This section of the web resource is devoted to describing writing assignments and classroom practices and situating them within the scholarly tradition(s) of Composition/Rhetoric. The assignments & critiques are available in Adobe PDF format.
Assignment Critiques (Fall 2004) | Practice Reports (Fall 2005) | Classroom Exercises (Fall 2006)
Writing Exercises (Fall 2007)
Writing Assignment Critiques (Fall 2004)
Classroom Practice Reports (Fall 2005)
Classroom Exercises (Fall 2006)
This semester, ENGL 400 students were asked to provide a "Scholarly Overview" of a topic in composition theory/pedagogy and then to design a "Classroom Exercise" relating to the topic. The Scholarly Overviews are available on the Pedagogy page.
- > "Understanding the Way Writers Think About Their AUDIENCE" (Chris Mays) - "I wanted students to acquire the small habit of thinking about their audience when they write....When students write, they should know that their readers are not reproductions of themselves, and that the goal of a good paper - of their papers - is lucidity, especially to readers who do not possess the same in-depth knowledge of the subject....Overall, the goal of audience awareness is inextricably bound up with the concept of clarity, and a solid grasp of both should be an overarching goal of a writing course in general....This lesson, though, only constitutes the first of what I believe should be a series of assignments throughout the term designed to enhance clarity through audience awareness. The creation of this awareness should be followed by a lesson in the proper implementation of it in their own writing."
- > "Voice Exercise" (Allyson Whipple) - "I wanted to see if the other students felt the difference between writing for school and writing for a different purpose, such as keeping a journal. While the class developed an excellent dialogue, it seemed grounded more in theory than in personal applications. As a result, the exercise functioned better as an advanced undergraduate or a graduate class....Were I to give this exercise again, I would...cut out some of the sub-questions...based on what I felt related best to the particular class I was teaching."
- > "Gatekeepers of the Academic Discourse Community: A Play" (Jason Stuart) - "I attempted to create an exercise that used controversies familiar (hopefully) to the professional class, yet unfamiliar (hopefully) to the students....Noting the gap between the sort of writing that Bartholomae (and Elbow, for that matter) expected from their students and the sort of writing encountered by students as models for academic writing, I wondered if it was possible to disrupt the performative aspect of a discourse community by calling attention to the potential differences between student writing and professional academic writing....By having participants speak to each other in the most jargon-laden examples of literary theory, I hoped to place experienced graduate students in the position of first-year composition students."
- > "Dissonance and Discovery: Exercises in Paragraph Organization" (Jason Kalin) - "After trying the exercise on my own writing, i realized that the jumble was not trite at all; rather, I realized that jumbling the paragraph dislocated and recontextualized the sentences....By dislocating and recontextualizing my sentences, I started out new and created the dissonance that allowed me to discover the incongruities of my writing. I wanted to stimulate that experience in my students....I believe that organization and coherence are ... fundamental to the writing process. After the conversation has begun about organization, other things can be added, such as audience, voice, argument, and discourse communities. In fact, I can see my assignment as a possible two class discussion. In the first class, we would discuss the first exercise and perhaps the second and assign the rest for homework. In the next, we would discuss paragraphing in general, leading into a discussion about argument structure and form, which I attempted to do in the third exercise. Argumentation could then lead to audience, and a conversation about the assumptions we make about our audiences while writing an argument, which leads to what kind of voice is necessary to reach that audience, which leads to how we enter discourse communities."
- > "Building Rubrics" (Rachel Benish) - "The goal was to collectively develop a generic rubric for respondign to undergraduate papers....Instead of illuminating what the students value in an essay, the object of asking students to work with rubrics is to help them understand waht their teachers are looking for in their writing....[In revising this exercise for a composition classroom,] I would...present students with two rubrics (possibly one analytical and one holistic) and ask them to identify the qualities emphasized in both rubrics by answering the following questions: (1) What seems to be the most important criteria for a good paper in this rubric? (2) How would you describe this aspect in your own words? (3) What seems to be least important? I might also give them a copy of an essay and its evaluation using each rubric."
- > "Style and Grammar" (Kate Anderson) - "I chose for my guiding mantra the idea that grammar, as a science, can be manipulated by a conscientious writer in order to establish personal style....My exercise...gave students a preview of the kind of question I wanted to intensify in class. The students were given poems by cummings and Stein, headed with the question, 'Why Are These OK? (are they?)"....The style part of the exercise was inspired by the advice of Winston Weathers, Erwin Sternberg, et al, who believe there is a place for literature in the classroom especially because of its potential as a teacher of style."
- > "Japanese Rhetoric" (Jason Barone) - "My teaching objectives for my class presentation on Japanese composition rhetoric were to demonstrate some of the organizational and cultural patterns observable in Japanse L1 and L2 compositions, particularly where they differ from English....[The first] scramble exercise had arisen from my desire to seek to simulate the experience that an ESL student may have when faced with composing in English....The second exercise was a comparative activity in which I asked the students to look at two different essays written by a Japanese ESL student: the first written in English, and the second written in Japanese and translated back into English."
- > "Russian Rhetoric" (Yulia Popova) - "My teaching objective with the first part of the exercise was to demonstrate that it is very difficult, even for the native speakers of English, to write being conscious of the rules all the time, and because in case of ESL writing these difficulties are even more obvious, I wanted my fellow students to see those difficulties, so that they could be more tolerant and patient when dealing with ESL writers in their future classrooms or in the writing center."
- > "Arabic Rhetoric" (Abdullah Bosaad) - "My ESL presentation focuses on L1 and L2 interference....[This exercise did] show my colleagues how their knowledge of English writing conventions and norms controlled them when they had no - or little - knowledge about the conventions of Arabic writing."
Classroom Exercises (Fall 2006)
- > "Editing and Revision Exercise" (Miriam Goldman) - "This exercise would come in the second half of the semester, and in the context of writing exercises that focus on how grammar informs style, and how grammatical structure can be a source of power and control for the writer."
- > "Voice" (Megan Webb) - "This assignment focuses on allowing students to recognize the differnece between academic and non-academic discourse as related to the author's 'voice.'...[It] asks students to look at how an author's voice reveals his or her relation to and knowledge of the reader of a specific audience."
- > "Analyzing Arguments" (Jessica Brooks)
- > "Collaborative Writing Workshop" (Hannah Rankin)
- > "Assessment Workshop" (Samiya Ilmudeen)
- > "Metaheur Workshop" (Mary Assad)
|
