Alexandria Hanson Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description First-year students often enter introductory writing courses with a wide range of language experiences and backgrounds. To develop critical language awareness, as Shawna Shapiro writes, it is important to help students “recognize the variation within their own linguistic repertoir—no matter how many languages or language varieties they […]
Communication Guide Assignment Read More »
Jackie Mohan Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In this assignment, students craft a photo essay about their identity, through which they hone basic writing skills, understand genre, and develop an understanding of voice, tone, and style. Intersectionality refers to how we can better understand each person’s lived experiences in the world by examining how
Intersectional Identity Photo Essay Read More »
Bethany Meadows and Kimberly Groves Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Many scholars have called for the necessity of social justice frameworks within K-16 classrooms for decades (e.g., Friere; hooks; Walton et al.; Muhammad). Specifically, in the first-year writing classroom, we know that neither writing nor our writing classrooms are neutral, apolitical spaces, but instead
Mark Shea Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description We often associate metalinguistic terminology with an adherence to normative language standards in students’ writing. Basing metalinguistic practice on students’ own writing can also evoke demotivating and damaging episodes in prior educational contexts. A more productive way to incorporate a focus on metalinguistic language into writing courses
Beautiful Sentences Read More »
Kanika Verma Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Teaching writing concepts in an undergraduate university writing course can be challenging. Several threshold concepts in writing studies are new for undergraduates majoring in any discipline. The comprehension of many concepts is dependent on other sub-concepts or meta-concepts. For instance, students need various examples to understand what
Massimo Verzella Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment is informed by a pedagogical tradition that emphasizes the connections between the fields of writing and translation (Matsuda; Horner and Tetreault), a connection that becomes even more relevant in technical communication (Gnecchi et al.; Petts et al.). Just like writing, translation is process-based, iterative, and
Writing, Translating, and Revising Menus: An International Virtual Exchange Project Read More »
Kristen Vogel Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In every course I teach, I work to instill in students the understanding that Standard English is merely one variety among many, rather than a superior form. In this assignment, students are asked to write an essay that analyzes the “grammar” of their own writing in a
The Grammar of Text Messaging: Analyzing Non-Standard English to Develop Genre Awareness Read More »
