Can Academic Writing be taught?

Blog #3

     As a student I have read many, many articles in my time. Whether they be about animals, presidents,  the kneeling during the National Anthem, the list could go on forever. But this article was different from other articles that I have read, "Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse" written by Teresa Thonney, she talked about whether academic writing can be taught or not. She explains the 6 "conventions" that are a part of academic writing. Now as a student who has been writing since elementary school and now in college taking a writing class where pretty much your whole grade is based on how well you write, it was actually kinda cool to be able to relate to this article. As she writes in detail the different conventions of writing, you can use that to compare to your own personal style of writing to see if there's something that you use as well or if there's something that you lack in your writing. 

    Reading Thonney's article was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, when I first opened it in my course reader it looked pretty intimidating, but as I continued to read it was really easy to follow along. But I also found myself learning a lot from this article because even though we write things down every day, we don't realize how much more there is to learn about writing and things we still don't know about writing. One of the sub-points that said "Academic Writers Adopt a Voice of Authority" is something that I didn't really notice before in my writing (or any writing for that matter) and made me realize that it's something I lack and another point she uses that said "Academic Writers uses Academic and Discipline-Specific Vocabulary" is something else that made me realize that I should work on in my writing. However, another sub-point that said "Academic Writers Acknowledge That Others Might Disagree with the Position They've Taken" is another way to say rebuttal, which is something that I personally believe that I have a strength in when it comes to writing (but there's always room for improvement.) This article really gave me a new outlook of the different aspects of writing and Thonney shows us how much you've already learned and how much more there is to learn. 

   Thonney does a good job at making the article flow by making it easy for any reader to follow along and more interesting to read, with each topic titled separately and neater organized. If this article wasn't organized the way it was, I know I would've 1. struggled a lot more to read it and 2. been bored out of my mind reading this article.  However, some of the words she uses made it a little challenging for me because I've never seen some of these words before (but I mean that's what a dictionary is for). Thonney's article is different from many of the articles that I have read in my time and something that I wouldn't usually read in my spare time, but I am really glad I did, because this article kinda opened my eyes in the way of there many different ways to improve your writing skills so there's no need to give up just yet! If you're looking for a way to improve your writing or wondering what you need to improve on, reading this article will definitely give you a few helpful tips!