Thursday, June 21, 2007

Writing Issues

We would like to meet briefly with everyone from the Urban Theory class after Pat's workshop today (approx. 16:00h). It seems there are significant problems with your ability to write that indicate that you don't necessarily have the fundamental skills expected of a student enrolled in a writing intensive course. The issues we'd like to discuss are:
1) You follow the given instructions for a writing assignment.
2) You write in the third person for all academic and professional presentations.
3) Our assessment of your intellectual and professional development comes from your making factual and direct observations about the subject, bundling those observations into collections of facts with larger meaning and inference, using those facts as bundled in support of an intellectual position, and using conventions of writing together to form a stylistically sophisticated form of argument.
These are the standard way that people communicate intellectual and professional ideas between each other. They are not radical. They are not advanced. You should be able to complete these three by the time you enter a university.