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.

My WAW Bibliography

Academic Writing

Bernhardt, Stephen. "Seeing the Text." CCC 37.1 (Feb. 1986): 66-78.

Ketter, Jean & Judy Hunter. "Creating a writer's identity on the boundaries of two communities of practice." Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. Eds. Charles Bazerman & David R. Russell. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse, 2003. 307-329.

MacDonald, Susan Peck. "Problem Definition in Academic Writing." College English 49.3 (March 1987): 315-331.

Penrose, Ann and Cheryl Geisler. "Reading and Writing Without Authority." College Composition and Communication 45.4 (Dec. 1994): 505-520.

Haas, Christina. "Learning to Read Biology: One Student's Rhetorical Development in College." Written Communication 11 (1994): 43-84.

Haas, Christina. "Beyond 'Just the Facts': Reading as Rhetorical Action." In Hearing Ourselves Think: Cognitive Research in the College Writing Classroom (Eds. Ann M. Penrose and Barbara M. Sitko). New York: Oxford UP, 19-32.

Higgins, Lorraine. "Reading to Argue: Helping Students Transform Source Texts." In Hearing Ourselves Think: Cognitive Research in the College Writing Classroom (Eds. Ann M. Penrose and Barbara M. Sitko). New York: Oxford UP, 70-101.

Rhetoric of 9/11

I've long thought about a course on the rhetoric of 9/11. Plugging 9/11 into comppile reveals some interesting suggested readings...

Thinking through my own ENGL 230 course

I found this quote helpful:

Teachers can also invent projects where writing becomes more clearly a means to an end, to “constitute the class as a working group with some degree of complexity, continuity, and interdependency of joint activity” in order to mirror the rich “communicative relations that contextualize writing in the workplace” as Dias et al. (1999, p. 235) advocate. (326)

Ketter, Jean & Judy Hunter. "Creating a writer's identity on the boundaries of two communities of practice." Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. Eds. Charles Bazerman & David R. Russell. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse, 2003. 307-329.

I think the key phrase is "where writing becomes more clearly a means to an end"--that's what I'm currently doing in my Business Writing course and, to a lesser extent, in my WAW writing 100 course.

Ketter/Hunter

I just finished reading:

Ketter, Jean & Judy Hunter. "Creating a writer's identity on the boundaries of two communities of practice." Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. Eds. Charles Bazerman & David R. Russell. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse, 2003. 307-329.

A terrific article which nicely makes the case for the value of an internship for students. Here are the passages which spoke to me, in particular:

"Erin’s story of negotiating the transition between writing for academia and writing for work is unique. But her experience suggests one way in which students might learn about writing in different communities. Erin’s consciousness of her identity as a writer is heightened by her work on the boundaries of two contrasting communities of practice as she thinks about and comes to understand the constraints and freedoms afforded by each community. Her participation in the two communities of practice enhances her understanding of writing as a complex interaction between the writer’s identity and social cultural practices of the community. As do Dias et. al (1999), we see that the ways of learning about writing and the purposes of writing activity in academic and workplace communities of practice can differ, but we learn through this study that Erin benefits more from her participation in each because of her participation in both." (326)

"...our study shows the benefit of providing opportunities for teachers and students to explore how contrasting communities of practice define successful writing activity and how writing activity operates in the cultural and political sphere of each community. Thus, we believe, academic communities of practice should provide students with opportunities to write in non-academic contexts and should encourage students to reflect about and discuss how these non-academic contexts frame writing activity. At the same time, students may benefit from discussing how the academic contexts in which college writing often occurs also affect writing activity. Such discussions should include how writing activity, both in academia and in other contexts, is a means of operating purposively in the world." (327)

Resources about Online Teaching

Hewett, Beth L., & Crista Ehmann Powers (Eds.). (2007). Special issue: Online teaching and learning: Preparation, development, and online communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 16, 1.

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