Academic Writing

Reading, Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse as my first academic journal was not bad as I thought, especially since I was not Thonney`s primary audience. One factor that made it easy to  read was the structure of the journal. I like how she lists her main points, which were her six standard "moves" and mentions the topics and journals she will be analyzing along the way. Also, to emphasize her six "moves" she made them as categories in her journal. Even though this was written for scholars and college teachers, the fact that she broke it down into categories gave me a sense of direction.

Thonney uses a lot of evidence and references back to the journals she studied, which was good for her to back up her claims, but it also seemed overwhelming and confusing at times. I think the main problem for me was because I did not understand the context in her evidence examples, such as the ones for Engineering. I do give her credit for branching out her evidence and analysis on several subjects which shows how these writing techniques can be applied for many, if not all classes. Because of that, it threw me off at some sections which resulted into me having to reread it.  Once I was able to understand the concepts, I found it very informative and helpful. For example, in the move "Academic Writers Adopt a Voice of Authority",  I learned the importance and power of using first or third person and writing concisely.

In the first "move", Thonney suggests that writers respond to what others have said about the topic, which reminds me of my 11th grade English class, AP Language and Composition. In this class, we learned how to write three different types of essays and one of them was the Synthesis essay, which we were given several sources to refer to when creating our own argument. My English teacher always told me that the purpose of the sources was not to summarize them but come up with a new idea. I find it interesting how Thonney talks about the same topic. She states that "instead of analyzing, or adding what others have said, they merely show they have 'done the reading'". Personally, I always struggled with this because I always end up agreeing with an idea already stated and ended up reiterating what has already been brought to the topic. I also think its important to add more analysis and a different opinion when it comes to responding to others.

Another convention or "move" that stood out to me was the use of academic and and discipline-specific vocabulary. My past English teachers always told me to not use big words or be too professional in essays because it sometimes seems out of place so I tried not to force myself to search up synonyms or more sophisticated words. As a college student now, I think it is important to use "discipline-specific" vocabulary in essays and papers because they need to be well thought out, organized well and more mature, proficient. I like how Thonney added websites with text analysis tools for students and how important "lexical bundles" are.

Overall,  I liked reading Thonney`s academic journal. Even though it was a challenge at times, she provided good advice and suggestions to help college students write better and effective papers.