Berkenkotter & Murray

IWA: 1/28/13

Summary: In the articles "Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a Published Writer" and “Response of a Laboratory Rat- or, Being Protocoled”, Carol Berknekotter and Donald Murray attempt to tell the reader that in order to properly write a piece the writer must think aloud to organize their thoughts. They argue that this technique will strongly help the writer later with their revisions because it will have set up a plan on what to cut from the piece.

Synthesis: This article reminds me of recent articles we have read because it discusses the best way to write a piece. Much like Lammot’s piece, we are informed to talk to ourselves about the piece (like putting the lab rats back in the jar) and that by doing so we will be able to write a better piece.

AE 1: Generally I spend my writing time with some beverage (primarily water) and a watch so I know when to take a break so I don’t kill myself from the frustration of scholarly writing. I would say my writing experience when it comes to scholarly writing is somewhat high for a college student since I had to write intense papers in a two year IB/AP English class. However when compared to “real” writers, my experience is probably very low.

AE 3: I forced my roommate to take part in this activity and I found that we both spend a decent amount of time trying to avoid the prompt. However once we get down to business we both like to write out an outline of what we are about to write. I think this shows planning what to write before you start is very important to the overall writing process.

QD 1: I find this writing process to be very interesting (a bit time consuming albeit but definitely worth taking note of). It reminds me of mine in that I sometimes like to talk out what I’m doing (especially when I’m tired) so I know what I’m writing will later make sense.

MM: I learned from this reading that talking out loud will help me keep in perspective what I’m doing and help me stay on task while I’m writing.

Afterthoughts: I think this article will really help me with Part 2 of Project 1 because it showed me talking out loud while writing is a good way to organize thoughts. This is a method I sometimes use while writing and now I know I can incorporate this method into the next part of my paper.