Ransom Reading

Summary
Ransom did an experiment/observation on her self in this article where she observed her writing habits in a natural environment, doing a timed writing exercise. As she did the writing assignment, she kept on a separate piece of paper, a record of her thoughts about the assignment, and her mood. She observed that timed writing exercises caused her to write faster and more of a need to "get to the point", although it hindered her writng performance and process. Many simple mistakes were made in the time restraint writing assignment. She even noticed that pausing to write down her thoughts caused her to defer her concentration from the prompt/assignment at hand.

Questions to Consider
things I found interesting:
-the time constraint caused her to have 5-minute interval "writing bursts"
-misspelling/word choice/omitting information was a problem w/ time constraint
-15% of her writing time was spent editing
-9% of time spent formatting to a comfortable place
-despite being alone/in a quiet place, time was her biggest distraction
-she checked the time 8 times

Yes, for my communications final last quarter we had to make a concept chart. I found this to be really beneficial in the writing process. You started off with a word (given to you) in the center of a diagram, and then from there you had to write 5 other words that you thought related to that term (no matter how random/off-beat) and then from those words, use 5 more words to make a connection & explain why your brain wanted to link the original two words together. It helped me to really reach out to the farthest corners of the prompt in order to insure that I was exploring all possible connections and arguments. It kind of forced my mind to wander, and ponder the extent inwhich I could have taken the extended writng response on my final.

My Own Thoughts
I really liked this article. Mainly, I think, because it was a lot different than any of the other reading that we have been given. The information was presented in a new and different format, which made it  a lot easier to not only read, but absorb and reflect upon. I liked the way the author organized her findings, and explained her experiment. It led me to think about my own writing habits. For example these responses (because in the reading, technically, she was doing the exact same thing I am now- typing out a response to a reading that she was assigned) I did notice a comparison to her findings and my writing habits. For example, if I wait until right before english class to do my blogposts then I notice that my answers are a lot more directly quoted from the readings, and a lot shorter. While, if I do them the day (or 2) before, like I am now.. I am able to reflect upon the reading more and thus write more indepth and reflective responses to the reading on my blog.....funny how that works out.