Tais Mitchell Writing Style Analysis

“Development of disciplinary writing,” (Roozen, 182) the act of looking at a person’s literacies and seeing the improvement of writing. I found through my interview, of Tais Mitchell, that this literacy practice is true. First Tais and I talked about his everyday literacies (including social media) and how they have affected his writing and the development of his literacies. After that we discussed barriers that he has overcome in his life to become an improved writer. Next, Tais told me about the things that have best influenced his literacy skills to this day. Finally, Tais reflects on his writing style, how it has always been the same and the fact that it does not change is what possibly holds him back from writing better. All of these influences are what shaped his writing and how he handles his writing. Like most college students, Tais’s everyday literacy practices consist of essays (research essays for his classes, journals, etc…), research on his major (mechanical engineering), and reading text books. While these practices seem like everyday occurrences for him, in a broad picture these everyday literacies have set him in a repetitive path, one that may or may not be good for him. For example; if someone were to practice the same format of writing every time they were to sit down and write an essay (whether it was to be argumentative, speech, novel, etc.…) then their literacy skills may never improve in other categories of writing. The internet is also very influential in Tais’s everyday literacies, social media especially. Tais’s use of his social media is not a lot (but enough to affect his writing skill), in fact he only goes onto FaceBook “once a day” and twitter only “once a week.”(Tais) This is very surprising considering that most of the youth population of today are glued to social media. In the essay, Tracing Trajectories by Kevin Roozen, Roozen describes some of Lindseys literacies practices over the years. They are “ 600 pages of [journal] inscriptions,” (Roozen, 164) though Tais has not done really any journal entries, I considered the constant use of social media to be like a journal. Posting how you feel or just posting what you are doing on your social media can be considered to be similar to journal entries. Though they may not be the same length, posting about how you feel or just writing whatever comes to mind is a great way to have constant use of your writing skill and the courage to post how you feel publicly is a great way to practice on how you receive criticism of your writing. Tais’s favorite subject in school was, luckily, English. In high school, while he may not have enjoyed writing and was only ever “motivated to write by grades,” he greatly enjoyed reading because it was always much more fun and writing is “hard” for him because the thoughts in his head never …show more content…
We broke it down in a couple of more steps to map it out better. First he usually does his research (whether that be rereading a novel, getting quotes, or looking up a topic), then he writes a drafty outline (sometimes this step is optional), next he writes the intro and conclusion so as to get a general idea of what to write, finally Tais’s rereads the paper and has someone with “fresh eyes” look over the paper and suggest changes. This writing style has, for the most part, always been Tais’s go to process when writing an essay. Sometimes, he feels, as if this process has not always been the best and brainstormed some ideas to improve on it, e.g. a real outline or more peer input. Me and Tais discuss Lindsey’s “rings project,” In Roozen’s essay.(Roozen, 173) Lindsey talks about how she was “constantly sketching panes and rearranging them in every imaginable” way (of course in her actual project she used facts in place of the panes). (Roozen, 174) Tais felt that the process in which Lindsey went thru to write her paper was “over complicated” and “a waste of time.” (Tais) I agreed with him and even though the process of Lindsey’s argument was a great example of extradisciplinary writing, recognizing that the way you write may not be the best and acting upon that realization is another great way to do extradisciplinary