Weekly Journals
The writers at Paper Masters understand the importance of weekly journaling for classes that have this type of writing assigned. You can have our writers do all of your weekly journal writing that is assigned to you. Simply give us the topics and goal of your course, any other important information, and our writer will do your weekly journal entries.
Often times a student may wonder why a professor assigns weekly journaling for students. A weekly journal aids in the complex processing of information in ways that remain unavailable to the other modes of language processing (listening, talking, and reading are the other three). The primary distinction iterated in this marking of writing particularly vital learning tool is that of the four modes of language processing:
Of these, writing is that only one that fulfills two key criteria. In combining both of these processes, writing engages both hemispheres of the brain that serves as a connective interface that not only facilitates activation of the more complex thought processes but also invigorates the encoding (and recovery) process for storing of data.
Important, too, is the fact that writing as a learning process is self-reinforcing in that "information from the process is immediately and visibly available as that portion of the product already written". Put another way, writing provides the opportunity for abstract concepts to be articulated and tested through their graphic representation on the page and, more importantly to researchers interested in learning, it provides through the relative permanence of the written word an opportunity for a writer to rethink and revise hitherto unarticulated/unrepresented ideas over an extended period of time.
It is this oscillation between the process of thinking through a topic or question and creating a graphic record of the process of that thinking is one of the most important contributions of writing to learning. Although they posit, initially, that writing can actually inhibit the learning process (blocking, as it were, the freedom to explore in favor of the pressure to substantiate in writing), they go on to theorize that writing as learning process establishes a vital dialectical "space" within which the writing process becomes aimed less at a stabilizing end product and more of a graphic representation of the thinking through of ideas. As the revision and rethinking of written ideas continues, therefore, a fuller and richer understanding of those ideas are realized. These ideas are, in turn, written down, which initiates the dialectical negotiation once again.
In addition, elements of graphically represented information (already written) in the form of notes, outlines, or drafts (that is, the fuel of the dialectic process) provide external storage of ideas that can, over the long term, facilitate the organization and goal-setting necessary for storage and recovery of information; as Benton et al. suggest, it is this simultaneous interactivity and iterativeness of the writing process that aids planning, translating, and reviewing of dialectically generating thought. Planning, this study concludes, involves three subprocesses, each of which reinforces the already vital relationship between writing as process and information recovery.
As both a dialectic and synthesizing process, then, writing works to facilitate all three of the abovementioned modes of information recovery. With a graphically represented organizational model of information in place, writers engage by the very nature of writing in the processes of translation (from iconic representation into symbolic coding into graphic representation) and through the processes together into a review process that further secures both encoding and recovery.
Although current research remains ambivalent about the direct relationship between writing and understanding of learned concepts, especially those of an abstract nature, there is less hesitation in stating that writing as a foundational activity in the learning process is at once a synthetic and connective endeavor, allowing an individual to engage the processes of critical thinking and contextualization in vital and necessary ways. To think, as Emerson wrote, is to act, and to write, as composition instructors inevitably begin a new class, is to think.
After you have completed a semester of weekly journal writing, you should reflect on what you learned. At this point, you have had several opportunities to improve your academic writing. Not only have you taken writing assessments, you have had multiple opportunities to improve your writing by reading peer-reviewed journal articles and gaining feedback from instructors. APA writing style should feel more comfortable as you write in the third person, paraphrase, and cite literature, please discuss the following:
- What surprised you about the results (whether positive or negative)? Explain your answer. Please share if your score improved, decreased, or stayed the same.
- In what areas has your writing seen the greatest improvement? Please be specific about how you were able to target one or two areas and improve your level of academic writing.
- Insight into your own growth will, hopefully, help your colleagues. Feel welcome to discuss areas that you wish to continue to develop.
- Finally, state whether the writing assistance programs were beneficial to you as you progressed through your program.