The Thonney Method

In Teresa Thonney’s article “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse” she generalizes ways to approach academic writing, suggesting professors use these conventions to teach their classes. Conveniently, Thonney incorporated six suggestions early on in her article, making it easy to read. By structuring the article and separating it into sections with subheadings, it allowed her article to flow easily, something we can all appreciate. Although students are not the main audience, I found her suggestions to teachers helpful in my own writing.

            Thonney’s first convention, “Academic Writers Respond to What Others Have Written about Their Topic”, is something I often did in my RWS 100 class. Throughout the semester we were asked to respond to other texts, evaluate their arguments, and provide evidence as to why it was weak or strong. I was constantly referring to other authors, addressing important topics, and elaborating on them. Contrarily, it was required that we not include our opinion. This way, we were simply responding to the text, rather than “analyzing, synthesizing, or adding to what others have said” (Thonney, 349). I was applying half of Thonney’s first convention. This proved to be difficult as the semester went on, seeing as how we discussed controversial topics such as smoking, but weren’t allowed to give our opinion on the matter. Nevertheless, I was still analyzing arguments, just not to the depths as Thonney is discussing here.

            I appreciate how Thonney separated this article, first introducing the main conventions then going in depth about each one. I also enjoy how she uses her own conventions in her paper. First introducing her text and why it was important, identifying sources, organizing sources into separate subheadings, and summarizing her article allowed it to flow nicely and further prove her ideas on how to teach. This mirrored example of her text compared to her advice allowed Thonney to not only gain credibility with her audience but also prove her conventions work and her research is valid. Her extensive research shows her dedication to helping other teachers, something I admire, and thought was very helpful to others reading as well. I found it interesting that her sources shared similar structures although they were all from different genres. although Thonney incorporated many different aspects of writing into her paper, there were a few things I found that I did not like.

Thonney’s diction in her text was somewhat wordy and sophisticated, making it more difficult to read. This may be because we are, of course, not her main audience, and those who are are much more advanced in reading academic writing. This was an academic article, so she wrote scholarly. She appealed to her audience, while not exactly appealing to me. Additionally, her sources were very well represented however I was not familiar with any of them. Again, this is because we are not her main audience, but her sources were credible all the same. This was my first time reading academic writing and I thought it was interesting to see the many perspectives of things, despite the few things I did not like.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Thonney’s article and thought seeing these topics from the teacher’s standpoint was helpful as a student. Seeing how things can be taught and the different learning techniques that can be applied allowed me to look at learning from a different angle. Education can be approached many ways, and I agree with Thonney that these are the most successful.