Response to Signs Of Life In the U.S.A (pages 21-28)

In the book Signs of Life in the USA, Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon emphasize the potential in a person’s everyday experiences in serving as evidence in a college leveled essay. They also explain what it is to be an active reader and the benefits it has in writing.  By using these techniques you can improve the quality of your writing, but how can you determine what experiences are considered important and which aren’t? Also, how can you incorporate evidence from a text to support your personal evidence without diminishing the strength in your essay’s quality?

Maasik and Solomon explain that when responding to prompts about topics such as popular culture, a person’s experiences or observations can serve as evidence or support regarding the author’s position toward the subject matter. Maasik and Solomon state that, “You should certainly draw on your own knowledge, but to write a strong essay, you need to do more than just go with the “flow” of your subject as you live it; instead, you need to consider it from a critical distance” (Maasik and Solomon 21).  Given that a person goes through many experiences through his/ her life that can pertain to the topic, how can the author decide which experiences are the most useful in answering the assigned prompt? Maasik and Solomon do an outstanding job in explain why a personal experience can serve as evidence but they don’t elaborate on how o determine which experiences, out of numerous, are more useful. For example, in responding to a prompt regarding popular culture in the USA which angle would be more effective to attack the prompt, would it be music, art, food, or economy. Also, once you find your angle, how do you know which experiences will support your angle more effectively? In my opinion, an author should utilize an experience that pertains to the topic and reduces the possibilities of going out of topic. By doing so the author will be able to address the topic and, also, prevent him/ her from going off topic.

                According to Massik and Solomon, in order to become a better writer, one has to be an active reader. Active reading is “to get more than just the “drift” of a passage” (Maasik and Solomon 22). They explain that by active reading a writer improves his/ her comprehension and also prepares to respond to a given prompt before prewriting. They give examples of active reading such as double reading, writing annotations, asking the five W’s and the H(what, when, where, who, why, and how), or highlighting. Although, once you pull out the important details of a text, how can you use them along with your personal experiences in topics like popular culture? In using evidence from a text along with personal experiences, you can run with the risk with weakening your point if you don’t use the perfect quote.

Overall, both authors do a marvelous job in explaining what an active reader is and why we should use our experiences in prompt responses. The only thing they weren’t quite clear on was explaining how to choose these two techniques together and also how to choose effective personal evidence.

works cited

Maasik, Sonia, and Jack Solomon. Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2015. Print.