Student Metaphors

The article written by James C. McDonald called, "Student Metaphors of Themselves as Writers," is about an assignment an English Professor has his students complete.  They must provide a metaphor that reflects how they view themselves as writers.  Students took different approaches to it from the processes they wrote it to the overall products of their papers.

The article is broke into 5 different section: the introduction, four categories of metaphors, and the conclusion.  The main idea of the first section is to introduce the assignment and give a quick overview of the varieties of metaphors. The following section topics include; metaphors of process and speed, metaphors of fear and courage, metaphors of control, and metaphors of silence.  Each section reflects back to the assignment.  He explains the creative metaphors that students come up with.  Some view writing as "dangerous and fearful," while others describe it as them being "a business executive running a large corporation."  This gave he professor an excellent idea as to how each student perceived their writing abilities and writing in general.