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Perl:
This essay talks a lot about the writing process and how unskilled writers spent more time and effort in the editing stage of the writing process. For example, Perl notes that Tony “rarely produced a sentence without stopping to reread either a part or the whole (p. 624). ” She notes how this seems to interrupt his composing rhythm and thus effected his word output.
This relates to me because I have notices that I spend more time editing, rewriting, and rephrasing my papers, which oftentimes leads to a low word count. In writing the last paper, I found myself about 200 words short of the minimum and I was looking for more stuff to talk about.
Winsor:
The focus of Winsor’s study are novices in the Engineering field of study and their use of models in the writing process. Winsor concludes that engineering students use models very frequently in their writing. I can relate to this study because, as an engineering student, I can confirm that I use a lot of models in my writing. The reason for this is that there is a very specific way everything has to be laid out in a lab report or memorandum. The engineering community has a specified format for presenting one’s research, so in order for a student to prepare a successful lab report, he/she must strictly follow the formatting guidelines set forth by the model. Any deviation from these formats runs the risk of injuring the author’s credibility.