reading to write

Getting Burned or Becoming Toast?: Problem-Exploring the Game “I Am Bread” as a Tool for Teaching Growth Mindset in First Year Writing

Laura E. Decker Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description First-year writers often struggle to take risks on projects, especially as they move from their composition courses to projects within new disciplines and contexts (Robertson et al.). However, taking risks by diving into new discourse communities, as Bartholomae argued, is required to participate effectively in the […]

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Dramatizing the Conversation: Creating Dialogue Scripts to Support Source Synthesis

Kim Fahle Peck Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor metaphor presents a picture of academic research as a conversation between ideas and perspectives: Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too

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

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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Assessing Source Credibility for Crafting A Well-Informed Argument

Kate Warrington, Natasha Kovalyova, and Cindy King Volume 3 Chapter Description This article walks students through how to use critical reading strategies to help them select credible sources for their research papers and helps them understand how critical reading assignments they may have completed earlier in the semester have prepared them for the difficult task

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The Evolution of Imitation: Building Your Style

Craig A. Meyer Volume 3 Chapter Description This chapter focuses on incorporating imitation practices into a student’s writing toolbox. By encouraging students to look more rhetorically at writing through imitation, they learn to recognize that language is more dynamic, and they can approach writing tasks with more contemplative thought instead of as a dreaded task.

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Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources

Karen Rosenberg Volume 2 Chapter Description As a writing instructor, you want to help students reflect on and refine reading practices that are so crucial to writing and academic success.  An examination of the elements of a rhetorical reading strategy—conceptualizing reading as part of an academic conversation, reading actively (and what this looks like), figuring

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Punctuation’s Rhetorical Effects

Kevin Cassell Volume 3 Chapter Description Many students tend to think of punctuation as governed by a set of rules. This chapter encourages them to conceive of punctuation as a system of conventions, which includes standard expectations of correct usage—certain “rules”—but applies them within a broader rhetorical context. After distinguishing between punctuation and grammar (the

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