Week 5: Taking stock at the halfway point of the course
The aim of this post is to summarise my understanding of the feedback I received over the weekend on the progress of my blog, and to consider how I can address the points raised in the feedback in order to further exploit the possibilities offered by the blog and corresponding dialogue with my tutor. Overall, the feedback reflected my own assessment of my strengths and possible areas for development and served as reassuring confirmation that I possess a good level of self-awareness and ability to self-evaluate. It was pleasing to see certain strengths validated in your comments, including critical awareness and communication style, but in this post I would prefer to focus on the areas for development identified.
The first area to address concerns scope and the importance of focus in blog entries and assignments. My posts so far have been lengthy and comprehensive which is indicative of my tendency towards a meticulous approach to the completion of tasks and a mildly anxious concern to avoid important omissions in my work. This can obviously be both a blessing and a curse. My work has often been praised for its rigor but I have historically struggled with word limits and the conciseness they require. At times my work has also been said to lack depth in its attempt to cover all bases. It would pay to remind myself at this stage of one of the key aspects of criticality – that of selectiveness – and the consequent importance of identifying a clear focus and justifying the inclusion or omission of points, partly as a means of demonstrating critical ability and partly in order to achieve sufficient depth in the development of ideas.
This brings me on nicely to the issue of critical voice, highlighted in your feedback as an area with significant potential for further development. My understanding is that, while I am already successfully demonstrating critical awareness in certain aspects, my critical voice is not always evident in the blog posts. This immediately got me asking myself the same question many students have asked me in my several years of working as an academic English tutor: how do I express my voice clearly whilst at the same time adhering to the conventions of academic discourse by using impersonal, tentative language? No wonder I’ve found this such a difficult question to answer if I struggle with the same issue in my own writing! Perhaps in my blog posts my voice has been obscured in the process of trying to hone my writing skills and broaden my vocabulary range, or simply trying to orientate myself to a new medium of communication. Perhaps there has been a bit too much going on in the first half of the course – cognitive and affective overload combined – to the extent that some of my thoughts and ideas have been swallowed up. Or perhaps it’s just a question of developing the confidence to state my opinions more self-assuredly, which is something for which a blog is an ideally-suited medium. Here’s hoping my voice grows in prominence now that I’m settled into the rhythm of the course.
The final aspect which you addressed in some detail in the feedback relates to the scope for multimodal communication via the blog, an area to which I would like to direct particular effort in the second half of the course. You encouraged me to explore and exploit the possibilities of the blog space in terms of variety of media forms and creativity in their use, at the same time as reflecting on their significance, opportunities and limitations when compared with conventional academic discourse. So far I acknowledge that I have been more focused on instilling a regular habit of writing on the blog and not given much consideration to the format of my posts or the type of media used. In the coming weeks I intend to mine the discussion forum and the ideas of my course colleagues for inspiration and try to be more experimental with my blogging, whilst maintaining the regularity of posting, continuing to develop my critical voice and aiming for a clear focus in my posts. This is likely to be a tricky balancing act but a necessary one in order for me to get the most out of the blog and the IDEL course as a whole.
If you feel I have misinterpreted any of your feedback, please don’t hesitate to give me further clarification and guidance as necessary! Thanks!
You have not misinterpreted anything, Jemima! As always, well done and here is to have a wonderful second half of the course!
That’s reassuring – many thanks for your support and guidance so far Michael!