellectual life”,(Strasser 148) while Hooks “criticizes the mind/body/spirit division”(Strasser 148), but she believes “voices of every age, class, gender, and language are important and valuable”(Strasser 148) even though “society only values a small group of voices” .(Strasser 148) The author brings all these perspectives together and makes way to stablish her own argument after considering the other sources, she stablishes her idea which is the basis for her work and shows the audience the main point she wants to address. She also believes that writing is a process that can be perfected or developed but only if enrich through learning from mentors. She makes the argument that teachers should challenge students to think critically and write personally that way it helps “their students write what matters to their lives” .(Strasser 150)This tells us that she wants to approach the way teachers encourage and instruct students to write by showing them to write passionately.

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The audience was an important factor because in her piece she wanted it to be known that everyone from every background should write from the heart. In page 147, Strasser claims that

“students are “whole’ human beings, striving not just for knowledge in books, but knowledge about how to live in the world”, this lets the audience know it can be targeted with more priority to students because they are the ones that are going through these situations where they are stuck currently. It can also be directed to teachers and administrators because it acts as a wake-up call that grammar and “sophisticated sentence structure…remain superficial skills”.( Strasser 146) This piece also addresses underpriviledged or minority groups by giving the example Danielle, who despite her home environment wanted to be a writer, and by claiming that students can “incorporate their street smarts and common skills of argumentation and persuasion into academic writing”. (Strasser 147)

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The author considers why writing from experience helps students develop more but I believe that there is some unrealistic faults in that statement. If students were to write about their lives and experiences, the academic factor of learning of a new topic is nonexistent anymore because students are not being introduced to new ideas that might expand or create new knowledge and it is unrealistic based on state or national standards because when standardized tests ask students to write about a new subject or to defend their ideas with evidence from the provided texts it would leave students clueless about what to do. For example, Strasser argues that students should first learn to write about subjects like “superheroes”(Strasser 147) and that by writing “what matters to them(students),they write better, more passionately, and more strongly”(Strasser 149). While this is true there is some fallacy to this argument, students will be able to write more passionately and openly about the subjects they care about but will not be prepared when asked to write on a completely different topic from what they know and it is not academic since students that write what they want all the time are not learning anything because they can support it and it can also be repetitive since you are using your own opinions and ideas. Author Linda Christensen, however, states that "students must be taught to hold their voices sacred" (Christensen 37). She believes students should use their personal experience and voice in their writing but sh does not state to write with no limits whatsoever, which differs from Strasser's perspective.

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To conclude, pertaining to the focus of the work it was clear that her goal was to bring awareness to the fact that students should “bridge” their academic and personal life to make writing more efficient. But Strasser failed to consider even though writing about your passions is very beneficial to the student, it can also be negative when performing on state wide national tests since they are accustomed to write on a personal level where they do not gain any academic benefits.

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Strasser, Emily. “Writing What Matters: A Student’s Struggle to Bridge the Academic/Personal Divide.” Young Scholars in Writing, vol. 5, 2008, pp. 146-150.

Christensen, Linda M. “Teaching Standard English: Whose Standard?” The English Journal, vol. 79, no. 2, 1990, pp. 36-40.