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Rae Overton

Nikolas Gardiakos

ENC 1101

29 September 2021

Reading Response Two

Both Deborah Brandt and Sondra Perl write interesting articles about the processes of

writing and how they can be impacted by external sources. Both utilize case studies to analyze

how sponsors and/or experience can make a difference in writing and development. Brandt

explores how sponsors make all the difference in writing in her “Sponsors of Literacy” article.

Perl writes on the specific writing process of unexperienced writers in her article “The

Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers” in order to discover how students develop

their writing and what can be improved upon.

Deborah Brandt’s article heavily focuses on the concept of sponsors in literacy. She

explains sponsors to be any sort of person, system, etc. put in place in order to aid someone in

developing their literacies at a mutual benefit to both parties. It’s like how advertisers will pay a

company to advertise their product or service. The sponsored individual gains money from the

deal while the sponsor themselves gain exposure to a larger audience that may in turn boost their

own profits. Literacy sponsors work in a similar manner. Though just about everyone has the

opportunity to gain sponsors, an individuals sponsorship opportunities are often impacted by

race, class, etc. as Brandt explores in her article (Brandt 246). Brandt does studies on two

individuals by the names of Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez to find out how two people’s

different life experiences impacted their literacy journeys and how the different sponsors they

were exposed to allowed them to develop. Branch grew up surrouned by technology and was
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from a relatively wealthy family that offered him constant exposure to computers and enabled

him to create contacts with people within the field; while Lopez grew up in a more economically

challenged household and she worked as a housemaid to earn her income, with little exposure to

technology besides the word processing machine her father gave to her before she transferred to

a technical college (Brandt 250-251). Even though Branch and Lopez ended up going to the

same technical college in the same city, they grew up with very different backgrounds that gave

them wildly different opportunities. Branch’s wealthy family and childhood exposure to

technology gave him the boost he needed to get a head-start on his learning opportunities and

exposed him to more people that could help him build his future without having to even maintain

a strenuous job to support himself. His sponsorship from his father allowed him to grow up

relatively unscathed with all the opportunities he could dream. Lopez on the other hand was

given very few handouts in her earlier years and had to work continuously to gain her position at

technical college. She was not given the same kind of opportunities or exposure to technology

because of her low-wage and ethnic background unlike Branch who was born into a wealthy

white family. These two scenarios show the differences sponsors can make in the life of people

developing literacies. While Lopez may have struggled more, her experience also lent itself to

help her because her biliteracy skills aided her later in life when seeking jobs, similarly to how

Branch’s technical exposure aided him with job prospects (Brandt 252). Though Branch doesn’t

know Spanish and Lopez isn’t a technical genius, both their sponsorships lead them down very

different paths that eventually aided them in being successful.

Sondra Perl writes her article on the writing process of college students. In her article she

does a study on a 20-year-old ex marine named Tony and observes his writing process both

through audio recording and what he is actually writing (Perl 103). Perl finds that Tony, similar
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to many unskilled writers, is very recursive in his work meaning that he repeatedly goes back to

change, reread, edit, etc. portions of his as he is writing. I have found myself to demonstrate a

very similar writing process to Tony, in that I am very recursive in my work. I often like to

reread sentences before I move on with my topic and even reread the prompt of what I am

supposed to be writing about to ensure that I stay close enough to the topic that my writing does

not feel like it has gone astray from the main idea. In addition to being recursive, I also find

myself rephrasing topics that I do not particularly understand or care about in a similar manner to

Tony so that the content is easier to manage and becomes more digestible (Perl 104). Rewording

a topic is very beneficial in making a topic easier to write about on your own terms rather than

however it has been originally written for you. It also makes you think more about your position

on the topic and how to write about it as you try to word it in a way that matters more to you.

Though Tony’s writing process is similar to my own in it’s recursiveness, I’ve noticed many

differences. Tony tends to spend a large amount of time editing his essays and struggles with

miscue analysis leaving his essays feeling incomplete, overcorrected, etc. as well as facing rule

confusion throughout the writing process on whether or not what he is writing sounds correct

(Perl 105-111). Though I can relate to not always feeling what I wrote flows correctly similar to

Tony’s rule confusion, I tend to pride myself on how “put together” my essays are. I make my

best efforts to ensure that grammar is correct and nothing is left uncontextualized throughout my

writing so as to not leave the audience left confused about what they are reading and where my

information and observations are coming from. I also tend to write in larger chunks and don’t do

any immense amounts of editing while I am writing, only the occasional rewording of a sentence

or reorganizing my words so that they flow better. This is an aspect of writing in which I believe

I strive, versus Tony who seems to have a more difficult time.

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Both Brandt and Perl give us a deeper look into how literature and literacies can be

impacted by our own upbringings and environments. While Brandt explained to us how different

backgrounds effected the literacies of Branch and Lopez, Perl took us through the case study of

Tony to show how those who struggle with writing go about the actual process and how having a

limited knowledge on writing can impact us. Both allow us to look back at our own writing

habits and backgrounds to analyze how similar we are and how different we are to the

individuals discussed in both articles.

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Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy” Writing About Writing, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and

Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2014, pp. 244-266

Perl, Sondra. “The Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers” Writing About Writing,

edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2014, pp. 93-117