ReThinking WAW (order)

It seems to me that a more useful place to start a WAW course might focus on discourse community, move to academic writing to study a bit about how writing functions in academic discourse communities, and then move to individual writers, and spend a bit of time on composing processes of individual writers. I feel like the way I have been doing it has spent too much time on the individual and not enough time on the social. So, a re-organized course might look like:

• Discourse Community/Community of Practice/Activity System (including genre knowledge)
• Academic Discourse Communities
• Composing Process of Individuals

I am also thinking about how a literature review is a nice culminating assignment for this course because it is a great test of academic writing in the sense that students must organize and present a conversation on a particular topic. I'm struck by the distinction between reporting on a conversation and contributing to a conversation and not at all sure that contributing to a conversation need be a part of this course (I do believe it is possible, but I think it is a tall order for a college freshmen). So, a culminating series of assignments:

• Annotated Bibliography
• Literature Review
• Conference Presentation

To resolve the issue of conducting primary or original research, I might ask the student to write a short follow-up paper in which he suggests potential research questions, based on what he has seen in the review of literature. The idea being--now you know what we know, tell us what we should know or have missed or need to know more about, and why. This might be an interesting way to take the project one step forward without committing to an "experiment" or whatever.