Nate’s Principles of Bad Writing
Vocabulary:
1. Counterproductive:
(adj.) something that doesn’t help what you are trying to achieve
2. Perspective
(n.): a way of seeing things
3. To
bomb (v.): in this case to do very very poorly; I bombed my last exam
4. Fail
miserably (v/adv.): to do something so bad
5. Blatantly
(adv.): when you do something without any care of the consequences
6. Ill-prepared
(adj.): not ready for something
7. Whatsoever:
at all; completely; used with negative things; like I don’t eat any food from
that place whatsoever
8. Whatever
comes to mind (expression): anything that you think about
9. Get
off track (v.): to lose focus of something
10. To
suit (someone/something)(v.): to be appropriate for someone or something
11. To
turn off (someone) (v.): to make someone not like you or something
12. Legible
(adj): something you can read; opposite is illegible
13. Perceived
(adj.): how something is viewed by another person
14. Migraine
(n.): a very large headache
Pre-Reading discussion:
1. What
is counterproductive to good writing?
2. What
makes someone bomb a writing assignment?
3. What
makes you fail miserably at a subject?
4. When
have you been ill-prepared for an assignment?
5. How
can you turn off a reader to your writing assignments?
Vocabulary:
Arguing with people all of the time is counterproductive to forming good
relationships with them.
People from different cultures have different perspectives on things depending on
where they are from.
I didn’t study for the final, so I bombed it.
I wrote an essay for class. I thought it was good, but actually I failed miserably.
You blatantly
don’t care.
My teacher came to class without a lesson because he
is blatantly lazy. He was very ill-prepared.
I can’t stand that class whatsoever. I don’t understand
anything you say whatsoever.
What will the final essay be about?
>Whatever
comes to mind.
The teacher was supposed to teach us how to write an
essay, but he got off track and
began talking about soccer for 15 minutes.
When you pick a job, you need a career that suits your skills and talents. I always loved animals, so working as a veterinarian
suits me.
People who talk when they are eating turn me off.
I try to be nice to people, but some perceive me as rude. I don’t know why.
I couldn’t concentrate in afternoon class because I
had a migraine.
1.We are obviously in this class to improve our writing
skills, so it seems a bit foolish and counterproductive
to be giving information that would encourage you in to write poorly in anyway. However, the textbook has a passage on the
principles of poor writing, and I felt this text was a bit too long, so I
decided I would come up with my own perspective
on poor writing. And, I won’t focus on the process of bad writing in general,
but on the specific occasions that you must do a writing assignment in a
classroom like setting. One thing I can
definitely promise you is if you want to completely bomb your next writing assignment, do these steps.
2. The first step you should take to fail miserably on your next
writing assignment is to come blatantly
ill-prepared. Don’t
practice your writing at home or do any kind of reading whatsoever. Just come
into class as if you know everything you need to write, and when it is time to
write, just write whatever comes to
mind. In other words, if there
is something specific the instructor or the test examiner wants you to write
about, just blow it off and write
anything you want with no purpose or aim.
3.While you are writing with no goal or focus, allow
yourself to get off track if
that suits you. In the first sentence you are kind of talking
about some amazing vacation you took, and all of a sudden you shift the entire
topic to the latest sales you saw online for some random product that only you
and no one else cares about. And while
you are at it, go into all kinds of
pointless opinions you have about things the reader certainly doesn’t care
about. That will turn off even the most patient person.
4.And since you clearly don’t care about your writing
style, or how it is perceived, why
bother to even try to make your writing legible? Skip lines whenever you want, or don’t skip
them when you don’t want to. Or, perhaps
you can write your words as if they are going up or down a mountain rather than
in a straight line. That will give the
reader a migraine.
5.So, basically, the process of becoming a bad writer
is to be ill-prepared, write about random, unfocused nonsense, and to write in
a really sloppy fashion. If you do these
things, your writing assignment will sink faster than the Titanic.
Questions:
*What are the writer’s steps to poor writing according
to this?
1.
Main ideas of paragraphs. Match the sentence with the paragraph it’s
the main idea of.
A. Your
style of writing on paper can affect how bad it appears
B. Don’t
study before any major writing assignment
C. When
you write, there is no need to keep on subject
D. I
am teaching about bad writing although I am ironically supposed to teach you
how to be a good writer
1. In
paragraph 3, it says you go into all
kinds of pointless opinions….When you go
into something, you:
A. Focus
on a specific topic
B. Avoid
the topic you should talk about
C. Challenge
yourself with something difficult
D. Pretend
you know something you don’t
