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April 23, 2019

Adequacy is Key

Dear Reader,

Moving to the USA and adapting to the linguistic and cultural barriers here has

not been easy. Throughout this year I’ve come to terms with some unfortunate facts,

the most important of which was an tough lesson to learn: no matter how hard it is to

accept some things, adaptation and acceptance are the easiest way. The most obvious

concrete example of this enlightenment of mine can be pointed out in changes I have

made to my writing style.

One of the hardest conventions for me to adapt to is, in fact, that of clear and

concise writing. Short, easy-to-read sentences are the norm here, and, as I’m sure

you’re already aware of, I don’t like that. When reading some other person’s paper, I

constantly catch myself rolling my eyes to the banality and repetitiveness of their

sentence structure, barely applying any adjectives to their stripped nouns. No matter

how many times I told myself to try and be as concise as possible, I would always end

up hating my first attempts, consequently completely deleting them and starting over.

However, throughout this year I’ve also learned that if you never try you’ll

never improve. When it comes to my writing style, I really don’t think there is

anything wrong with it, but rather, that in the context I present it under, it is not

adequate. In this case, adequacy is key: the case isn’t against my writing style as

much as it is about learning new ways to adapt my sentence structure and write in

another language. My mother has always told me, “Once you write well in one

language, you can write well in all”, however it would be more correct to assert that

in such a scenario you have potential. Potential that is necessary to writing well in a

different language. Potential that is buried inside of you, but needs to be released.
In other words, it is not useful to try retaining all of the writing conventions and

simply translating them to a new language. One must first understand the significant

differences in idiom structure and social-linguistic conventions that pervade the

foreign tongue. In this way, I started thinking of language as a generalistic form of

genre: to connect with your audience, you must use the correct forms of variable

sentence structure, the correct ways of saying, down to the very words that make up

the lexis of such a language. In the words of Dirk, “Your goal is to recognize these

shifts in location and to be aware of how such shifts might affect your writing.”1

These words resonated with me. “Learning about genres and how they function

is more important than mastering one particular genre” –he goes on saying. By

introducing me to the concepts and applications of literary genres and their

subdivisions, I can now grasp the differences of my English writing style with that of

Italian, and I can focus my approach to that of the “English genre”, or rather, how to

write in convincing English, clear and concise as it is meant to be in its purest form.

Reading through my Writing Project 1 once more, I noticed that I’ve learned so

much through this course, even though I considered myself a pretty decent writing

even before taking this class. The paragraphs were long and intricate, and, I have to

admit, it was quite heavy to read. To improve my WP1 I mostly chose to reduce the

length of many sentences and simplify my ways of saying, eliminating redundant

periphrases. I also revised the lexis I used in WP1 and tried to come up with easier

terms to understand to substitute hard to read wording.

I was a lot more content with my WP3. Reviewing my genre translation of

Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream” I cut down on the length of some

paragraphs and mainly reorganized the concepts I chose to analyze in my explanatory

essay. Here, my main concern was the format of the document, rather than the writing
style itself. Properly placing footnotes and learning how to adjust the side margins of

documents is definitively a necessary skill, and I am glad to have learned (even if

quite late in life…).

Some stylistic choices I left in my WP3 were long sentences paired with single

spaced text within the translation. Had I been given more time, I think I would’ve

elaborated more on the ending, but I am quite content with how my Writing Project

came out. Regarding the introduction of the course-recommended readings within the

text, I chose to analyze Dirk and Swales’ impact on my writing style and

understanding of the uses of genre.

Swales especially impacted my understanding of what a genre is and how it

helps a group of driven individuals come together and work as one, introducing me to

various terms, their meanings and uses, such as that of “genre.”2

All in all, I believe these writing projects have definitively helped me improve.

The readings were also useful, as they were mainly a source for inspiration to start the

writing. In the words of Bunn, I would often read about a genre and ask myself

“Would I want to try this technique in my own writing?”3

The concepts of “discourse community” and “genre analysis” along with the

critical reading of these different categories of literature helped cement my

understanding of writing in general and, overall, aided me in the development of my

approach to writing. So many stylistic choices, along with new idioms and grammar

rules have not only allowed me to write all my assignments with satisfactory results,

but, more generally, they have completed me as a person.

Sincerely,
Francesco Moulson
1 Kerry Dirk, “Navigating Genres”, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 1, 2010
2 John Swales, “Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings”, Cambridge
University Press, 1990
3
Mike Bunn, “How to Read Like a Writer” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing 2, 2011

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