Shiva Annareddy 1

Shivakiran Annareddy

Professor Gardiakos

ENC1102

6 October 2020

Reading Response 3

After reading ‘Concept 3: Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and

Ideologies’ from the Naming What We Know book, there seems to be a good

amount of interesting information to take away from the selected composition.

There were many claims or points made by the authors in this section that

seemed to be very engaging and unique. It had changed my perspective a little on

the way that I had viewed writing. There was a claim made in the book that

writing “is not so much about using a particular set of skills as it is about

becoming a particular kind of person” (Roozen 51). This claim conveys to me that

writing is all about exploring the depths of a person’s thoughts and the kind of

writing a person composes reflects heavily on who they are. I feel that Roozen’s

claim is significant to me, because it made me realize that people view writing to
 Shiva Annareddy 2

be the representation of one’s inner self. Another significant claim made by an

author is they see that “writing…functions as a mean of displaying our identities”

(Roozen 51). This supports the understanding I had of the previous claim, but this

contains a deeper significance to me, because it helps acknowledge that writing

explores the inner and outer identities of the self instead of just the inner

identity. Lastly, a claim of significance that I found in this reading is when an

author states that writing is “a means of engaging with the possibilities for

selfhood available in a given community” (Roozen 51). I view this claim to have

such importance, because it helps me configure certain communities view writing

with pride and they may inhibit a first opinion on your character based on the

complexity or structure utilized in your writing.

In addition to the claims containing a good amount of significance to me,

there have been some vital writing experiences in the past that have shaped my

relationship with writing. One of those experiences was my fourth grade FCAT

writing exam. This was before the invention of FSAs and FCAT was still a big thing.

If I recall correctly, I used to write essays only for the purpose of addressing the

prompt and I used to be afraid to dive deeper into my writing, because I thought
 Shiva Annareddy 3

it would mess up the flow of my essay. However, on the day of the FCAT writing

exam, I decided to go all out and just let everything that came into my mind,

relating to the prompt, to be put onto the paper and it seemed to be that I was

able to formulate a pretty good response. It turned out to be a successful exam

for me and this experience relates to the claim of writing “is not so much about

using a particular set of skills as it is about becoming a particular kind of person”

(Roozen 51), because I chose to let my thoughts freely ‘speak out’ during the

exam instead of just trying to adhere to fulfilling the requirements of the prompt.

After having read these sections on identity and enacting identities, I would

describe my current writing identity and community, which is my identity writing

as a college student, as the best version of myself yet. I view my current writing

self to have the most experience than compared to my past writing self-versions. I

feel like the complexity of my writing is at its top level than compared to the past

and the vocabulary and structure that I incorporate into my compositions are

better than they ever have been before. I feel like my ‘identities’ are well-

represented in my writing through my current writing self. However, I think I will

not be writing much compositions in the future as my major is more math and
 Shiva Annareddy 4

computer based. Contrastingly, some values and writing practices that I might

assimilate into those future discourse communities are the use of intertextuality

and genre. My reports that I might have to create to submit to my boss will be

formatted in the same manner as other reports he would receive that are in the

same genre. In those reports, in order to reference data or any other statistical

statement, I would need to base the information off data collected by other

people in order to support the credibility and validity of my claims.

 Shiva Annareddy 5

Bibliography

1. Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth A. Wardle. Naming What We Know:

Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Utah State University Press, 2016.