During my second semester at Longwood University I had the opportunity of taking an English class as an Honors course. this class was called English 165 and I was in the 51st section. This was a very interesting class to say the least. What made this class interesting was the professor’s beliefs on what writing should be and why it should be done. She believed that scholars should write with the intention to expand the ring of human knowledge and to build off of what previous scholars have researched and found.
In the first half of the semester we focused on studying the different academic disciplines and their contributions to the academic world. We learned about the academic disciplines in the universities and about the differences/similarities between their writing styles, and explored how to rhetorically analyze a situation or a piece of writing. To understand the similarities and differences between the different academic disciplines (the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and the applied fields) our big project for this class was to write and create an academic article.
The goal of this academic article was to determine, and analyze the similarities and differences between how the different academic disciplines used language, structure, and reference in their writing. Before we could start this assignment we first needed to educate ourselves on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and how the academic world views WAC. To do this we had to create an annotated bibliography of five random samples of writing to collect our thoughts and then we used our notes to write a Literature Review. This review would be very beneficial for our academic article because it would show our audience what WAC is and how it should be used to assist in learning.
After our Literature Review we were tasked with finding six samples of writing across three different academic disciplines. For my article I chose to research two samples of writing related to nursing (applied field), biology (natural science), and history (the humanities). Finding the articles in the Longwood Library Database was the easy part of the article. The hardest part (for me) was the Results and Analysis section of the article because it required me to read all six samples of writing three separate times. This is so I could analyze them thoroughly for their language, structure, and reference use. I did not particularly enjoy this assignment but I wanted to end the year by giving an honest effort so I tried my absolute hardest.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dBJ5mKoM49hRCCBIyLaDMNxjepZxNLhS8L76LA7DmlQ/edit?usp=sharing
Above is a link to my favorite literature review written for my english class. Literature reviews became a fun past time within my english class. We wrote so many that they all begin to blur, but it is only fitting that my favorite literature review become my artifact for this class.
By the time I finished writing my Academic Article, I had learned a lot about how the different academic fields approached writing and sharing knowledge. The material I learned from this class and this article, and the friendships I made in this class will forever stay close to heart and mind. For anyone who wants to take an Honors level English class, I HIGHLY recommend taking Professor Green’s course!