| Unit 1 – Identity, Language, and Process: Emotion and Writing |
| The focus on this unit is primarily grounded in the first two Learning Goals of the course (i.e., Composing as a process; Compose with an awareness of how intersectional identity, social conventions, and rhetorical situations shape writing). We will explore together the emotional foundation of writing, language, and rhetoric—that our feeling is integral to how we know our worlds and communicate about them. Sometimes, for sure, the feelings associated with language can make writing difficult, even lonely. Thus, we will focus on thinking strategically about the entire process of writing. The sub-goals we explore will include:
· Understand language as social and as part of who you are · Experiment with the rhetorical power of tapping into the full range of your rhetorical expertise (i.e., your rhetorical practices in all of the contexts in which you use rhetoric) · Understand the role of reading in writing (e.g., procedures of annotating, reading to revise) · Set goals and a process for checking in on your progress on an ongoing basis. Re-evaluate goals, periodically. · Develop a writing practice (e.g., creating the best environment for productive writing sessions as possible, managing distractions, time management) · Develop your writing process (e.g., planning, outlining, drafting, reflecting, revising, editing) · Receive feedback, apply it, and give constructive feedback (e.g., in peer response, workshopping writing, interpreting comments, integrating feedback in a global sense rather than only locally, managing the embodied nature of having an audience for your writing) · Using examples effectively in your writing to help illustrate things you are trying to explain or argue
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| Unit 2 – Rhetoric: Awareness and Writing |
| In this unit, we will explore rhetoric in greater detail. We will start with the importance of audience and the relationship between audiences and genre conventions (and the slipperiness of what we can ever actually fully know about either). We will then consider the full nature of the rhetorical situation (i.e., exigence, constraints, and audience), the impact of ideology on how everyone reads and writes, and consider the value of a rhetorical outlook on the world around us. To realize these ends, we will develop our abilities as rhetorical analysts. This unit will mostly address the third and fifth Learning Goals of the course (i.e., Read and analyze texts critically; Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose). Some of the sub-goals for this unit include:
· Learn the functions of rhetoric: make knowledge, coordinate human and nonhuman activity, and impact others. · Learn the differences between genres at the level of words, sentences, paragraphing, document design, mode, etc. · Change stylistic features of your writing to accommodate your audience · Recognize the full rhetorical situation to understand the context for writing · Consider the important material concerns for writing, to include different modes, circulation, and other infrastructural concerns for writing · Learn how to analyze vs. summarize · Find, evaluate, and synthesize evidence in texts we analyze · Establish links between claims and evidence · Apply theoretical lenses to what we analyze in ways that both expand and limit what we can know · Integrate textual analysis into a larger argument or narrative
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| Unit 3 – Research: Knowledge and Writing |
| The focus for this unit is on research. Now, all writing requires research; research is an investigation into various kinds of information. We can’t really write without doing that. However, generally speaking, and in academic contexts particularly, research usually has a very systematic connotation. In other words, it means close analysis of primary and secondary materials to make some kind of argument about something in a specific disciplinary domain. In this unit, we will consider how research and writing intersect in terms of how writing makes knowledge, how developing information literacy can assist us in making that knowledge, and how there are both general and context-dependent conventions for research writing that help us communicate our research in impactful ways. This unit primarily addresses the fourth Learning Goal (i.e., Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing) but it also touches on the fifth (i.e., Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose). Below are some sub-goals:
· Write to learn (e.g., writing out processes and aspects of a topic to see what you know, moving from analysis to synthesis, moving from summary to analysis, coordinating multiple voices to reveal something new) · Develop information literacy (e.g., finding information via search engines/library databases/stacks, evaluating source credibility and relevance, analyzing primary vs. secondary sources, using citation tools) · Learn differences in research genres and disciplinary knowledge (e.g., using documentation style, IMRaD vs. thesis-driven paper) · Write with other voices (e.g., paraphrasing, direct quotes, summary, footnotes, endnotes, managing claims and evidence with other voices, qualifying claims, counterarguments) · Organize and making an argument (e.g., stasis theory, Toulmin’s model, organizing sources and mapping their use, making an annotated bibliography, supplementing research process onto writing process)
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| Unit 4 – Reflection: Lifelong Learning and Writing |
| In this unit, we will think deeply about the writing we have done this semester and how it applies to other aspects of our lives. We write all the time (in class and out of class)! So the question now is to think about what we learned these past few months and how to apply it to future writing. This unit mostly focuses on the first Learning Goal (i.e., Composing as a process), and will include these sub-goals:
· Closely read your writing to learn about it (e.g., annotate your own writing, connect annotations to previous learning goals) · Use quantification to learn about your writing at a distance (e.g., complete a quantitative of analysis of certain aspects of your three major writing projects to detect things a close reading might not) · Write about your writing to learn about it—use what you learned in past units (about identity, process, analysis, rhetoric, and research) on your own writing to consider progress toward your own goals and course goals, as well as to develop new goals. |