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Thinking about thinking

What are the benefits of metacognition? How does this relate to the "so what?" of this paper?

Using metacommentary to challenge/expand on past thoughts or claims about reading/writing

In many ways, the assignments and readings in this course have challenged and expanded the way I think about the task of reading—especially academic reading. In the first assignment for the course, "Conceptulizing Reading I", I wrote:

Even thinking about reading sometimes just makes me want to puke, weird as that may sound. Think about it this way. Imagine taking a random thirteen year old boy and putting him in the middle of a professional basketball game. You think he would do very good? You think he could compete in the game? Of course not. Same goes for me with reading. (Student 2).

After reading Haas & Flower, I realized that this feeling I have, when it comes to academic reading, points to my lack of "experiance" as a reader. In my interpretation, a large part of the reason that Seth was able to use rhetorical strategies to better understand readings was because of his many years of reading experiance in an academic setting. The reason I felt like a 13-year-old in an NBA game was because, in a way, I was one. I was being asked to interpret texts that I didn't have enough background, experiance, or skills to understand.

Using Quotes from past assignments to illistrate a claim you're making about yourself

When it comes to writing, however, my thinking has not changed very much. In Assignment 2, I explained my metaphor "revision is like cleaning my room" by saying: "For me, cleaning my room is in some ways therapeutic. It allows me to reorganize my living space, which then allows me to have a sense of clarity. ...Editing, like cleaning my room, also shows me the ‘junk’ in my essay that needs to be thrown out" (Student 4). If anything, the intense amount of revision we did in this class has only reinforced, and made stronger, this metaphor for revision. I feel I have an even deeper appreciation for revision, and a greater sense of catharsis when I work to make my writing clean, clear, and organized.

Using summaries of moves you made or ideas you had in past papers to illustrate or challenge a past idea about reading/writing

With writing: The way I organized paper 2 was unlike any paper I had ever written before. Because we were asked to use Tomlinson and Lakoff and Johnson, I really had to think about how to connect all those parts, which in some ways expanded my conceptulization of how a paper can be written and organized.

With reading: The metaphor I made for Bob in assignment 3—"reading is a puzzle"—made me realize how similar I am to Bob as a reader, as well as question whether this was "good enough" for me, or whether I wanted to strive for those Sethian "rhetorical strategies."

In his essay about redefining argument, Jim Corder talks about argument as two competing narratives confronting each other. He states that “the arguer must, with no assurance, go out, inviting the other to enter a world that the arguer tries to make commodious, inviting the other to emerge as well” (26). In this model for re-writing narratives to accommodate new, competing narratives, both parties must “emerge,” or show a willing acceptance of the other’s way of doing and seeing things. Application to A4: If this is the case, part of the problem I had adjusting my writing narrative might result from the fact that I did not feel my own views were being seen and accepted by my instructor Hailey. Rather than both parties “emerging,” teaching usually involves one party (teacher) acting as though they know everything and are always right and the other party (student) being forced to accept the competing narrative without their own being seen. This unfortunate characteristic of many teaching models can partially explain the difficulty I had identifying and changing my metaphor for writing.