Feb 27 Blog Post

Summary: In the article Reading and Writing Without Authority, Penrose and Geisler argue that the presence or absence of knowledge is not the sole factor that determines authority in writing. They try and prove this point through analyzing a first year freshman in college, and a doctorate student. Both of these students wrote about the same topic and after both of their works were analyzed, the conclusion that these two authors came to was that authority in writing does not just come from the amount of knowledge you have, but also your experience with writing and the confidence you portray when you write. 

QD:

3.) The Information Transfer Model pertains to Janet because since she is only a first year student, she does not have enough information on her own to write an entire paper. It is information transfer because Janet has to do research to do her writing and take information she has found form her sources and transfer it to her paper. Roger’s model on the other hand is a bit different since Roger, being a doctorate student, has a much larger database of knowledge and requires a lot less research to to find appropriate material for his paper. 

4.) I think Janet’s lack of confidence is the case for why she gives so much of the credit to her sources and the authors she reads dominate how she wants to write since she does not believe in herself without any outside sources. 

5.) It heavily depends on what topic I am writing about to determine whether or not I write with Janet’s model or Rodger’s model. If it is a topic that interests me and I am passionate about I will probably end up writing like Rodger since I have confidence in my writing and I would have a lot to say. If the topic was not on something that interests me however, I will write with Janet’s model since I wont have enough information on the topic just form my own knowledge and I will need some outside sources to help me write. 

MM: One way reading this article has helped me with my future research paper is that I will now try and obtain a good amount of knowledge on the subject so I can write confidently about it instead of just pulling random bits of information from the web and throwing them into my paper. Another way this article will help me write my next research paper is that I will rely more on my writing ability than my sources to help improve my writing as time goes on.

Reflection: I liked this article because it helped show what was important in writing; not your information as much as how you present it. Confidence in your writing is key and this article was an easy read so I did not have a difficult time understanding their points. The example they used with Rodger and Janet helped portray their conclusions effectively.