Introduction

Hey Guys!
I'm a junior here at OU and my major is athletic training. I live in Tampa, Florida with my family but I grew up just outside of Chicago, which I still consider home. This fall I'm interning at Harvard with the hope of a job offer that will allow me to move out to Boston for good. Hopefully this quarter flies by so we can all get started with our summer breaks!

Response to Bunn and Rosenberg Readings

Reading Response to Bunn and Rosenberg Articles

            Reading like a writer is very similar to active reading. I was always taught in grade school to read actively by writing notes in the margins of the book and circling vocabulary and phrases that were new to me. I would understand the material better if I wrote down important points so they would pop out at me again when I looked back over the chapter. Charles Moran said “When we read like writers we understand and participate in the reading” (Bunn, 2011).

            When reading I like to try to think like the author. I pay attention to the techniques he or she uses and try to apply them to my writing style. I’m also always looking for synonyms and phrases to better my work. I especially love descriptive writing. I seem to understand what the point and view the author is trying to convey much better when they write extremely descriptively. Personal narratives are my favorite kind of paper because they call for the author to paint a picture of the story setting by using certain words and phrases that describe it best.

            I am very fond of reading student pieces rather than published pieces. I like the fact that they are raw and very abstract with their writing style. I don’t necessarily like to put a format no writing. I’d prefer to read something written at the spur of the moment with no formality so that I can better understand where the author is coming from.  I also like to look for clues like where the author went to school to guess what type of background they have.

            I have found that reading actively and trying to recognize the authors writing style has helped me a lot with school. It is so much easier to remember what I read by looking at my notes in the margins rather than searching back through the text trying to find something I remember reading. I will continue to read like a writer and hopefully pick up some more helpful tips from others to better my writing as well!

            In her article Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources, Karen Rosenberg said “Reading academic texts is a deeply social activity.” I completely agree with her. When I read a scholarly work I try to understand it from the author’s point of view as well as formulate my own opinion. I feel like there are two sides to an argument and if you can’t see both sides then you can’t accurately judge the work.

            It is also very important to know what type of crowd the author is writing for. I wouldn’t be able to critique a paper about aviation because I don’t know anything about it. If someone wrote a paper on Athletic Training, however, I would be able to follow it and give my opinion based on a solid background of knowledge. I have also found that by reading the headings and titles of a paper or book help me better understand what the author is trying to say as well.

            I was taught in high school to skim read. When I needed to cram for a test or was behind on work I was trained to read the title of the chapter, each heading, and all footnotes. While doing this I also read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Usually this strategy worked well for me because it was very easy to deduce the point the author was trying to convey by these clues alone.

            I find published writings the hardest to read. They usually tend to be dry and crammed with information. One of my Athletic Training professors has been published numerous times and we use two of his books in our classes. I happen to love his style of writing. Not only is there information but it is presented in an orderly fashion and includes very detailed examples. This seems to be the easiest writing style for me to learn from. Sorry my citations are wrong!