Writer’s Fortnight Reflection Post

Prompt: “Our student-writers rose to the challenge, producing authentic, responsible and powerful pieces”

The construction of the featured article starts by taking notes during interviews. Finding an angle that can successfully engage your target audience is the most important part of writing your article. Journalistic storytelling for me is only powerful if I can somewhat immerse myself in the life experience of the subject. Before I even started organizing my notes, I have already decided on my target audiences being students in my age group since I gained so much insight about university application through my speaker’s presentation. University is a relevant topic to me and my peers. The speaker also had a vastly different point of view towards university application in regards to financial struggles, and it was very touching to me since it was a facet of the process I rarely thought about. Just the planning phase revealed to me the elements that make an article powerful.

In order to create a piece of article that is appropriate to be released into the wider school community, I had to be a very responsible journalist. My first responsibility would be to the guest speaker who I elected to create a featured article on. Listening to the recordings, and going over my notes during the interview was the first step I took to be responsible for the article I was producing. My subject’s consent regarding how I portrayed her, and how accurately the story they wish to present is being told is important to my process of improving as an academic writer.

I presented my articles to 5 nominated readers including my subject before my final submission. Their comments were one of the most fruitful parts of the writing process. I received comments on structure, register, grammar, and most importantly factual errors, pointed out by the subject. Improving and fixing my article was being responsible to the subject, the school community, and myself as an author.

Learning to write a featured article was an incredible challenge for me during the process of improving my academic writing.