[Draft 1] Reader Response Outline

Parker-Pope (2015) mentioned in her article “Writing Your Way to Happiness” that writing down your thoughts and problems improves physical and mental health. It can change one’s perception of life positively which makes them happier. Studies on American students proved who engage in expressive writing achieve better results and are less likely to quit college. Also, expressive writing allows one to identify life obstacles and tackle them. An example used was about someone who failed to achieve her goals for reasons she assumed only to discover the root of her problems when she wrote down her thoughts.

 

Thesis: The author’s claim on how writing down one’s thoughts can help him identify his problems and obstacles and tackle them, is highly reasonable as identifying problems and obstacles is necessary in order to solve them.

 

1^st Point : Writing down problems and obstacles can help us to clear our mind of the problems and obstacles we are facing.

 

Explanation of supporting idea: When our mind is clear from the problems and obstacles after writing them down, we can now focus completely on coming up with solutions to overcome them.

 

Examples or citation to supporting idea: Overcoming Math anxiety by writing down the stress and thoughts http://www.scottkpowers.com/2014/08/what-writing-does.html

 

2^nd Point: Writing down our problems and thoughts can positively change our perceptions of the problems and obstacles we are facing.

Explanation of supporting idea: As we write our problems down, our negative feelings are being relieved which allows us to make way for the positive ones.

Examples or citation to supporting idea: “Some researchers have developed a method where they say, if something is nagging at us, write about it in the third person so we can look at it as objectively as we can as opposed to immersing ourselves in a negative experience. That kind of distance can be really helpful to change our story and to look at it in a new way and give new meaning to it” http://lifehacker.com/5891564/recalibrate-your-reality

 

3^rd Point: Identifying obstacles and writing them down does not necessarily lead to the tackling of the obstacles.

Explanation of supporting idea: If the obstacles and problems are merely written down without any actions taken, the obstacles and problems will remain as it is.

Examples or citation to supporting idea: In the case of a problem like time management, we need to consult for advice or tips from others on how to manage our time wisely in order to tackle it. A problem as such require us to act upon it and not just merely expressing it on paper.