I seem to have a real problem with academic writing. Sure, I can spit out an argumentative essay and get an "A," but I hate it. I love to write, but I can't get into argumentative essays. I do believe that writing this way is good practice though. Is there anyone out there who likes to write argumentative essays, or maybe even specializes in them? Is there anyone who feels the way I do? I feel like I should love to write anything; I guess I do if it's for the greater good of my writing abilities. Sometimes I wonder if I dislike academic writing just because someone is telling me what to write. I don't like that pressure. I suppose I should just suck it up and get used to it. What do you guys think about this topic?
Why should you love writing everything? I've had work of multiple genres published (newspaper articles, short stories and poems) yet I dislike all academic writing -- with the single exception of reflective essays -- plus script-writing and poetry. I can write them but it doesn't mean I'll enjoy it in the slightest.
No, I dislike academic English...I can't stand it. Analysing in an essay Shakespeare stories and Robert Browning poems = NO. And you don't have to like writing everything in my opinion.
Oh, I love writing Academic essays! I find it really fascinating and rewarding to look at other writers work and discover so much about it- it really helps me understand the craft of writing more. ^__^ I mean, I love Shakespeare but it's often quite... difficult, so I find I understand it better when I write on it because it makes me narrow my focus more. Perhaps I'm really odd in this respect- my friends who do English Lit always seem to do their essays like the day before the hand in: Meanwhile I've been researching and planning mine for weeks... In short. Uhm. I like it because it's what I'm good at.
Well that's good because I don't like writing everything. I'm glad some people feel somewhat the same. That's it I'm going to go give my English teacher a piece of my mind, and really let him know what I think of his miserable academic writing! Just kidding.... But seriously, I'm going to tell him to shove it right up his class hole. (terrible pun by the way)
That's really cool. I wish I had that sort of enthusiasm about it. Sometimes however I will become very enthusiastic about an essay if I get to choose the topic. It is hit or miss though because the teacher often chooses for us.
I like writing argumentative essays when I understand the topic. If it's about a non-technical subject, you can even add in a few jokes to lighten things up (for yourself, perhaps also for the reader). What I would term academic writing is writing research papers. That is certainly pretty dry. In fact, I have heard the opinion that a research paper is better, the more boring it is. Clearly it's not very much fun to write that, but it's a necessary evil of academic life. Still, better than grant proposals...
I'm good at it, and see the value, but hate it. One thing that helps is I just try to be as stuffy and academic as possible, to the point of reading my essays out loud with my 'I'm a pompous d-bag voice' until it sounds like pure comedy to me... then I turn it in and the joke continues (for me) as I'm awarded praise and A's. You shouldn't feel you need to like everything. If you're a poet, you write poetry. If you're a novelist, you write novels. If you're an essayist, you write essays. If you're deluded and a masochist, you write short stories. The term 'writer' is generally far too inclusive for what most people actually are or want to be.
No problem. No one likes all kinds of writing, right? I wouldn't say I always enjoyed academic writing, but it came pretty easy to me. Researching and writing my thesis was quite an experience, and I learned a lot of things during those two years.
That's funny. I actually just wrote an essay about that idea. I completely understand the comedy aspect that you are talking about. I find myself laughing about my pompous d-baggary as well when I write academically. It works though. I guess that is a fact of life for some of us.
since you're a student, if you want to get a passing grade, you'd better ignore your dislike of the medium and just do as good a job of it as you can...
In my college class whenever we have essays due, it usually gets fun once I have all my main argument points. Once I start writing, I get into it and I just tear the subject up. I wrote a paper on why America should not have participated in Libya and how video games don't cause violence. Each time I found myself destroying the opposing view. It helps that I love to complain so it bolsters my motivation for writing argumentative papers.
Thanks for the advise. However I'm not worried about my grades in English, I get A's. My reason for this post was mainly to see how others feel about this topic. My biggest problem is lack of enthusiasm in an academic setting, but I wont let that stop me, school is very important to me.
A good introduction in an argumentative essay acts like a good opening statement in a trial. Just like a lawyer, a writer must present the issue at hand, give background, and put forth the main argument -- all in a logical, intellectual and persuasive way. That’s why you need a hook, need to include background also should understand what to leave out. Here is{link deleted by moderator - actually a link to an assignment cheating service}
Maybe Larry can help you? There are some of his lectures about academic writing in Tubestan. Here's couple. It's interesting and important.
I prefer to write non-fiction/essays more than anything else sometimes. I almost exclusively read non-fiction now (except on this forum).
I had to write argumentative essays in Literary Criticism. what made it help was this book Critical Theory Today by Lois Tyson. Argumentative writing, especially for literature analysis, can be done in many different lenses. CTT lists: Psychoanalytical, Marxist, Feminist, "New Criticism" which is "focuses on the individual literary work in isolation from other literature and from other cultural productions." Reader-Response, Structuralist, Deconstruction, Historical/Cultural, LGBTQ, African American, and Postcolonial. Over the course of that class, each week we had to write a paper using one of these lenses. Some were more interesting to write in than other, but the goal was for us to find our argumentative style. Personally, I liked Psychoanalytical, New Crit, Historical/Cultural, and Postcolonial, but again, it depends on what you are arguing (literature vs article). For example, the topic was an article that came out in the '70s after The Exorcist came out. The article was talking about how it scared the nation and blah blah blah. The Psychoanalytical lens worked well with this article (i forget my argument, though lol!). I feel like its not fun for you right now because you havent found your argumentative "voice". Play around with it! it can be fun
Also, Tyson breaks down each lens. Its very reader friendly. the only sections that tripped me up was Marxist and Deconstruction. Those were my weakest essays because i didnt really have a grasp on those concepts...
Good Lord I hope I'm not required to like writing every single thing possible. Technical writing and this nightmare of a memoir are plenty for me. If I never have to write another paper on Shakespeare I'll count myself a lucky woman.
That's why I had to take that course? I did my thesis on science and Robert Frost which was a lot of fun, and I helped my advisor edit his Literary Criticism textbook, but I was often frustrated by the many absurd ways people were interpreting literature. I thoroughly enjoyed compelling my Rhetoric prof to listen to Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime start to finish as part of my final. I didn't like Rhetoric at all (the Liberal Arts' version of Statistics) but when the definition of "a work that uses rhetorical elements to influence perception" wasn't fleshed out, she granted me permission to do it. She said she didn't think it was possible but I scored an A on that one.
You can try my method: think outside the box. Arguments aren't necessarily aggressive. With some notable exceptions I was allowed to go any direction I wanted as long as I stayed within the parameters and most of my profs' parameters were quite flexible. Some were surprised by what I wanted to do but only one flatly refused to allow me to take my own path.
seems like you had an awesome professor. My professor wanted to fight me on every thesis statement I wrote. I was the only black person in my literature MAJOR. So for one of my papers, I argued that 3 of Shakespeare's sonnets could have possibly been written about a woman of color (dubbed "dark lady sonnets") and how it was written as an antithesis to the petrarchian sonnets and as an opposition the the cultural standards of that time. he. flipped. out. "not everything is about race!" and "YOU COULDNT POSSIBLY KNOW WHO THOSE POEMS ARE ABOUT" and "I'll be damned if you can find evidence of THAT statement" and "HOW DARE YOU" my classmates were like "dont listen to him, write the paper. We see nothing wrong with it. sounds pretty awesome" and there were a surprising amount of literature surrounding the identity of the Dark Lady in the sonnets, so I wasnt the only one to speculate about the identity of her. it was a fun paper to write and the research was interesting.
Considering the first thing I said to her was, "Basically you're teaching us how to lie and get away with it" she was pretty cool. I fought with almost every prof I had on that side of campus. The Math & Science department was easier to deal with. Okay, I realize it's been more than 20 years since I was in college but geez, really? You should've seen some the absolutely absurd theses my classmates composed. Honestly I wondered if I'd really missed anything by skipping high school. The way I saw it, I was taking on an arm and a leg in debt to attend those classes, which in turn paid their salaries. I wasn't about to let anyone ride roughshod over me. It's one thing to be told the specifics of an assignment, another to be told how to think. NO ONE tells me how to think. ETA: I was 24 when I started, almost 30 when I finally got my BA, and had way more life experience that most of the profs and almost all of my fellow classmates. That might have something to do with it.
