3.6: Making an Academic Connection- Looking Outward

First year writing courses are designed to teach a range of writing—from the personal to the academic—so that you can learn to express advanced ideas, arguments, concepts, or theories in any discipline. While the example I have been discussing pertains mainly to college writing, the method of analysis and approach to critical thinking I have demonstrated here will serve you well in a variety of disciplines. Since critical thinking and analysis are key elements of the reading and writing you will do in college, it is important to understand how they form a part of academic writing. No matter how intimidating the term “academic writing” may seem (it is, after all, associated with advanced
writing and becoming an expert in a field of study), embrace it not as a temporary college requirement but as a habit of mind.

To some, academic writing often implies impersonal writing, writing that is detached, distant, and lacking in personal meaning or relevance. However, this is often not true of the academic writing you will do in a composition class. Here your presence as a writer—your thoughts, experiences, ideas, and therefore who you are—is of much significance to the writing you produce. In fact, it would not be farfetched to say that in a writing class academic writing often begins with personal writing. Let me explain. If critical thinking begins with a personal view of the text, academic writing helps you broaden that view by going beyond the personal to a more universal point of view. In other words, academic writing often has its roots in one’s private opinion or perspective about another writer’s ideas but ultimately goes beyond this opinion to the expression of larger, more abstract ideas. Your personal vision—your core beliefs and general approach to life—will help you arrive at these “larger ideas” or universal propositions that any reader can understand and be enlightened by, if not agree with. In short, academic writing is largely about taking a critical, analytical stance toward a subject in order to arrive at some compelling conclusions.

Let us now think about how you might apply your critical thinking skills to move from a personal reaction to a more formal academic response to Annie Dillard’s essay. The second stage of critical thinking involves textual analysis and requires you to do the following:

• Summarize the writer’s ideas the best you can in a brief paragraph.
This provides the basis for extended analysis since it
contains the central ideas of the piece, the building blocks,
so to speak.

• Evaluate the most important ideas of the essay by considering
their merits or flaws, their worthiness or lack of worthiness.
Do not merely agree or disagree with the ideas but explore and
explain why you believe they are socially, politically, philosophically,
or historically important and relevant, or why you
need to question, challenge, or reject them.

• Identify gaps or discrepancies in the writer’s argument. Does
she contradict herself? If so, explain how this contradiction
forces you to think more deeply about her ideas. Or if you are
confused, explain what is confusing and why.

• Examine the strategies the writer uses to express her ideas.
Look particularly at her style, voice, use of figurative language,
and the way she structures her essay and organizes her
ideas. Do these strategies strengthen or weaken her argument?
How?

• Include a second text—an essay, a poem, lyrics of a song—
whose ideas enhance your reading and analysis of the primary
text. This text may help provide evidence by supporting a
point you’re making, and further your argument.

• Extend the writer’s ideas, develop your own perspective, and
propose new ways of thinking about the subject at hand.