Category Archives: Duke Blog

A blog space for Duke W20 students.

Nupur’s Final Reflections on a Journey Through Writing

Writing 20 Theatre: Verbatim/Verboten has been much more than a class. It has been a journey; a discovery of myself as a writer. Through the course of the class, I have discovered some the subjects that I feel most passionately about. Finding this passion is crucial to my writing’s improvement. In addition to this passion, the three tools that I have found to be most significant in my own writing are personal bias, personal writing style, and drafting.

Personal bias sets the tone for any piece. Every work of writing, especially that of the documentary genre, has a certain history behind it. The writer’s personal bias helps mold the piece in a way unlike any other; it offers a truly unique perspective on the subject matter. Strong, clear personal bias is crucial to good writing because good writing involves rhetoric that offers a fresh perspective to its subject matter. This course has taught me the importance of being able to put my personal bias down on paper in relation to writing profoundly.

While personal bias accounts for the perspective on the writing topic, personal writing style accounts for the way in which this perspective is presented to the piece’s audience. Personal writing style is: “it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it.” I have learned that the writing style should reflect the purpose of the piece. Earlier this semester, I attempted to write on the horrors of high school violence. Looking back and analyzing my writing now, I realize that the reason that my piece was not as successful as it could have been was that my word choice did not reflect these ‘horrors’; it was too passive to make a profound impact on my audience. My word choice did not reflect the function of my piece. As a result, my piece as a whole was not as impactful as it could have been had my writing style reflected the purpose I wished to convey.

Developing personal bias and writing style have helped me tremendously in connecting passion, writing technicalities, and function in my pieces. However, I consider drafting to be the tool that has helped most in improving my writing. It is so interesting for me to look back upon my work this semester and see my progression of ideas through successive drafts of the same paper. Coming into this course, my biggest problem with writing was my tendency to overwrite. Worse still, I did not initially recognize this as a problem. Drafting has helped me realize and improve this tendency. I have seen the evolution of my successive preliminary drafts to the final, concise, and well-structured one.

I am truly grateful to Dr. James for helping me improve my writing. Editing requires patience, especially for my own writing. I am taking from this class not only the ability to write well and with purpose with respect to documentary theater and film, but also the confidence to apply this ability to all other venues of written expression.

Hanna’s Reflection (posted from BBoard by Dr. James)

The singular tool that trumps all I have learned in this course is the power of revision.

I admit it.

I do not enjoy editing my own work.

Why exhaust oneself DOUBLY by taking a carefully written piece and calling it inadequate?

I have always trudged through revision grudgingly, but this semester through our consistent group and one-on-one meetings with Professor James, it has occurred to me that as long as one dedicates time and pursues outside opinions on their writing, the revision process is not so laborious. This revision “journey” particularly applies to documentary theatre and film in that their collaboration requires greater amounts of revision and manipulation. The documenterian has hours and scores of information that they have researched and collected for their piece, it is only a matter of condensing accounts, and creating a storyline.

Just only…

Documentarians struggle with the “revision” or “manipulation” stage when trying to balance the authenticity of the subject’s testimony and their intended storyline, and it is a serious of revision after revision after revision which could seemingly have no end! Luckily, Documentarians, just like college students, learn to let go of one’s work once they have invested enough time and energy, an allow the piece to stand for itself.

My most favorite function of academic writing is peer editing. This isn’t to say that I enjoy having my work be edited, but I highly enjoy editing other student’s work. I believe this comes from my personal background: In my home we speak three languages and as a child my English wasn’t completely grammatically correct, so when my parents would encourage me to read and write to improve my grammar, I would re-iterate what I learned by correcting their English. While correcting a person’s English in conversation is seem as obnoxious, rude, or pretentious–it was a standard habit in my house, where it helped us all improve our grammar. Therefore, in high school, when my friends will ask me to edit their papers, I found it both enjoyable and diverting to scout out grammatical errors.

I enjoy editing papers.

How weird IS that?

This proved extremely useful when in my Essay #2 I was confused with some documentary film definitions such as “cinema verite” and through my peer edits a friend noticed this error and that prompted me to ask the professor during our one-on-one meeting, and ultimately save my paragraph #3 of Essay #2.

My final and probably least favorite stage of essay writing is research. We have done this since the beginning of time–typed “   (essay topic)   ” into Google web, and clicked the most relevant link on the first page–often resorting to Wikipedia– walking away with about 5 pages of printouts and a shallow feeling of accomplishment.

Research is EONS more comprehensive than this.

Theatre verbatim revolves around both the visual and the textual, providing our class with two mediums by which we must acknowledge, explore, and analyze throughout the semester. This means two different types of research, two different modes of media, and two different matters that which we inquire. In the duration of writing my two essays, I have not scoured through more video footage, and scripts in my young writing career. However, the hidden advantage of this particular Writing 20 course is the detail in which we can examine these two mediums both as a class, individually, and with the professor one-on one.

Prose Reflecting Plays (and other such things)

Academic writing can be many things; however, it usually does one of three things: explain, persuade or entertain. Throughout this semester I have written several pieces for this course; their main function was to explain my opinion about my documentary theatre and film pieces. Though they were brief explanations I feel as though I was able to, through them, understand more about the way that my pieces work. Discovering a new idea while writing is a part of the process that writers go through, as is editing and incorporating new ideas about the pieces. Writing evolves over time in order to best fulfill its function not only in academic paper but also in the plays and films that I have discovered through the course.

Explanation, as a function of writing, is mostly just a summary of relevant facts that deal with the issue at hand. For me this was the easiest part of writing and was for the most part where I started my first drafts. Most types of writing do this in order to broaden the available audience of the piece just as film and plays target different audiences by the viewpoint they take throughout the work.  The second function which is to persuade is also almost always done by writing simply because bias can never be removed from anything that we do. Documentary plays and film also struggle with objectively versus personal opinions. Usually in my writing I would finish my first draft with the different idea I wanted to express with my paper and the topic at hand then later revise to my the argument more coherent. Finally, the third function of writing which is to entertain is something that writers try and do in order to keep the reader engaged or simply for the sake of it. I did not do too much of this in my essays however my pieces were, though informative, also meant to, simply by nature, be entertain. Writing is similar in function to documentaries both seek to explain an issue and often to persuade the viewer toward one side of the issue while keeping them interested in the topic at hand.

In short in order to create any piece of writing one is usually trying to explain, persuade, entertain or some combination of them all much like any piece of work or art. Academic writing is a form which is taken to express some type of information in words and the methods we use within this form are varied.  Most people write in order to give their opinion about a subject, in order to do this they must first explain what that subject is. Then they must persuade the reader, with the explanation, that a certain way of thinking about the issue is the correct one. Sometimes the information can be given in a humorous way designed for entertainment or take on a conversation tone, as writers strive to keep their readers interested. Academic writers like documentarians seek to inform their audience about a topic, but also like documentarians they cannot keep personal biases out of writing and usually tend to persuade the reader into a certain way of thinking all the while understanding the importance in keeping their writing appealing.

No Answer? Yes, There Is!

As an engineering major, I am more familiar with the problems with definite answers. For most of the times, the answers have to be precise and accurate. However, the writing assignments do not seem to require the type of answers I have encountered. Sometimes, there were no definite answers. I had to learn the way to address the problems in a subjective or rather, in a creative way just as directors and playwrights of documentaries do. Often, the documentary directors and playwrights created their works based upon the scrupulous research of the reality to persuade the audience who opposes to their opinion and to further advocate their supporters. Likewise, the thesis or the subject of our writings can be as creative as possible yet the supporting details have to be based upon facts and logics. If we can do so, we can be good writers. Here are specific tips to be so:

1)      The flexibility to implement different structures and designs in our writings is often helpful. The creative structure has the power to make even the boring contents interesting and provocative. For example, I have encountered “9 Parts of Desire,” a play written in the poetic language. The implementation of poetic language in documentary plays does not take place very often; thus, the playwright Heather Raffo’s implementation of the poetic structure keeps the audience from losing their focus.

2)      In the writing process, every word counts. It is true that thesis is more important than other sentences. However, every word in every sentence contributes to the construction of our logics in the essays. While constructing the logics, it is easy to lose track of what we have been saying; thus, our sentences can end up being wordy. Yet, we have to keep in our minds that good writings should be concise yet fluent.

3)      The proof-reading and continuous revising is necessary. As an international student, I often feel the need for such process. Often, the lack of persuasiveness in the choice of words and the awkward organization of phrases weaken the power of my logics and the authenticity of materials that I cope with. To maximize the effects of the creative structure and conciseness of words, the fluency in language is required.

My advices above are made under the assumption that we have acknowledged of basic materials regarding to our writings. Any other tips cannot substitute the understanding of basic materials about the issues and problems. Without this understanding, we will be unable to construct the logics that are strong enough to persuade the readers of our writings, and to come up with the answers that a large number of readers can agree as the answers to the issues and problems.

Throughout the semester, I have encountered and analyzed documentaries with unique approaches and materials; none of them has proposed the absolute answer to the addressed problem. However, as I was looking for flaws in the suggested answer, I had experienced the critical thinking process, through which I could find my own answer.

The Key to Mastering the Art of Writing

While writing has never been my strongpoint, I was excited to take this course because I love all aspects of theater, whether I’m studying theater or performing. By the end of the semester, not only was I able to explore a topic that interests me but also I was able to develop new writing skills. I learned many things about being a writer including how important drafts are, how important it is to work where you can focus, and that there is never one “correct” way of writing an essay.

The hardest part about writing an essay for me was typing those first sentences. I always believed my first draft had to be perfect so I would never type anything unless I was absolutely sure that I would keep it for my final draft. I have been progressively learning that the beauty of writing drafts is that a paper does not have to be perfect the first time you sit down to write it. Once you have something to work with it’s a lot easier to review it and figure out what parts you want to keep or what parts you want to rearrange. For both of my essays and my festival project, I wrote several drafts. At first I would revise parts throughout the entire paper and then I would focus on perfecting a few select parts or one paragraph. After going through this process, I felt a lot more confident with my final drafts.

Not being able to focus made starting an essay even harder. Sometimes it’s a lot more convenient to work on an essay in the room, but with so many people doing non-related work activities, I would never be able to focus one hundred percent on my assignment. It was only a five or fifteen minute trip to Lilly or Perkins, and in the long run it saved me a lot of time because I would not get distracted. In a quiet and calm setting I was able to think a lot more clearly and better understand the structure and main arguments of my essay.

Figuring out the structure and flow of my essay was often a challenge I faced. I always used to work on an essay similar to the way I would work on a math or science problem; I would try to figure out the right answer. The reason I struggled so much was because I could not come to the realization that there was never a right or wrong way of structuring a paper. There are always many different ways of organizing a paper, and as hard as it was for me to accept it, I was able to embrace the freedom that comes with writing.

While Writing 20 has greatly improved my writing skills, there is still a lot more room for improvement. I plan on continuing to learn more about tools that make writers more effective in their storytelling. Similar to the way filmmakers use different camera angles and cinematography to influence an audience, academic writers have certain writing techniques that impress an audience. Even simple changes in the structure of a paper or film can go a long way on the impact it makes on viewers.

Mengchao’s Reflection Post

As an international student, I really want to improve my writing skills since I have never taken any English writing courses before. Thus, I registered for this writing 20 class even though I was assigned to take it in spring semester, because I think academic writing is an important tool that I have to use throughout my college years, so the earlier I take this course, the better prepared I am. Now, at the end of my first semester in college, I look back to what I have learned so far, and I realized that I received much more than what I had expected.

First of all, I discovered how to collect information from Duke Library system. Usually when I need some information to write, I will first turn to Google for help. However, Duke Library system gives me much more valuable resources. For example, when I was doing research about the play COLUMBINUS, I typed the name of this play into the search engine of Duke Library. It soon gave me over one hundred results from such websites as Academic OneFile. The information I got from these websites were much more specific than those from normal web search.

After writing six blogs and two essays in this semester, this cumulative process of academic writing helped me to better understand the documentary genre. The themes of the six blogs connected six different aspects to analyze the documentary genre. First we look at the play the Laramie Project, and we gained the basic techniques to analyze a documentary piece. Then we started working on our own documentary theatre to practice the techniques we learned. Later on, we expanded our study to documentary film, and by comparing the two different genre, we obtained a more comprehensive understanding of both media. During this process, academic writing provided us an opportunity to use the skills we learned, and as we thought about our writing, we went through the materials we covered in lectures again. Thus, we were able to improve our writing by this process.

Another thing I learned this semester about academic writing is that we should start as early as possible. A piece done by the last minute before due time would never be as good as a well-prepared and carefully made one. Also, as I mentioned, to write a good piece of academic writing, we need to collect information from different resources. This process is fruitful but time consuming. If you do not start working on your writing early, you may have little time to look up the resources that will offer you significant help in developing your point, or making a powerful conclusion.

Reflections- What I’ve learned this semester

When my academic advisor informed me that I had to take an academic writing course during my freshman year, I was rather perplexed- I had taken a number of writing courses during high school and wondered if there was any point in taking more. A few months later, I admit, thought with some mortification, that I was completely wrong. Over the course of these few months, not only did I learn a significant number of quintessential tools that enhanced my ability to evaluate written materials critically, I was also exposed to an entire new genre of academic writing. When I first sat in Professor Jules class, I hardly new what verbatim and verboten meant. Now I know that I’ll definitely take courses related to theatre during my remaining time at Duke. Though I’m confident that I can fill pages describing what I’ve grasped, the three main tools of academic writing that I learnt stand apart in pertinent importance and have significantly complemented my writing skills.

In high school, I developed a rather bad habit of leaving assignments for the last moment, and completing them rather quickly before submitting them minutes before their deadline. During the first few weeks, I came up with a self-conceived justification for this predisposition: since my high school followed the British Gce system, we were only given a few hours to write our
essays. The result was that most of my work, to a neutral observer, appeared to have been completed hastily and often had significant shortcomings. However, the essay and blog assignments in Professor Jules class taught me the importance of proofreading and revising my drafts before submitting them. I’m sure most seniors from my school would consider proofreading to encompass restructuring sentences and going over minor spelling or grammatical mistakes. However, I quickly grasped that the key lay in fact in going over an assignment or essay, and writing it again and again until I was satisfied that it was totally different from my first draft.

Another important thing that I learned was that peer-revisions and the feedback from my professor provided me with clear insights into my shortcomings as a writer. Some people would be slightly offended when others offered their opinions and criticized their work. This was certainly true in my case. However, as the months passed by, I was rather flabbergasted when I realized that the feedback I received, when implemented, actually improved my work. I realized that having a bloated opinion about my capabilities actually proved counter productive and forestalled my ability to improve myself, not only for my course assignments but as an individual aswell.

However, the important thing that I learned was to prioritize my time and place my studies before other miscellaneous activities. Having taken a gap year after high school to intern at a NGO, I had grown accustomed to working only a few hours a day and then spending the remaining time in leisurely pursuits. My first few weeks as a freshman at Duke involved little reading, so my impression remained that my college experience would similar, if not very different from, my previous years. It was only when I had to appear for my midterms did the truth dawn upon me. I’m sure everyone would agree that the frat parties at West campus and Saturday nights at Shooters appeared quite tempting. Coupled with the fact that someone in my dorm was always ‘playing a rather crude version of ping pong’, I had a hard time concentrating over my studies. However, the assignments in our writing class, where we had to submit blogs or work on our essays, made me realize that unless I mended my ways, I would fall back behind everyone else. As spring semester approaches, bringing with itself the infamous ‘rush period’, my experiences this semester would ensure that I don’t repeat the same mistake again and place my studies above everything else. An ‘enlightening’ college experience does include having fun, making new contacts and undergoing new experiences, but it reaches us the importance of acting responsibly. This, above anything else that I learned, shall help me even when I’ve graduated and embraced the world outside.

Tips for Writing Success

Writing can be a difficult process, and I have learned a lot this year on how to improve it. The biggest thing I found out, is that writing is a process. There is no one key that will turn an F paper into an A, because writing is very complex. However, the following three tips will help to improve your paper:
1. My first piece of advice for success in writing is to research as much as possible, especially about the producers of a particular documentary piece. It is extremely important to get a holistic sense of what kind of documentaries the producers like to make, as well as the history of their career. When reading a review of a documentary, it is also helpful to read other reviews by the same author. This is key because when you use your sources, context in everything. When I was doing my piece on My Name is Rachel Corrie, I had no idea the magnitude of the controversy the play caused, until I read numerous newspaper articles from around the country about it. Also, my opinions of Gaza Strip changed as I researched the production of the movie more. I found out that James Longley to shoot preliminary footage for another film, but decided to extend his stay after he saw the turmoil caused by the 2002 elections, and meeting Mohammed. This information was critical in making some connections with other documentaries, and I would have never found it out without research.
2. My second piece of advice is to watch/read your documentaries 2-3 times, especially the movies. When I had to watch my film or read my plays, the first time I read/watched it, I wouldn’t take any notes. I would just try to get a central theme or message out of it. The second time around, however, I would look for more specific details and tactics that helped my understanding of the piece. When you watch movies, in particular, it is nearly impossible to pick up on everything your first time watching it. Also, I found it much easier to start actually writing, after watching or reading something more than once. This tactic is useful in other classes as well, and I used it throughout high school.
3 My last piece of advice is to start your papers as early as possible, and never stop revising and editing them. By starting early, you will have a huge advantage. You will be able to think about you papers as much as you need to. More importantly, however, you wont be forced to cram your papers in, which creates rushed results.

Good luck!

My academic Writing Survival Guide

It would be bold to claim that I have discovered many of the tools to successful academic writing at the college level, but in the four months I spent writing on documentary, I like to think I learned three valuable resources to help me get through the rest of my writing career here.

  1. Use the Library
    1. The Building Itself

i.     Study rooms are stuffy and dorm rooms provide too many distractions; the library is a great place to hunker down and grind out some work. I even found out during exam time that they occasionally give free hot chocolate and refreshments as a “study break.”

  1. The Staff

i.     Both on East and West, the library staff’s main goal is to help you get any materials you need to write a successful paper. I once had a librarian work with me for twenty minutes trying to find a copy of a DVD lost in the stacks. Looking for research materials can be overwhelming and discouraging; never be afraid to ask a librarian for help.

  1. Utilize Draft Opportunities
    1. Multiple times this semester we were given the chance to meet with our professor to discuss and go over a rough draft. Sometimes we even got to meet with her twice before handing in the final product. Under these circumstances, there is no excuse for submitting a sub-par assignment. If you don’t make a full draft for each meeting, you are cheating yourself. Never reject a chance to hear professional feedback on your work.
    2. Have a friend proofread your writing.

i.     You know what you’re trying to say, but maybe others don’t. Having a friend read your writing aloud can point out inconsistencies in flow and grammar otherwise undetectable to your eyes/ears. Of course you should offer to proof-read their work in return.

  1. Don’t go Insane
    1. We have a disgusting amount of free time in college. Still, don’t be fooled, work will pile up on you if you don’t take care of it little by little. Space out your studying. Try not to spend more than two hours in the library at a time. If you’re feeling like you’re loosing concentration, take a break. Eat a meal, play some videogames, watch TV, or go for a run. Specifically the exercising option will give you a sense of accomplishment so that you know while you’re not studying you’re still getting things done. Set up rewards for yourself for once you do a significant amount of work. Go out to dinner with a friend or go out partying. Having a light at the end of the tunnel is sometimes all you need.

So that’s about all I’ve got. I like to think I made it through this semester keeping a respectable caliber of work while still keeping my head above the waves in terms of sanity. Thanks for a great semester!

Kabir’s Three Keys to Academic Writing

Documentary Theatre Verbatim/ Verboten. After reading the description of this course in the summer, I placed it into my virtual book-bag and a few weeks later clicked the large, green enroll button. I had never studied the documentary genre before and even had to look up the meaning of the word “verboten”. I also, if we are being totally honest here, thought that a required academic writing course was completely unnecessary. I had written many, many papers in high school and didn’t see the need for the Duke administration to make me write even more. However, four months later I have not only learned about a new genre, but I have gained a variety of writing skills. Although I believe there are more than three tools needed to be a successful academic writer at Duke, here are, in my opinion, the three most essential:

1)   Use Your Sources. My high school English teacher loved to say: “think of an essay like a plate of meat and potatoes.” Just as meat is the central component on a dinner plate, sources/ quotes are the central component of an essay. Academic essays need evidence to support claims and scholarly sources often comprise the juicy, substantial part of one’s argument. Individual analysis, descriptions, and opinions serve as the potatoes. A nice, necessary complement to the meat. At Duke, one ought to take advantage of the unbelievable amount of scholarly works at our disposal. The library has an online database that has access to just about every academic work and will even buy subscriptions to sources if they don’t already have one. You can even instant message a librarian for help and answers immediately. If sources/ quotes are the meat of one’s essay then the Duke Library is Outback Steakhouse.

2)   Criticism is Great. Whether it is academic writing, sports, or even playing xbox, I generally don’t like when people point out my flaws. However, I have discovered in this course that in order to improve an essay, it is important to be able to listen and respond to another person’s perspective. Even reading my papers aloud helped me discover syntax errors and sentences that lacked clarity. After each peer review session I made substantial changes to my essays. If you are able to accept constructive criticism rather then just argumentatively defend every point of your draft, then your final product will be significantly better.

3)   Start Early, Never Finish. Everybody loves procrastination and there is no place where procrastination is more prevalent than on a college campus. Isolating yourself and continuing to write and re-write is, in my opinion, the most efficient and effective way to write an essay. If you are able to start early and write a comprehensible, thoughtful first draft, then not only do you have less work later but the peer review sessions will also be more productive. The process of revision is also critical to the success of an academic writer. Every time I read through one of my papers, I discover some grammatical error or find a repetitive phrase or even want to add another analytical sentence. I think of the deadline for an essay as the time when the most revised draft is due, since the process of writing is almost never completely finished.