Announcements and Homework

Important Announcements:

1. The email address for our google group is: writingrhetoric@googlegroups.com. If you send an email to that address, or reply to an email that came to you from that address, you are sending your email to everyone in both of my Writing 100 classes. If you want to correspond with me, and just me, please address your email to mmichaud@ric.edu.
2. Please put the following on your radar (more info to come in class): i) you can expect a quiz on the Downs/Wardle, Haas/Flower, and Berkenkotter articles on Thursday, 9/18. ii) You can expect a draft of a formal paper (one of the three) to be due sometime during the week of 9/22.

Homework for 10/16

1. Go to our google groups page and download the document (under “FILES”) called: Notes.Haas:Flower.pdf. Read this document carefully; it is my notes on the most important points we discussed in regard to the Haas/Flower article.
2. Go to our google groups page and download the document called (under “FILES”): Berkenkotter.pdf. Print out a copy and read it. This is the major reading assignment for Tuesday. In this article, Carol Berkenkotter asked Donald Murray, an accomplished writer and writing teacher, if she could use him for an experiment to see what she could learn about how expert writers do their work. The article concludes with a brief follow-up essay from Murray in which he writes about what it was like to be Berkenkotter’s “lab rat” (meaning: research subject).
3. Blog Entry #3: Apply what you learned from the Haas/Flower about reading. Begin to create a “constructive” reading of the Berkenkotter article. In your blog entry, create three sub-headings:

a. Content Strategies
b. Feature/Function Strategies
c. Rhetorical Strategies

4. As you read, take detailed notes under each sub-heading. So, as you begin to speculate about the content of the article, take notes about what it seems to be about; as you begin to notice the various features within the article (or parts), take notes on them and what it appears their functions are; and finally, employ rhetorical strategies by going “beyond the text” to imagine the rhetorical situation of the article itself—take notes on what you notice when you think of the piece rhetorically, as a discourse act. (300-500 words)

If you have any questions/concerns, don't hesitate to get in touch (mmichaud@ric.edu).

mm