critical thought and analysis

Object Ethnography for the Real-World: Using Objects and Documents for Disciplinary Development

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, primary source research, reflection, research, rhetoric /

Meng-Hsien (Neal) Liu Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description As Writing Studies has sought to address multimodal and embodied composition, one area has focused on how objects mediate writing processes and identity formations (Shipka). This assignment represents a final term project for an advanced composition class with the overall objective of complicating students’ thinking regarding […]

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Emotionally Aware Ethnography

Assignments, Community-engaged writing, critical thought and analysis, genre and discourse community, narrative and storytelling, Place-based Writing, primary source research /

Sarah Bramblett Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description I’ve encountered several jarring writing submissions: an essay describing a student’s family member’s tragic death, an essay detailing a student’s battle with an eating disorder, an essay telling of a student’s loneliness in their first semester of college, and an essay recounting a student’s suicidal thoughts. These

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Literacy Autobiography

Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Assignments, critical thought and analysis, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, narrative and storytelling, Racial Literacy, translingualism /

Anita Chaudhuri & Subrata Bhowmik Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Writing a personal narrative assignment is commonplace in first year composition classrooms and the proposed assignment presents it as a literacy autobiography (LA) which can, according to Canagarajah, focus on individual learning journeys and underline “in-between identities and discourses” (p. 13). The transnational identities

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Non-standardized Grammar Assignment

Anti-Racist Pedagogy, Assignments, critical thought and analysis, grammar and mechanics, linguistic difference, linguistic diversity, narrative and storytelling, prewriting and invention, Racial Literacy /

Cheyenne Franklin Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description “… dont nobody’s language, dialect, or style make them ‘vulnerable to prejudice.’ It’s ATTITUDES” (Young 110). Vershawn Ashanti Young, along with Asao Inoue, Geneva Smitherman, and more recently April Baker-Bell, have long fought against oppressive language standards in education. It is not enough, they have jointly argued,

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Lobsters & Second Conversations: Addressing the “So What” in Your Writing

Activities, critical thought and analysis, reading, reading strategies, reading to write, rhetorical situation /

Stina Kasik Oakes Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description What’s a lobster? A second conversation? For years I worked to explain to students how to incorporate purpose, depth, and meaning into their writing with the terms “deeper meaning,” or “story under the story,” or “what the essay is really about.” But these phrases didn’t quite

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“Establishing the Who”: Professional Writing, Power Dynamics, & Improv

Activities, critical thought and analysis, professional writing, rhetorical situation /

Lauren Esposito Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description When I started teaching professional writing, I would ask students: “Imagine you’re a nurse and you need to explain the signs of a stroke to a young child. Or, imagine you’re a business student writing a “how-to guide” for investors that will be published on a company

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Strategies for Analyzing and Composing Data Stories

critical thought and analysis, narrative and storytelling, visual/multimodal rhetorics, Volume 5 /

Angela M. Laflen   Volume 5 Chapter Description Data stories are multimodal texts that combine data with words and images to tell a story to or make an argument for a particular audience. They are increasingly common in everyday life as technology has resulted in an information explosion. Data often do not make sense unless

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The Importance of Transfer in Your First Year Writing Course

critical thought and analysis, demystifying writing assignments, genre and discourse community, rhetorical situation, volume 4, Writing Transfer /

Kara Taczak Volume 4 Chapter Description This essay explores the importance of transfer in first year writing. Transfer is the ability to take writing knowledge and practices from one context and use it to repurpose or reframe it in a new/different writing context. To help students better understand how to effectively transfer, this essay examines

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Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way into a Writing Assignment

critical thought and analysis, demystifying writing assignments, Volume 2 /

Catherine Savini Volume 2 Chapter Description How can we help students become invested in their writing? How can we help students write interesting papers that we look forward to reading? Students can learn to write interesting papers that develop complex ideas if they begin by “looking for trouble.” This chapter provides students with a step-by-step

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