Response to Penrose and Geisler, Writing About Writing ePages
Help Received: None
After reading Penrose and Geisler, I noticed that my writing is a lot like Janet’s. In my analysis of Virginia Tech’s Mechanical Engineering Department as a discourse community, I included a lot of examples from both the website itself and the work of John Swales. I did not analyze these examples very efficiently in this essay. Like Janet, I was afraid to contradict the claims that the authors of my sources made. I considered everything that I read to be “facts,” and this sacrificed my sense of authority in writing this paper.
To improve, I need to actually talk about the evidence I’m using in my paper, not just summarize. I also need to be willing to come up with my own opinions instead of just relying on those of Swales.