Rhetorical Situation

You might find this image helpful as your read Kantz.  

Topic Proposals

I realize that the Project #1 assignment does not say anything about Topic Proposals.  Also, a few of you asked me after class.  I just wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page with the assignment at this point.

For the Topic Proposal that you bring into class on Wednesday, you need to have a paragraph or more that states what topic you would like to approach and your reasoning about approaching that topic.  The chapter 1 introduction in Writing About Writing lays out some potential topics for you, but do not feel limited to those.  You will also want to look at the definition of construct to help you figure out exactly how to approach finding a topic.  You might also want to be aware that your topic could change when you start doing your research, depending on what you find in the conversation you are approaching.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Reading Response Comments

Just a note for you on how I am evaluating Reading Responses.  I will try to comment on everyone's blog at least once a week.  If you are doing a great job on responding, you will probably get more encouragement and kudos than recommendations for what you could add.  If you need improvement, I will offer encouragement and recommendations.  All recommendations will be suggestions for how to improve your responses and should not be taken as criticism.  I am trying to help all of you become better writers.  One of the main goals of the course is to improve your writing, not sustain the level you are at.  Everyone can improve (even my writing could stand some improvement).  All we can do is work at it.

Assignments and response groups for Wednesday, September 5

Monday, September 3

LABOR DAY
We will not be having class this day.

Wednesday, September 5

Please note the change in the schedule.

READ: WAW: Chapter 1 Introduction, "Texts/Constructs:  How do Readers Read and Writers Write?" (p. 34) and Kantz, "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively" (p. 67) 

DUE: 

1. Topic Proposal for Project #1 
2. Respond to one of the 3 prompts for "Getting Ready to Read" (p.68)
3. Reader Response, including summary and synthesis, answer QD: 1,2; AE: 2; Meta Moment (MM) (p. 85), and your thoughts

Response groups for Wednesday are as follows:

1. Michael and George
2. Wesley and Megan
3. Taylor and Greg
4. Quinn and Aaron
5. Gina (respond to whomever you would like)
6. Allison Sharpe and JD
7. Allison Shenk and Aubrey
8. Abby and Ally
9. Maia and Peter

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Friday, September 7

DUE:  Summary of Library Tutorials (keep an eye on future posting).  Also, instead of doing a reading response for this class, please REPLY to one of the comments made on your blog by one of your classmates.  If your classmates have not commented, please REPLY to me.

We are doing Library Tutorials in class.  You should note, however, that we will probably be holding class in a computer classroom.  You should refrain from bringing food or beverages this day.

Assignment and Response Groups for Friday, August 31

For Friday, August 31, you need to READ WAW: Kleine, "What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One--and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?" (p. 22).  Your reading response should include Summary and Synthesis of Kleine's article, answers to QD: 1,3,4 (p. 32-33), and your thoughts on the readings.

Response groups are as follows:

1. Michael and Megan
2. Wesley and Greg
3. Taylor and Aaron
4. Quinn and Marissa
5. Gina and Peter
6. Jill and JD
7. Allison Sharpe and Aubrey
8. Allison Shenk and Abby
9. Maia and George

As always, please contact me if you have and questions or need help with anything.

Revisit the Directions for Informal Writing

Wow.  I just did my first major look through on the class blogs.  I am still missing a few.  And some of you really used your blog to show off who you are.  Great!  I would like to review the assignment for a few of you.  You need to include (1) a summary of the articles read, (2) a synthesis of the conversation the article(s) are engaging, (3) answers to the assigned questions, and (4) then your thoughts on the reading.  I also asked you to do one of the pre reading activities on page 9 of Greene, which you have the option of bringing to class.

Please refer to Quinn's blog as a way to format your response to make sure you include all of the components.  If you do not have all of the components for the response, I suggest that you update your blog to include them.  We will talk about how the responses are working for you in class tomorrow.

Also, you may want to "follow" the class blog so that you know when it is updated.

What is Writing? In-class responses

What is writing?

1. The recording of stories, facts, and information for masses to communicate.
2. Writing is a way to express what you want to say verbally on paper.
3. Writing is using letters to make up words to express ideas.
4. Non-verbal form of communication using symbols to represent words and sounds.  Used to express knowledge.
5. Writing is a form of communication to transfer information silently from one or more people to one or more people.
6. Writing is the art of words to form stories, poetry, prose or other structures of writing.
7. Having the ability to compose ideas of thoughts onto a page in order to explain or express that particular idea.
8. Writing is speech that is readable often on paper or a computer.

Can we be more specific?  What about the writing that you do every day?  Writing is not just the assignments you do for classes or, for some of you, a way to express your creativity.  We mainly write to communicate.  We write emails, letters (some people are old fashioned), texts, instant messages, comments on Facebook, comments on blogs, tweets, etc.  People write more now than before we had the technology to communicate with friends half way across the world.

How does writing work?

1. Writing works by writing down what you need to say.
2. Writing works by thinking up a concept and putting it down on paper.
3. The mind forms what it wants to say and the writing is the product of these thoughts.  Writing must first be planned out if it wants to be neat and successful.
4. Letters represent sounds and when properly placed create words.
5. Writing is when you put pen to paper and say anything that is on your mind.
6. Writing is when one takes pen to paper, or fingers to a keyboard, and expresses ideas that others will be able to understand.
7. Writing uses words to create images in one's mind, helping to allow the reader to perceive it as he or she wants to.

The question is difficult.  Are we talking about how writing happens, the process of learning to write and how we write down what we want to communicate?  Or are we talking about how writing engages readers successfully?  What do you think?

What is your relationship to writing?

For some of us, our relationship with writing is both extremely private and very public.  We may love or hate writing, but then again, we may only love or hate academic writing.  We may really enjoy writing about how the day went on Facebook and then commenting on our friends' pages.  We may find ourselves in our journals.  We may have mixed feelings about writing.  

However you feel, I hope that during this class you and writing can work together on friendly terms.  You can always come see me or go to the Student Writing Center for assistance.  Writing is something that I enjoy in many forms, but that does not always means that writing is easy for me or that I do not work at it.  It is something that I have had a lot of practice doing.  I am a writer, as are all of you.

ARRRRR Blogs

I realize that setting up this blog can be an interesting and frustrating process.  Please stick with it.  I am new to Blogger also.  We can figure it out together.  My frustration has to do with getting all of your blog sites posted in a place where you can access them.

And remember that depending on your privacy setting, you may need to add your class members and myself to your reader list.  If you need to do this, please contact me for a list of email addresses.

Informal Writing

As part of our day-to-day work, I will ask you to do numerous informal papers. As I have mentioned briefly in the syllabus, what I want from you in all these pieces is to show that you are doing your best to consider, think-through (with or against) the ideas that we are considering, whether the ideas presented in readings or the skills, principles, and concepts that we are attempting to understand and apply in group or individual in-class writing. Ideas aren’t really understood until you can explain them for (and to) yourself, so these papers are very important; they also give you opportunities to practice reading and writing skills in a “low stakes” situation (I won’t be grading your writing skills, just your efforts to think about and discuss the ideas, which will only be graded credit/no credit). I will give you feedback on the specific writing skills that we are practicing, but that will have no bearing on whether you get credit (unless it looks like you aren’t putting in the thought or effort). These informal writing assignments have no length requirements, but you will find that you will have difficulty showing that you are thinking through ideas unless you write enough to do so. You can be pithy and cram a great deal of thought and meaning into a brief paper, but doing so usually requires a lot of skill. It is very clear when a brief response contains a lot of thought and when it doesn’t, so explaining your thinking thoroughly with examples and anecdotes from your own experiences, which should make your writing as long as it needs to be, will benefit you.

In-class group and individual writing will be assigned during class, but reading responses will follow a regular pattern.

Reading Response

Part of learning how writing works involves learning to read like writers. Writing is always a remix of other writings that the writer has read, analyzed, and broken down to use for her or his own purposes, which means good writers are good readers, analysts, summarizers, and remixers who can read something, understand its overall point, purpose, and underlying reasoning, and then explain and use it in writing. In an attempt to become good writers, we will learn about writing by reading writing scholarship, which will give us plenty of practice with reading and writing skills. (I hope you leave this class as practiced and critical readers who can understand and breakdown the reasoning behind everything you read.) To help us practice these skills, I will ask each of you to write up written responses to each class’s reading that includes each of these elements:

• A summary of each reading that explains what the authors are trying to do (purpose), who they are trying to do it to or through (audience), what their overall point is (argument), and the underlying reasoning they use to try and prove that point (reasons). The objective here is to make this summary as brief, yet complete, as possible. To help you, you could use the following paradigm: “In his/her/their article ____(’Title’)_______, _____(Author(s))______ attempt(s) to ______(purpose & audience)___. He/She/They argue(s)________(Overall Point)______ because _______(reasons)________." Writing such summaries will allow you to practice breaking down a reading in order to understand not just what it says, but how what it says leads to what it is attempting to do. Texts (written, visual, audio, etc.) attempt to do things to readers, and reading analytically involves not just being able to list down everything the text says, but to be able to explain what it tries to do. Good summary does not list (first it says x then y) what a document says but instead explains what it tries to do.
• After the brief as possible summary for each reading, I will ask you to put the reading in conversation with other readings we have read during the semester. Which readings is this one similar to? Which readings does it differ significantly with about major ideas? This work should help you improve your ability to synthesize (put together into an overview summary) the conversation among different texts. This work requires you to begin to map or sort texts into groups of similar ideas and to articulate how the various groups or regions differ from each other generally and not just at the level of individual texts.
• After your summary and synthesis work, 1) Type up the results of any pre-reading exercises Writing about Writing asks you to do, 2) Type thorough and thoughtful responses to the specified questions from Writing about Writing or about readings from Readings on Writing as indicated on the schedule.
• Finally, add a paragraph on your own thoughts about the reading: Was it interesting? Why? Do you think it will be helpful to you? Why? How do the ideas compare to your own experiences? Do you agree or disagree? Why? Etc.


To get credit for responses, your response needs to include each of these elements and show that you made a thoughtful effort to complete each part. All responses must be posted to your blog, unless otherwise indicated.  Also, all reading responses need to be posted by 9 p.m. the day before the reading is assigned.  Doing so will give your classmates a chance to respond to your blog and engage in the conversation.  One more thing:  you should take the time to look at the comments your classmates have posted about your reading response and respond to them.

Blog

You need to post your reading response on the Blogger blog that you have created for this class.  After you create the blog, send your blog web address to me, your instructor, at yb240212@ohio.edu so that I can add your blog to the blog roll.  Have fun creating your blog.  It will be a representation of yourself to your classmates.  Also, I have not made the class blog open to the public.  If you choose to make your blog open to the public, that is your choice, but you should be aware that the whole world can see it if you do.

Responding to Reading Responses

For every reading response you submit on Blogger, you need to respond to a reading response belonging to one of your classmates.  Over the course of the semester, you should respond at least one time to each of your classmates.  I will hand out (and post) a list of who you should be responding to when. I will also be responding to your blogs.  You should also feel free to respond to my comments, especially if they seem confusing.