Chapters 9 & 11

1. Chapters 9 & 11 “Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting aside Your Own Voice” • “Entering Class Discussions”

2. “Ain’t So/Is Not”:Academic Writing Doesn’t Always Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice • Many students believe papers should be packed with big words, long sentences, complex sentence structures • Apt words, mix of long and short sentences, complex sentence structure only when required • Clarity always trumps complexity • “[A]cademic writing can—and in our view should—be relaxed, easy to follow, and even a little bit fun” (121). • Should use academic terms, but also incorporate more casual turns of phrase

3. Intellectual ≠ Stilted, Deadly Dull • Mix academic and colloquial styles • “Frequency of Formal Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research” • Don’t be afraid of imagery and creative language • “Doing it [correcting formal errors] represents the Bad Old Days. Ms. Fidditch and Mr. Flutesnoot with sharpened red pencils, spilling innocent blood across the page (122)” • More common in humanities, but do find elsewhere • Physicists especially prone to (Big Bang theory)

4. Recipe for Mixing High and Low • First make your point in the professional language of your field and THEN make it again in everyday language. • “As Merill Skaggs has put it, ‘She is neurotically controlling and self-conscious about her work, but she know at all points what she is doing. Above all else, she is self-conscious.’ Without question, Cather was a control freak.” (Fetterly, qtd. 124)

5. When is it safe to mix styles? • Consider audience and purpose • Usually not a good idea in a grant proposal • If for a journal or other publication, look at previous issues • If for a course, consider professor • Almost always safe in the humanities • Always remember, colloquial language enlivens academic discourse but does not replace it • Provides spice, not substance

6. Take Home Message: “To succeed as a writer in college, then, you need not always limit your language to the strictly formal” (128).

7. “I Take Your Point”:Entering Class Discussions • Frame comments as a response to something that has already been said. • Name the person AND position you’re responding to • To change the subject, indicate that you are doing so EXPLICITLY. • Be even more explicit and focused than in writing. • Usually good idea to make only one point at a time • USE METACOMMENTARY TO HIGHLIGHT POINT YOU ARE MAKING • In other words, what I’m trying to get at her is… • My point is this:

8. Review of Three Ways of Responding • Disagree—but explain why • Agree—but with a difference • Add something new to the conversation, like pointing out supporting evidence the author hasn’t noticed, applying the thesis to a new situation, or bringing in a personal experience that supports it • Agree and disagree simultaneously (be specific!) In all cases, make sure you briefly summarize what “they say”