Sondra Perl's Most Important Idea. Revised.

Vianca Acosta

ENG 220

Sondra Perl

        Writing is meant to be read with pleasure. It is important to feel and understand what we are writing about. During the writing process the writer should always feel the sense of the paper, the words in order to

proceed, and have the reader understand the writing.

          Guidelines help us write but one of the most important and enduring idea that had contributed to the field of theorizing the writing process is “felt sense”. Felt sense is the most important idea of Sondra Perl. It is the feeling of what you want to say, and understanding what your writing is about. Sondra Perl is professor of English and Urban Education at Lehman College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Perl is an English professor whose specialty is the teaching writing.

         During the writing process it is important that we take a look to the topic or the issue we are writing about because we need to pay attention to the feelings that we are getting from the writing. During the process of a writing assignment we ask ourselves, “what is missing?”, “what's this all about?”, what point do I want to make?”, or “does what I’m saying make sense?”. This is part of felt sense. Felt sense is the feeling that we get during a writing process or the feeling we get when our writing piece is not clear enough for us as a writer. Felt sense is with us all the time. It helps us with ideas to make our writing piece better and understandable, It let us know what we need to improve and make it clear. Felt sense help us focus on our writing by checking and knowing the feeling toward what we are writing about. It is something that we feel within the body that helps us write a well written paper.

         When we get stuck on a paper felt sense help us to know where our writing is getting at and if is going out of place. “Continue writing, even when you don’t know where you're going” (p.36), this is an example of no matter how confused or lost we might be while writing we can take a chance and stop to settle down the information we have by understanding and have it clear in order to continue, and making sure we are mentioning the point we want to make. Felt sense is also when you write anything even if you don’t know why are you writing or what are you writing about. It is the pause we take to look at what we have so far, is when we follow our feelings and images and continue our writing process ideas. Also it is what tells us if our writing is right or wrong. When we ask ourselves questions during a writing assignment we follow our guts. And felt sense help us make it better in the way of asking questions such as “what point do I want to make?” and this question can help us get better as a writer, thinker, and to have a good writing piece. With the idea of felt sense Sondra Perl wants to give us the opportunity to follow what we feel inside while we write, it is basically like following our guts. Some people feel different while writing. Some might stop and ask themselves, “where is this leading?”, this is an example of how felt sense allow you to write down whatever comes to mind. Even though, sometimes we might feel that our writing is going into a different direction and is not making any sense we always think and continue writing to make it better.

       This idea of Sondra Perl; felt sense lead us to think before we write and while we write. “Learn to listen to what your body knows, to what is on the edge, but not yet in words, to cultivate [felt sense] so that your writing comes alive. Felt sense is key to understand how new ideas come to us”. As a writer we need to learn how to listen and understand what our body is telling us. For example, thinking before you speak. Before we write we need to understand what the body is telling us to feel and to express. We need to feel, listen, and understand in order to start writing. Before taking pen and paper we need to feel what we are going to transmit; to give out there to the reader. Doing all these strategies of feeling, understanding and thinking before writing, our writing comes alive. Our thought gives our witting the spirit of giving the information we want to give out. New ideas come to us from the inside of us. We have to feel in order to write. We have to think in order to write. Felt sense is the understanding of following our guts and thinking about what we are write about before we start.

        Felt sense is an useful writing idea because it helps writers to improve their writing. Felt sense is important because we all can improve and get better as a writer. It pushes us with our thoughts and understanding to get better at something we are having problem with. To me felt sense means more than an idea to think before writing, It is the process that lead us to a better communication with ourselves and it give us the opportunity to listen to our body and know exactly what we want to write before writing it. Felt sense is Sondra Perl's most important idea because in order to become a better writer we need to follow our guts and listen to our body before we start writing.

Work Cited

Felt Sense, Writing with the Body. www.stu.ca/inkshed/perl.pdf. Web. 2004.

Perl, Sondra. Understanding Composing. P. 29-35.

Perl, Sondra. Composing Guidelines. P. 36-40

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/nwp_au/970.

My First Tutoring Experience

            Before starting tutoring I wasn’t nervous, I was just ready to do it but when I started the process I got very nervous. The first thing I did was introduced myself to the student and then I asked him, what kind of help he need? He needed help with his paper, he had already a part of the essay written but he needed more help with his paragraph development in the way of using examples, details, and saying more information. And also he needed help with transitional words because he does not use them at all.  He understood the article and already had an idea of what information he wanted to use but his problem was that his paper was a little all over the place. I had problem understanding his writing; it was very confusing. I found very different that he started the essay with his personal experience because it makes the essay interesting. In my opinion, I think it is better to start the essay by doing the summary of the article and then the important ideas, explain the ideas, your personal experience, and final the conclusion. I liked the fact that I got into the topic that I felt like writing the paper for him but I know that can’t happen. My tutee and I had a good communication, when he got stuck in some parts I jumped in and helped giving him examples that were very useful for the paper. I also asked him questions to get answers from him so he can be able to use his own answers and put them into ideas for the paper. To me the time went by so fast, I think it was a lot of good information to talk about. I did not have time for everything but I gave him my email address so I can help him over the weekend. So far I like my tutoring because I can see how much I am able to help other people with their writing assignment.

CATW Essay Response.

                While reading this article I realized that the student understood the message of the article very well and the student explained the message with facts and good details by using an example of how the media sends us thousands of marketing messages per day and how advertisements are implying on how people should live their life. The student understood the message of how advertisement is brainwashing our brains. In my opinion I think that the student should have one a much better job by summarizing the essay better with details that and explaining and mentioning the author’s most important ideas and one of the author’s significant idea.

Even though the student included good details in the essay it would be much better if he/she mentioned the most important details that the author stated and that he/she is more important as well. I think the student could have done much better if he/she would have included a personal experience that can relate to the article or reading they learned in the outside because this is a big part of this assignment. It is very important for the student to give a personal experience related to the article because if not the student can fail the test. I think that the student chooses good words choices that helped he/she organized the essay. I think the student have some problem with the structure of the sentence in making the first paragraph too long.  

Reflection on Sondra Perl essay, what's important to you in it.

The three aspects of the process are felt sense, retrospective structuring and projective structuring. Felt sense is a feeling of what you want to say, part of the process of writing, like an intuition, “does what I’m saying make sense?” “Is this what I really want to say?” Retrospective structuring is the order, organization, paragraph, sentence order and grammar. Retrospective structuring is the connection between language and ideas. Projective structuring is when you put yourself in the audience’s shoes, how they would respond, but not writing from a place of obsession w/ “correctness”.

Felt sense is very important in the writing process because you have to feel what you will be writing about; also you need to have an idea and an understanding of what’s your writing about. Felt sense is very useful in the process of writing because it gives the writer a feeling and an interaction with the writing in the way of understanding everything and saying what’s on your mind.

To me the most useful aspect of the process is felt sense because it is important to feel what you are writing about. Felt sense is my favorite because before putting yourself in someone’s shoes you have to feel the writing, understanding it and getting the ideas of it. Felt sense is with you all the times this is why is important in developing the understanding of your writing before you start writing.  

"Tutoring Do's and Don'ts"

Tutoring Do's

-  A face to face relationship between a tutor and a student.

- An open and good communication between the tutee and the tutor

- Guide tutee to become independent.

- Build trust and honesty between tutors and tutee.

- Gives feedback and strategies to better a writing piece.

- Gives tutees’ expectations about their work.

- Is the help you need to become a better writer.

- Demonstrate care and responsibilities for the tutees and their writing piece.

- Listen to any problem the tutees might have with their piece.

- Gives strategies to become a better writer.

- Be respectful with the tutees and their work.

-  Prepare to answer questions and make everything clear and understandable for the tutee.

- Show concern about the writer's piece.

- Set examples for the writer to have an idea of how to make the writing piece better.

- Very professional and respectful.

Tutoring Don'ts

- Correct errors.

- Take over the tutee's paper.

- Tutors don’t be messy and unprepared.

-Tutors don’t rush during a tutoring section.

- Tutors don’t tell their tutees what to write in their paper.


- Tutors don’t lead students on with questions unanswered or without making suggestions.

"How I feel about becoming a Writing Tutor".

        

About becoming a writing tutor I feel very excited because I will be helping students that need advice and help with their writing. Also I am very excited to help students with their writing because I will help them with their progress and grammar, but at the same time I will also learn from it myself. I am ready to help them learn new writing process and techniques that can help them become a better writer.

         I know that it would be times that I will feel nervous while tutoring someone because it's going to be my first time tutoring a college student but I will maintain confidence that everything will be alright. And I'm there to help that person become a better writer something that they will appreciate in the long way during the school years.  Becoming a tutor will help me in having more practice working with people since I want to become an elementary school teacher. I have experienced working with young children but not with college students so this is a very big step for me because I will have more practice working with people.

        I am very positive about becoming a tutor because I want to do well and I want to be able to show the student that I am willing to help her/him with anything they need. Since this is my last semester here in the school I am willing to enjoy this class and learn a lot from it because this will be very helpful for me in my own future.

Vianca Acosta

ENG 220 – 0878

Research and writing Assessment Paper.

                                                                     Sondra Perl

            Sondra Perl is professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of the City of New York where she coordinates the PHD program in composition and rhetoric (Boe John, 2). She is a writing theorist, she analyzes and process writing.

            The most important and enduring idea Sondra Perl has contributed to the field of theorizing the writing process is to “engage people to create a piece of writing that is strong” (Boe John, 4). When a person is creating a piece of writing it should always be strong in the way that it can touch others, it can have everything clear and understandable to the reader. Having a strong piece of writing can make the writer feel very comfortable and confidence about the writing, because the paper has a good and strong piece and that makes the writing better.

            Sondra Perl has contributed idea of engaging people to create a piece of writing that is strong because her job is to “work with the text, to help the writer see what in this piece of writing is going to speak to other people” (Boe John, 4). Having a strong piece can reveal information that can be very helpful and informative to the reader and to the writer.

Also in my opinion having a strong piece of writing can show that the writer went back and fix some parts in the writing, thought before start writing, gather the ideas together before starting to write or maybe the writer wrote the strong piece from the beginning. But I think that most of the times in order to have a strong piece of writing the writer has to first analyze, process and plan before starting to write.

            As a writer at the beginning you might not know where you are going, how to start or what to write about but wanting to have a strong piece can make you plan and scratch ideas that can help you with your writing.

            The book, Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, by Sondra Perl can be very helpful for students that are writing a piece because the book “can help writers discover and articulate their best thinking” (Blau Sheridan). By composing information and prewriting it can be very helpful to write a strong piece of writing.

            “Students had not yet internalized all of the rules that would make them skilled writers, nor had they learned how to judge their writing objectively. However by looking more closely at how much students compose, teachers can improve instructional methods by which students can achieve composition skills” (Pearl Sondra, 2). By teachers improving instructional methods by which students can achieve composition skills it would be very beneficial for the students because they would practice more the writing and learning new methods to be able to engage and make strong piece of writing.

            Unskilled writers at the college level can be very engage from the enduring idea that Sondra Perl has contributed to the field of theorizing the writing process which is to engage people to create a piece of writing that is strong. This piece of writing can help unskilled college students to practice more, learn more and to know how to get skills by writing strong pieces. In my opinion, unskilled students or skilled students writing strong pieces makes their writing better and they learn from it to continue doing better writing.

            I believe that engaging people to create strong piece of writing it’s a very good method because is something that would help people to practice more, learn and be good at. If Sondra Perl engages her students to be better writers and to write strong pieces it would benefits unskilled college students that need help to be able to write better. But with this idea it would make them write strong and their writing structures and learning will increase in a higher level because they are learning how to write strong enough for a piece of writing. Sometimes it’s difficult to know when you’re writing piece is strong or how to write a strong piece this is why it is good when you built strategies that can help you with your writing for example, planning, editing and even going back and fix things in the paper, doing all these can make your paper be strong by making sure you are writing a strong and very detailed piece.

           

           

Worked Cited

Boe, John. “There's Honor and There's Tears”: An Interview with Sondra Perl. Writing on the Edge 20.2 (2010): 42-55

Blau, Sheridan. Book Review: Felt Sense: Writing with the Body, by Sondra Perl. 26.3 (2004)

Perl, Sondra. The Composing Processes of Unskilled Writers at the College Level. (1977): 1-15