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Keith, ENGL 101.033

Unit One

Unit One

Writing to Discover What You Already Knew: You!

A quick note about unit assignment sheets like this one: You need to hang on to these so you can refer back to them if you have any questions. Please bring this to class everyday!

Overview:

This unit focuses on how you became the writer you are today. And yes, you are writer! (We’re also going to focus on redefining what it means to be a writer.) You’ll consider many questions about your literacy: What kind of reader/writer/thinker are you? What are your habits, processes, and interests? Why and what do you read/write? Who do you write for? What specific events affected your literacy practices? We’ll do several in-class activities and writing “explorations” to help us get started contemplating these questions.

Reading:

For each unit, we’ll read things that help us think in different ways about what we’re exploring. We’ll read in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes.

WC, WL: Introduction, English 101 Statement

WC, WL: Bishop, Wendy “When All Writing is Creative and Student Writing is Literature”

Macrorie, Ken “The Poison Fish” from Telling Writing (handout)

Zinsser, William “Writing About Yourself: The Memoir” from On Writing Well (handout)

“Guidelines for Peer Response” (handout)

Explorations:

Explorations are informal, and, well, exploratory. They give you space to think through ideas and ponder options and questions—and then you have time to let that Exploration “sit” a bit before you return to the ideas later(if you do) for your main project for that unit.

Exploration One:Written in class on Wednesday, August 29th

Write about one writing experience you feel was successful and why. What aspect of this writing would you consider “good?” (Please feel free to refer to the class list we generated on the first day.) Then, write about one writing experience you feel was not as effective and why. And again, what aspect of this writing would you not consider “good?” Be sure to think about the circumstances in which these pieces of writing were taking place. Describe them in detail. (Roughly 2+ pages)

Exploration Two:Written outside of class and due at the

beginning of class on Friday, August 31st

Analyze the two writing experiences from Exploration One. What do you notice about the topics you wrote about or the audience you wrote to? What did you find challenging about these pieces of writing (even in the “successful” piece of writing there were bound to be times of difficulty). How were these challenges alike or unalike between the two experiences? What do these two experiences tell you (so you can tell us) about your writing process? Because this is written outside of class you have more of an opportunity for reflection! (1 ½ - 2 pages typed)

Unit Writing Project:

Your unit writing project is an extended, more formal piece of writing, often in essay form (but not always). Your Explorations should help generate ideas for your unit project, and while you may be able to draw from them, you’ll need to reorganize and reframe the material for your longer writing project.

You will write a literacy essay that analyzes events related to your use of reading and writing. Consider this a (brief) history about how you came to be who you are as a writer today. You’ve already written an exploration that dealt with both positive and negative writing experiences, which may work as a springboard to get you started thinking about your history with reading and writing. In this essay, you will describe and reflect on an event or a few related events in which writing and/or reading had a lasting affect on you. This effect might be positive or negative, but in either case, you must carefully describe the event for your audience (me and your classmates), and you must use the details you provide to help your reader understand the significance of these events. Readers will want to know what you learned, why it’s important to understand your story, and how your experience might help to shed some light on their own. Literacy essays tend to use an informal style, so feel free to do so (no Engfishing allowed!).

Important things to remember for your literacy essay:

  • You are not just retelling an event; you must draw the reader in by using description, narration, and/or dialogue.
  • The most important thing is that you fully describe this event’s significance. How has the event contributed to your approach to writing now?
  • Technicalities: 4 pages, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins.

Due on Monday, September 10th:

In a stapled packet, you’ll want to turn in

A cover letter, addressing some/all of the following: What was your writing process like as you wrote this unit’s writing project? What challenges did you encounter? How did you address, or attempt to address, those challenges? What breakthroughs did you have? If you would have had more time, what would you have done differently? Also, revisit the strategies (see below) that we worked on this unit. What strategies did you especially gain confidence in, do you think? What made that happen? (3/4 of a page, single-spaced)

Your Writing Project (4 pages, double-spaced, normal fonts and margins)

The reader response sheets from you response group

Explorations 1-2

Any in-class work connected to this unit project

Writing Strategies We’ll Be Working On This Unit:

  • Producing writing that has a “center” focus (including narrowing topic);
  • Generating lots of rich, specific details and organizing that material effectively;
  • Providing effective writerly feedback and learning from the feedback of others (what kind of feedback is useful?);
  • Using writing to explore and deepen our understanding (What do you know now that you didn’t before writing this piece?).