Various topics and themes in academic research

¶ … confusing several different aspects of writing. She refers to her expectations that the writing course will help sharpen her writing skills and become a more polished writer, a more organized student, and she hopes that it will help her learn more about herself and the way that she communicates with others. In reality, a writing course can only help her achieve one of those objectives: namely, the one pertaining to becoming a sharper and more polished writer. It seems that her other objectives would be more appropriate expectations for a time-management and communications course, respectively. Likewise, she hopes that the class will help her inspire others through her writing, which may be a valid long-term objective but one that seems somewhat premature considering that this is her first writing class.

The writer of the passage suggests that she expects the writing course to help her develop her writing style that she believes is based on her tendency to watch people and engage in imagining stories about them. This does not seem to be related as much to writing as to imagination. The thought process she describes is more about perception and focus rather than about writing per se. Whereas a writer who wishes to expand his or her creativity or the manner in which real life inspires writing, it would seem that a student in an introductory writing class should focus more on mechanical aspects of writing than on matters of inspiration. The writer reiterates her desire to reach a broader audience and reduce her own biases; but neither of those objectives seems to be an appropriate concern in the context of an introductory writing course.

Evaluation

The writer's only realistic expectations seem to be her desire to better organize her ideas in the context of her writing and her desire to sharpen and polish her writing skills. Typically, writing students can achieve those goals by practicing their written responses to assigned prompts. The feedback from instructors (and from other readers) usually enables writers to better understand how they could have expressed their thoughts more accurately and more efficiently in terms of communicating the ideas on any subject matter of writing. It might be helpful for this writer to think about the distinctions between motivation in writing and execution in writing. Similarly, she could benefit from learning how other elements that may have an influence on her ability to perfect her writing (such as organizational skills, clarity of thought processes, and interpersonal communications, for example) are not actually writing issues.