Rhetoric Analysis of the Academic Writing Study
In the research about the role of academic writing for students, Lucille P. McCarthy identified the subject and context of writing as one of the key points of the activity. Conducting her research by observing one of the students, Dave Garrison, McCarthy concluded that the students see the writing tasks as one of the most challenging activity, the difficulty of which varies depending on the subject and the approach of the professor to teaching about the academic writing. Thus, another key point of academic writing is a sort of communication between the student and his or her tutor that occurs during the activity.
Lucile P. McCarthy conducted her research while observing one of the college students named Dave Garrison as he wrote the papers for three of his classes, which were the composition, poetry, and biology. During her research, McCarthy attempted to figure out the major barriers and challenges the students face during their academic writing, and how these difficulties can be overcome and eliminated. McCarthy observed the progress of Dave Garrison and three of his friend during the 21-month period and analyzed their achievements as they moved on with their studies. From the summary of Dave Harrison’s experience provided by himself, McCarthy concluded that the main goal the students usually strive to achieve while performing the academic writing activity is “to figure out what your teachers want,” which Harrison saw as not an easy task to complete (McCarthy, qtd. in Bazerman & Russell 231). This leads to McCarthy’s more formal conclusion that the students often find it hard to communicate with their tutors as with their senior colleagues.
Mutual understanding of the student and his or her teacher is one of the major factors that affects the student’s grades. McCarthy sees the solution to the problem of the academic writing in the “explicit training in the ways in which one figures out and then adapts to the writing the demands in academic contexts.” (McCarthy, qtd. in Bazerman & Russell 258). This solution concludes that the main idea of the contemporary academic writing is finding the mutual approach between student and the professor to achieve the success in earning the decent and proper writing skills. Such conclusion is the main rhetorical point McCarthy provides in her research.
Works Cited
Bazerman, Charles and David R Russell. Landmark Essays on Writing across the Curriculum. Davis, Hermagoras Press, …
