Allen & Berkenkotter

Before You Read: For starters, as soon as I read what lied in the quotations, I felt this sudden feeling just drop inside of me. As a person who has experienced death at 16 years old due to the passing of my fellow students, the thought of explaining it is horrifying. Then again, how can you explain what death is to a child when you can't answer the following questions they have when they basically are your own, depending on what you believe in of course. If I were to explain to my soon to be ten year old brother what death was, my best way to explain it was that a person's life ends when their body shuts down and can no longer work when they are older. Younger deaths can occur due to whatever they choose to do to themselves or a severe accident that ends the life which still shuts down the bodies functions. It wasn't hard to write, but seriously thinking on it was just a reminder that death happens and it is hard to explain to others if they don't understand or they have questions that follow. As humans, we don't really know for sure what happens after we die. That is a question that, in my eyes, can never and shouldn't be answered.


In her article "The Inspired Writer vs. The Real Writer", Sarah Allen attempts to explain how to write a good paper by imitating the writings of other authors to help improve writing styles as a student aiming to better their writing.  She argues that by observing your writing and having writer's you consider to know what they are doing help revise your papers can improve your writing and help you find the connection you are looking for to make your paper better.

In her article "Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Publishing Writer", Carol Berkenkotter attempts to explain how by planning, revising, and editing your paper, you will be able to write articles more effectively by spending a great amount of time on all three topics. She conducts an experiment where she has Donald M. Murray say his thoughts aloud without analyzing what he is saying so she can figure out how others go about writing their papers and narrowing it down to what it is this subject does to make them more effective.

Synthesis: Berkenkotter's article relates to the same as Kleine's because both of them use other scholars to conduct experiments to test their theories. Both experiments have the soul purpose of hoping to better students writing and improve their papers.

QD 3: The study helped Berkenkotter's  understand of writing processes because it showed that you need a large amount of time to plan, revise, and edit papers so that they are written to the best of their abilities. With partial response from Murray, he even stated that he now realizes that articles take over a year to actually be a complete piece of work.

A&E: My time spent on writing is usually in one setting. I compose an outline of what I'm wanting to write through the 5 paragraph essay and simply begin to write. My level of writing is literally at the high school level. When reading my papers, they sound smart, but I feel like they are on a simple level of writing. The writing process reflects my experience on writing because I don't seriously take a whole lot of time when going over it. It's alright, but nothing to special. Mediocre would be the best word for the time I spend on the writing.

MM: To help write more effectively, I need to start by spending a lot more time planning my writing so I can create a better paper. The time period spent on what I'm going to do is the key to an effective paper.

I didn't really like the article with Berkenkotter. It was just really hard to comprehend what she was saying and doing and it was just a hassle for me to read. When I tried to reread it, I still had a hard time following what she was saying. Allen's article was easier to follow in because she could openly say how she bettered her writing and the exact words of how to do it.