By Ricky J. Revilla
In the article “Habituated Practice Can Lead to Entrenchment” by Chris M. Anson, he writes about the writers being subjected to repeated practice and how that affects standards to different communities. Chris explains that this repetitive practice leads to conditions psychologist call automaticity or unconscious competence. Some examples mentioned by Chris are when experienced drivers shift gears while multitasking, a veteran policeman being objective when a subjective scenario would have been better suited. He further states that this practice of writing is an example of the 5-layer paragraph writers learn during high school. This causes failure when writing to the expectations of new rhetorical communities. He mentions that novice and prolific academic writers alike could encounter the effect of habituated practice by struggling to write for unfamiliar communities. On the other hand, Chris M. Anson tells us about scholarly debates of opinions. Some writing experts advocate for a pedagogical approach, giving the writer the chance to confront new things with better awareness and others argue there will always be difficulty, to some degree.
I believe habits and entrenched skills could have a lot of advantages and disadvantages depending on how we practice using them. For my experience of this article, I relate to my writing skills being impacted negatively. My work is very repetitive, entrenched from responding to so many emails or formal writing pieces for evaluation purposes. The type of writing almost requires repetition because it always has the same format or requirement. I could relate to this causing an issue on me as a writer. When responding to non-work-related emails, for example a teacher from my child’s school I can see how I’m writing for the same audience and not expressing myself in a way that they would understand. What has become automatic for me is how I start and end the email, including only the facts and not expressing myself showing a lack of depth or interest which is furthest from the truth. However, the advantages of being able to complete our work from which we have repetitive practice could be beneficial. Having the ability to reassess our work after formulating an opinion is soundly underrated. When faced with writing an opinion outside of your own community formulating your thoughts in the most comfortable way and then either validating or revising them is beneficial. Overall, I believe that habituated practice and automatic skill are a good thing that we should continue to expand on.
Growing up I was a big fan of Bruce Lee Philosophy – YouTube
how I imagine the writer inside me looks Man Formal Wear Messenger Bag – Free image on Pixabay
Required reading “Habituated Practice can Lead to Entrenchment” concept 5: Writing is (Also Always) a Cognitive Activity Naming What We Know: (oclc.org)https://muse-jhu-edu.lcc.idm.oclc.org/book/40635
