Mary Laughlin Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment reflects my ongoing attempts to build transfer-oriented reflective opportunities into first-year writing projects. It was inspired in part by pedagogical advice in John C. Bean’s Engaging Ideas; specifically, his emphasis on giving students opportunities to consider purpose and audience. For example, Bean suggests an imagined […]
Multimodal FAQ Assignment Read More »
Shannon Mooney Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is intended to help students practice articulating the larger stakes, or the “so what,” of an argumentative or analytical assignment. The activity works best after students have developed complete drafts, and it can be easily adapted for any paper that requires students to present and
“So What?” Speed Dating: Articulating an Argument’s Significance Read More »
Emma J. Rose Volume 6 Chapter Description When I think about what makes a good technical document, I’m reminded of Janice (Ginny) Redish’s explanation.1 Redish defines a successful document as one that helps the intended audience find what they need, understand what they find, use that information to accomplish a task and do that in
Who Is the User? Researching Audiences for Technical Documents Read More »
Amy Cicchino Volume 5 Chapter Description This chapter foreshadows challenges you can experience as you adapt your writing beyond your first-year writing course to become a writer in your discipline. The essay contains a student scenario, defines key rhetorical concepts within discipline-specific writing situations, and gives you strategies for adapting these rhetorical concepts to new
Keri Epps Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description As a writing instructor dedicated to researching and teaching rhetorical genres, I often struggle with how to facilitate students’ learning of what makes a genre, how it circulates, and who it matters to. In short, designing scaffolded assignments around “genre” has seemed difficult in writing courses at
How to Write a _____ Like a _____ Read More »
Heather Shearer Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Many composition instructors ask students to read drafts aloud during writing workshops because doing so helps writers identify logical gaps, stylistic mishaps, or localized errors they overlook when reading drafts silently. To amplify the writerly knowledge gained from reading drafts aloud, we can extend the read-aloud practice
“Lend Ears!”: Creating Audio Recordings of Final Drafts to Develop Rhetorical Awareness Read More »
William Duffy Volume 5 Chapter Description Providing an introduction to rhetoric is a foundational component of most first-year writing courses.1 Discussion of rhetorical appeals, for example, is standard fair in these contexts, as are activities that ask students to develop an appreciation for rhetorical situations, audiences, purposes, and even more nuanced concepts such as kairos
What Is Rhetoric? A “Choose Your Own Adventure” Primer Read More »
David Blakesley Volume 5 Chapter Description This essay presents a working definition of rhetoric, then explores its key terms to help you understand rhetoric’s nature as both an applied art of performance and a heuristic art of invention and creation.1 The definition also situates rhetoric in the social processes of identification and division. The definition
Elaborate Rhetorics Read More »
Ann N. Amicucci Volume 4 Chapter Description Many students are frequent users of social media, and it’s important to recognize the rich rhetorical activity that happens on apps like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. This chapter teaches students how to take rhetorical moves they make on social media and mimic these moves in academic writing,
Four Things Social Media Can Teach You about College Writing—and One Thing It Can’t Read More »
Craig Hulst Volume 3 Chapter Description This chapter focuses on grammar, specifically on understanding that grammar is much more than just the rules that we have been taught. Rather, grammar can be used rhetorically—with an understanding of the writing situation and making appropriate choices regarding the structure of the sentences, the use of punctuation, using
Grammar, Rhetoric, and Style Read More »
