Response to Jaqueline Guzman:
I agree with Jaqueline that academic writing is frequently dreadful because of the plagiarism. All of us know that plagiarism is bad as means cheating and stealing ideas from other people and violates the intellectual property rights; as Dolak writes, “Academic freedom is a fundamental right. But within that right is the ethical issue of academic integrity” (Dolak, 2003, p. 1). However, the students hear about the dreads of plagiarism and its consequences so often that for the most sensitive of them, writing process becomes really terrible. Indeed, we cannot avoid writing, but always thinking about the possibility of plagiarism while using the required supportive academic sources makes the student stressful. In this context, the avoidance of plagiarism becomes even more important than the good mark. Also, I like the idea about the one way of writing. The school system really teaches us to write essays and research papers the same way, and it takes away our creativity. Students tend to use the same structures that also contribute to plagiarism, and their brains start to think the same every time while writing. It is difficult to escape such thinking, especially when you are not a very creative person or when your professor is too strict.
Response to Maria Martinez:
I like Maria’s idea about the correlation between the order and creativity. Indeed, we understand that some writing types, for instance, advertising slogans or academic writing, cannot exist without rules, but following these rules takes away a part of creativity and limits the writer. At the same time, academic writing is hardly possible without the support of ideas by academic sources, which creates difficulties when the writer has enough knowledge about the theme but cannot express them in the desirable way as should adjust to the required sources. However, one should note that in this context, the writer can demonstrate his ability to be creative even being limited to the requirements. During their lives, people are always limited with the requirements, and in order not to become robots able just to follow the rules, they should be able to find a way to express themselves remaining within the established framework. I think that academic writing is good for the development of this ability and for the preparing of students to adult life and work.
References
Dolak, F. (2003). Academic integrity and intellectual property. Ball State University. Retrieved from https://cms.bsu.edu/-/media/www/departmentalcontent/library/copyright/copyrightforum/v1i2.pdf?la=en.
