Richards & Miller Doing Academic Writing: Seeing Ourselves as Writers

Richards, J. C. & Miller, S. K. (2005). Doing academic writing in education: Connecting the personal and the professional. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Chapter 1: Seeing Ourselves as Writers: A Process of Personal Discovery
•    Most people don't see authors write. The process seems mysterious.
•    Getting to Know Us
    o    Response and feedback and critical.
•    Becoming a Writer
    o    Early Writing Experiences
•    Some Teachers May Take Too Much Control of Students' Writing
    o    "Writing in a stiff, academic language results not only in loss of students' personae, but it robs them of their voice (p. 6)."
    o    Our positive and negative experiences with writing in childhood travel with us to adulthood.
    o    Personal voice in writing must be cultivated and not stifled because it creates trust and establishes credibility with the reader.
•    Teachers Can Make a Positive Difference
•    Finding Support for Your Writing Efforts
    o    Mentors play a key role when supporting their developing writers. Their roles are more layered and complex than originally thought.
    o    "Your writing is your property and it is a representation of your thinking. You should feel free to reject or accept suggestions from others (p. 10)."
•    Participating in a Writing Group
    o    Writers should not be isolated; they need the support and feedback of others.
•    Behaving Like a Writer
    o    Writers must write often, even daily, in order to improve their craft.
•    A Preferred Time and Place for Writing
    o    Each writer is unique. S/he has time, places, and habits that work or don't work for him/her.
•    Identifying Our Individual Styles of Composing
    o    Heavy Planners
        •    Heavy planners plan intensively before they write. They plan constantly.
    o    Heavy Revisers
        •    Heavy revisers revise constantly. They are perfectionists who struggle with letting go of a piece.
    o    Sequential Composers
        •    Sequential composers enjoy and thrive on the linear process of writing. It provides order and structure.
    o    Procrastinators
        •    Procrastinators exhibit avoidance behaviors in order to write. They also thrive under the pressures of deadlines.
        •    They procrastinate for different reasons. For some, it is a lack of confidence. For others, it is too much to do in their personal and professional lives that they can't get everything accomplished.
    o    Discovery Drafters
        •    Discover drafters just write and discover their ideas through their free-writing.
•    Understanding How Academic Writing Connects to Our Personal Selves
•    Summary