purpose

The Importance of Transfer in Your First Year Writing Course

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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Navigating Genres

Kerry Dirk Volume 1 Chapter Description In this chapter, I introduce students to genres as rhetorical responses to reoccurring or similar situations. After defining genre in the context of rhetoric and composition scholarship, I use examples from popular culture, discussion from contemporary scholars, and personal experience to show students how genre awareness requires a rhetorical

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So You’ve Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?

Corrine E. Hinton Volume 1 Chapter Description Interpreting writing assignments can be a challenge for anyone. For first-year college students, however, it can be an overwhelming struggle as students learn to adjust to new academic pressures and expectations. What is my instructor evaluating? Do I need an argument? How do I structure my response? Questions

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Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web

Alex Reid Volume 2 Chapter Description Blogging offers unique opportunities for first year composition writers to develop personal motivations and rewards for writing. This chapter will help you encourage students to find an approach to the unique rhetorical features of blogging as a genre. Students may need detailed assistance as they get started in the

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Ten Ways to Think about Writing: Metaphoric Musings for College Writing Students

E. Shelley Reid Volume 2 Chapter Description Writing is hard. It’s harder if your students think of it as a collection of arbitrary rules than if they think of it as a human communication process they already understand a lot about. Using comparisons to familiar events (doing laundry, making fruit Jell-O, writing thank-you notes, and

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