Friday, November 5, 2010
West's article
I had a tough time finding something significant in this article because I found it was poorly written. It made references to sources and a system of how those sources list things such as the "levels of social organization" but does not explain the system. She also gave characterization titles to each of her subjects like the "relationship-savvy teen" and does not give her definition of this type of characterization. These things made the arguments hard to follow and I felt there was no supporting evidence. I do not know what I was supposed to derive from this article, but I did not get it.
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I have yet to read it, but I will be interested to see if I see the same issues.
ReplyDeleteI am not clear on how you went from poor writing style to a lack of content. You say that "because it was poorly written" you had difficulty "finding something significant." Are you saying that the writing was so problematic that it distracted you to the point that you were unable to follow the main ideas? I didn't hear any specifics about how the writing became an obstacle to understanding. Your discussion of the systems, however, really does help me understand where you grappled with the text--this is mostly about content and argumentation. I would like to toss you the idea that academic writing in the humanities may be a bit of shift in terms of genre and can be tough to decode until you have some practice. If you get hung up on writing style, you are giving up on an opportunity to work through someone's ideas and learn something new from the perspective. The same goes for reading drafts written by your classmates and future colleagues.
ReplyDeleteBring your focused questions to our close reading discussion in class so others can benefit from what we tease out of the article. I suspect that others also have the same concerns.