Libraries are an essential part of the community. However not all societies have libraries. Libraries require centralized populations, economic development and political stability for their survival. Libraries exist in places where peace exists. They cannot exist in places with full of conflicts. Libraries have different missions and serve different communities differently. People and organizations establish libraries with different missions. Historical overview shows that libraries have always had missions. The earliest mission of libraries was to maintain an archive for records. There is not information that shows when the first library was established. In the past, temples, municipals and governments had libraries. These libraries...show more content...
Therefore, Julius Caesar started building a public library, but died before he completed it. Asinius Pollio completed the library. This established was followed by more public libraries. Other missions of libraries that existed in the past included maintaining scholarly mission, religious mission, for instance, monastic libraries of middles ages, educational mission, for instance university, humanistic mission and promoting national pride (Rubin 39).
In the modern world, libraries have certain missions that they serve. The establishment of the printing press made more books available to many people. This encouraged the establishment of more libraries. In the United States of America, libraries came up with new missions. First, libraries emerged with the mission of self–improvement. Advances in mechanical technology in the eighteenth century led to industrial revolution that improved the economy and community health. This meant that a certain class of citizens had more leisure time, for self–improvement. This favored the emergence o f new libraries. The social library emerged with an aim of helping individuals improve through the search of truth. Therefore, they provided literature and books that provided information, which could help people to gain knowledge and improve their character. In the current world, libraries provide information that people have access to, and use it for their own improvement (Rubin 47).
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English is a hard language to learn, for there are numerous elements of effective usage and writing. Many people, including me, struggle in writing because of a lack of knowledge. Since middle school, English was not a strong suit of mine. I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. Unmotivated teachers and a lack of interest resulted in remedial writing skills. To put it simply, I had little confidence in my writing and I dreaded taking the class because of the writing involved. In spite of my fears, I took the course and I was able to perfect and challenge my mediocre writing skills. With the professors' assistance, I was able to identify the meager...show more content...
An aspect that I often struggle with is proper punctuation. Truthfully, I do not know how to correctly use punctuation. When writing, I place punctuation by mimicking authors' formats or by placing them where it feels right. This is present in all of my writing, but I am attempting to improve. Punctuation also plays a part in another weakness of mine, one that is most likely present within this essay. Since middle school, it was engrained in my mind that a good essay is a long essay, so I have a tendency for wordiness. To elongate an essay, I tend to add needless words and sentences. For example, in the rough draft of the Whole Process Essay, I added several unrelated occurrences to elongate the paragraphs. Although my essays were long and wordy, the professor commented on vagueness and unclearness within the whole process and practice essay. Sometimes, I disregard the fact that the reader might not know what it is I am writing about or the sentence makes perfect sense to me. The latter is the most common, I quickly read the sentence and it appears fine to me. Within the Whole Process Essay, another weakness was brought to my attention. I lack structure, a key element in effective writing. Within the same essay and a few others, I simply added what felt right, sometimes the result would be acceptable but in other instances, it was a long, jumbled mess. Once these weaknesses were revealed, I worked on improving my current works. There were several elements I had Get more content
The Memo will directly address my growth as a writer throughout my time in EH 101–13. It will also highlight my current strengths and weaknesses in my own personal writing style.
My DevelopmentRhetorical Analysis: This being the first paper I wrote for you, it turned out to be utter garbage. This was my worst essay because I was overconfident in my own writing ability and didn't think I had much room to improve on. At the time I felt like it was a top notch essay, but I have recently gone back and reread it only to notice it as choppy and stale to read. Then the paper was riddled with comma splices, even after you did a lesson going over how to fix them. It wasn't out of spite that I kept repeating these mistakes, but instead it was just ignorance on the matter. It was my goal coming out of that essay to fix those errors and while not perfect, I feel I have improved in my awareness of the problem. This paper taught me a great deal on how to think more critically about situations. This new mindset directly came into play in the second essay. I learned my greatest lesson from this paper. I have so much room for improvement. Now that I can see more of my errors I can continue to improve and move forwards with my writing abilities.
Literary Analysis: The Literary Analysis was by far my best essay and the one I most enjoyed writing. The new critical thinking skills I learned in the first essay made writing this paper much easier. I also found the topics of the
When I think of what it means to be a writer, I do not envision myself– at least not anymore. I don't think I ever will again. In order to refer to myself as a writer, I believe I would have to wholeheartedly enjoy the content of which I write about, but unfortunately a combination of predetermined school prompts, a lack of time, and a dwindling creative flow prevents me from doing so. It wasn't always this way, however. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but during my formative years of life my imagination (as most four to five year olds' are) was at its height. I look back on those years and picture swirling images, a vibrant display of watercolors blending seamlessly into each other, light and darkness all at once, creatures unimaginable to everyone except my own mind, and the warm feeling of believing there are never–ending possibilities. These visions, no matter how sensational, are how I remember my imagination during my youth. To me, the world was endless. I had nothing to fear. So satisfactory it was to believe...show more content... I was entered into the "I Am An Author" program and wrote my own picture book about a mermaid. As one would expect, the plot was cringeworthy and the conclusion didn't make any sense, but I guess that's what you get when you give a kindergartener a pencil and paper. I worked hard at storytelling throughout the rest of elementary school, continuing to enter contests and even winning a few. My imagination was unrestrictable to the point where I was thinking of short story ideas so quickly that I barely had time to write an idea down before I thought of a new one. Stories of slugs, poems about waterfalls, narratives of Betsy Ross (I was obsessed with her...), and adaptations of Jack and the Beanstalk littered my notebooks throughout the years. My mind was vibrant, youthful, and alive. Unfortunately, all of this would be coming to an end near the end of fifth
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While writing this paper, I attempted to follow the forms and models put forth in the research papers we read in class during this unit. It was helpful to have something to follow while writing this report because I focused more on the "how" and "why" instead of the "what" of the research report structure. Overall, I found that this paper was much more organized than my last and I hope that this also improved the quality of my writing. I understand that this paper is longer than the assignment stated, but for good reason. The literary analysis follows the examples given in class and, therefore, takes up a considerable amount of room, considering that I cite three works in my paper from our textbook. Additonally, the findings...show more content...
Instead of discussing the song list for the week or the order of service, this email discusses the potential days for performance and a final decision agreed upon by all members. Additionally, the voice here is much different than the first sample cited prior. Not only do the individuals use familiar words and phrases like "Hey guys" and "as long as it works for Jenna," one of the members uses a musical allusion to a famous Coldplay song titled "Viva La Vida" when she says "Viva la Frio Trio." Granted, this email is a conversation among familiar friends, but it does show another side to the worship team email genre. As seen in this example, this genre can take on many forms both in its voice and in its content.
Concluding with the last email sample studied, supplementary genre features can be found. With the return of a long absent member, this last email takes a semi–familiar tone, while retaining the consistent structure and vocabulary recognized by all members. Schmitke states:
Hello Praise Team Week 3! We will have a special guest joining us this weekНѕ Patrick is coming home for a visit and will be playing the piano with us for most of the songs. You will notice that I have only listed 5 songs. The closing song is undergoing some last minute changes and as soon as we've figured it out, I will let you know. Here is the rest of the list for you to prep. See you Sunday at 8:00am. Heather
1. God Almighty 2. You Get
About halfway through my creative writing degree, I had an existential crisis. Ever since I read Letters to a Young Contrarian at the age of thirteen – ignore that I only understood about twenty percent of it at the time – I knew I wanted to be a writer. Christopher Hitchens' words inspired me and sparked a love of literature and intellectual honesty that persists to this day. However, as weeks turned into months in class, I kept thinking, do I even want to be a writer, and if so, what stories do I want to tell? These thoughts remained and grew louder, creating a mental block that impacted my creativity and thus made the plethora of writing assignments I was given more unbearable. It was a vicious cycle that led me down a path of self–reflection
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When presented with the question, "who are you as a writer?", I was speechless at first. But after thinking about it, I realized who I am as a writer has been influenced by so many different sponsors throughout my life and there was not a short, concrete answer. Brandt mentions that "literacy is sponsored by people, institutions, and circumstances that both make it possible for a person to become literate and shape the way the person actually acquires literacy." (Brandt 43) My attitude towards writing has been influenced by teachers, both negatively and positively, by my mother, and by academic assignments over the years. My answer to the question can only be answered by a narrative of my writing life. I have convinced myself that I am a terrible writer, and when presented with a writing assignment, I get anxious instantly. I see writing as a burden and a huge obstacle that gets placed in my life. Academic writing is not fun, but something I value due to the fact that we are a grade driven society. When writing, I write to the guidelines in order to receive points for the requested criteria. The reason being, I gave up on expressing my own ideas because I had been shut down by so many teachers throughout my education. I tried to write down what came to my mind and put my own twist on things, but that was not the "right" way to write papers. In order to make both my teachers and my grades happy, I wrote what they wanted to hear, and even then I was not to the level they
As a writer, I think that I am not as good as I thought I was back in high school. I see myself as a student who tries their best, but makes "B" average work. I have never really taken the time to relate to my papers. I always just wrote what the teacher wanted and handed it in. In my mind, I never really liked trying to explain in full detail what something meant. Back in high school, my teachers always wanted me to explain my writing in such depth that a kindergartener would understand why Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. Trying to explain my writing was always very tiring. I often would get bored trying to explain and just stop writing and do something else for a while. Most of the time in high school I didn't like writing. Mainly...show more content...
One way to calm my inner critic is a quote from Allegra Goodman's article called Calming the Inner Critic and Getting to Work on page 309.
"Love your material. Nothing frightens the inner critic more than the writer who loves her work. The writer who is enamored of her material forgets all about censoring herself. She doesn't stop to wonder if her book is any good, or who will publish it, or what people will think. She writes in a trance, losing track of time, hearing only her characters in her head." What this means to me is that if I truly let my mind go and only focus on the material, I will be able to write the paper without having my inner critic confuse me. In an article called The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers by Sondra Pearl on page 201, there is a strategy that I used to help with writing a paper. "Given any topic, the first operation he performed was to focus in and narrow down the topic. He did this by rephrasing the topic until either a word or an idea in the topic linked up with something in his own experience (an attitude, an opinion, an event). In this way he established a connection between the field of discourse and himself and at this point he felt ready to write." The strategy that he uses to organize his thoughts is the same way I start my papers. I start with just words that relate to the topic and figure out how to put them in my writing so they make sense to the
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Why do writers write? Like Stephen King said, it's not for the money, and it's definitely not for the fame. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't turn down a fat paycheck, but I started writing because it felt like something I was meant to do. I hesitated for years before I finally took the plunge and tried writing a book. There were so many excuses...not enough time...not enough talent...or ooh look, there's something shiny! The years passed and every so often, my need to write outweighed my reasons not to. I'll admit it. I wrote fanfiction. I got my feet wet and I enjoyed the feedback. That still wasn't enough. I wrote a few pieces of satire and that wasn't enough either. My biggest obstacle was me. That inner voice that said, "You just aren't good...show more content...
My hand flew across my spiral bound notebook with story ideas, characters, and dialogue. Some were good, some were bad, some were downright awful, but my new mission in life was to write my own romance novel. By the way, let me tell you why I will never give another writer a bad review. Writing a book is hard and if you take the initiative to try it, you have my complete and utter respect. Simple words, but true nonetheless. Holy Hell, how did people do it?
Could I do it? Turns out, yes I could, and I did. After many rejections from publishers (those sting no matter how many you get) I finally got a yes. You only need one yes to get your foot in the door. So here I am, two years after wracking my brain, pouring my heart out, and driving my husband crazy with reading revisions to him ad nauseum. I write romance because I want my readers to feel the same sense of happiness I feel when a love story can take you away from it all. You can live vicariously through the characters' struggles, immerse yourself in a new place, smile, laugh, cry and come out of it knowing there is always a happy ending. The world needs more happy
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I want to be a writer when I grow up. Being a writer is hard. The success of your job is dependent not only on whether you have done it well but also on whether other people think you have done well. I would like to be a writer. I don't know if I can do it. It's like any other job; you never know until you try. But few other jobs are as dependent on the opinions of others and on something that has no basis in fact or logic. One word out of place can tear a whole work apart, and yet a few black and white words arranged just so can unleash a world of color and feeling. A spark of inspiration can create a new world from nothing, metaphorically speaking. It is the gift of God. He gives some people a story to tell and the ability to tell it. Like any gift from God, it is something to be used to His glory and not taken lightly. To use any gift takes work....show more content...
In college you can major in Creative Writingbut many authors recommend that you do not. Instead, they advise that you study Literature instead, the great works of authors past and present. If you don't know what is good, how can you write something good yourself? Or you can do this outside of college and simply read the great works of literature on your own, studying what makes these writers great, what writing tricks and techniques make up their style. The purpose is not to copy them; the purpose is to be inspired. To be awriter you must write. This is the most important piece of advice. Write anything, even if it's as flat as the floor. The more you use words, the more they become willing to be used by you. The more you write, the more you have something to write. Writing is both a skill and a gift. It is both acquired and
Nabokov: Providing a Flood and Lifeboat
In Nabokov's 1948 "Good Readers and Good Writers," the reader has the opportunity to view the possibilities of a beautiful collision of a major reader and a major writer. This piece discusses reading and writing: skills that have become standardized and slightly devalued as education has advanced. Literacy has become so expected that little thought is put into what defines a good reader or writer; Nabokov tackles this idea head on. Nabokov's intention of this piece is to passionately display a relationship that is formed between a good reader and a good writer, and the essential need for an open mind. He stresses the vitality of understanding instead of immediately identifying when reading;...show more content... Instead Nabokov states: "study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know" (1). When approached in such a manner a major reader can see the new world in its entirety and once it has been explored and understood then there is room to compare its connections to other worlds and knowledge. Nabokov uses bold and unafraid language to emphasize his thoughts and chooses to speak only to those who choose to listen. The lesson he teaches requires the audience to look past personal comparison and preference. The audience must gain understand and appreciate first; then let Nabokov's ideas apply to the world of reading and writing they themselves know it. Nabokov displays this message by refusing to dull any of his thoughts: for example phrases like, "Can anybody be so naive as to think he or she can learn anything about the past from those... historical novels?" (1). He still has a definite message but in a lot of sentences and phrases they have a condescending punch to them. Nabokov uses superlatives such as: "the best temperament for a reader to have..." (3). As well as opinionated statements such as: "nothing is more boring or more unfair..." (1). Statements like these can prevent his audience to open their minds because his language is emotionally provoking. Nabokov purposely tests his audience by using powerful provoking language
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Growing as a Writer
From writing thoughtful poems to research papers, I have experienced composing a diverse portfolio of literary analysis and criticisms throughout the school year. I started out the year writing minimally. By the end of the year, I noticed I was able to express my ideas and thoughts in a more clear and concise way on paper. Ultimately, each composition allowed me to widen my horizons as a writer and see how I could improve as a writer.
After analyzing many of my written works, I highlighted my writing weaknesses along with notable strengths. Evident in my earlier works, my vocabulary was more basic and was not as powerful unlike my more recent essays. Seeking to improve, I started utilizing words I learned during the year...show more content...
I began writing with basic vocabulary and barely any sentence variety. As the year progressed, I learned to advance my vocabulary and word choice in addition to incorporating a diversity of sentence structure. Nearing the end of the school year, I acknowledge that I have grown and learned more about writing. I anticipate that I will receive even more arduous writing assignments that require more research and time. Although it will be challenging, I feel confident that I will do well because I feel well prepared from all I've done this year. As I grow older, I will have to continue to write. I know I can take the knowledge I've learned this year and apply it to future papers for years to
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It is the end of this high school year and I am glad to say that I accomplished many things. The idea of doing a blog was a very successful one, given that I was able to write about what i like and improve my writing skills. Therefore, I believe that throughout this year I was able to grow as a writer, express myself better, and expand my knowledge. In addition to my English class, I was also able to improve my skills in others subjects such as history and theology, in which I had to write a few paragraphs, but mostly I had to read a lot which definitely expanded my knowledge and improved my vocabulary. That said, since I was required to write about different subjects, I also had to improve research skills and my creativity when writing about personal opinions. Overall, being able to write not only English related papers made me abroad my thoughts and enhance my writing skills. In the same way, my English papers and blog entries also helped me to become a better writer. I was very found of my blog posts, not only because it was a reflection on my life but also because of the effort that I put in it. I procrastinated way less this last quarter by making...show more content...
I am sure that I have improved a lot my writing and reading skills. However, I still have to exceed on how to organize my thoughts and making better word choice. With that in mind, I'll always be looking for new ways, such as reading, that will make me a better writer. However, I'm glad to say that from the beginning of the year until now I outdid myself with significant progress. All that said, I have the goal to keep on writing during the summer so that I can practice the skills that I learned. Thus, this year was very important in making me a more insightful person, and a better writer. For that reason, I hope to keep myself motivated so that I can learn more and more and continue to express myself through my