Writer’s Fortnight Reflection
srini92577@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg Comments 1 comment
“Our student-writers rose to the challenge, producing authentic, responsible and powerful pieces”How far does this describe your experience? Consider the insights [to journalistic storytelling, to our community] that you gained, and the personal rewards and challenges of the process.
Yes, I believe the whole process of journalistic writing helped us become more authentic and responsible authors. Throughout there were several steps that helped us have an insightful experiences.
Firstly, during the week, we had several interesting and impactful conversations with several speakers who could be our potential story profiles. However, these speakers were much more than that. We were given the opportunity to have deep and philosophical conversations and share personal experiences and learn how to ask meaningful questions. Speakers like Angela Noronha, who spoke with us about the realities of ‘prestige’ and the power of decision-making as a student, or Sergey Grechishkin, who spoke to us about large concepts like what ‘home’ means and gave us insights into life as a Soviet kid, really resonated with us as students and expanded our view on the world and the experiences people have. These conversations were one of the things about Writer’s Fortnight I found personally rewarding as I had the ability to have stimulating, non-superficial and meaningful conversations.
In our FIB Class, we also met with reputed authors and journalists which personally made me more knowledgable about journalism as a whole and expanded my views on expression through language. We met Enlai Yeoh, a reputed journalist parent within our community, who taught us the basics of professional journalism. This conversation taught me much more about what journalism is really about – it isn’t just reporting on an issue. I gained detailed and distinct insights such as using the ‘active voice’, rounding up numbers or the importance of punctuation which I would have overlooked otherwise. Importantly, I learnt the responsibility in maintaining authenticity and accuracy in journalistic writing which I did not think was as crucial to good journalism. I learnt that journalism is much more than a text type – it needs to be sensitive to context, audience and carefully worded as well.
Furthermore, I found the whole interview process while writing our articles insightful as I learnt much more about the teachers and students within this community and learnt how to ask insightful questions, cater information to specific audiences and spread a message. Developing this helped my achieve focus on the topic I was talking about. Being able to hold a ‘guided’ conversation was another thing I learnt that helped me keep the interviews on track but also giving them room to explore.
One thing I found challenging initially was being able to steer away from the normal literary and essay writing and learn how to persuade, inform and explain content engagingly, but through the process, I found it interesting to learn and explore a different side of English through this process.
One thought on “Writer’s Fortnight Reflection”
yep, back to the essay grind…so glad you enjoyed the break and the insights that came with it.
“I learnt that journalism is much more than a text type – it needs to be sensitive to context, audience and carefully worded as well.”
Great!