1 Literacy Narrative

Overview

The foundation of our course is built on the ability to read closely and critically. To engage with this skill, and the multiple literacies we navigate on a daily basis, this first major essay is a personal piece in which you will explore a significant moment regarding your own literacy; you may approach literacy either in the traditional sense or using our expanded, modern definition. 

Course objectives

This assignment meets the following CO1 course objectives:
  • Develop rhetorical knowledge
  • Develop critical and creative thinking
  • Develop rhetorical knowledge
  • Develop experience in writing Recall previous experience with various types of reading

Module objectives

During the process of completing this assignment, writers will:

  • Recall previous experience with various types of reading
  • Identify personal goals for academic reading and writing
  • Distinguish the different purposes for academic reading and writing
  • Give examples of familiar genres

ASSIGNMENT SHEET

Assignment Sheet – Literacy Narrative

The foundation of this course is built on your ability to read closely and critically. To engage with this skill, and the multiple literacies we navigate on a daily basis, this first major essay is a personal piece in which you will explore a significant moment regarding your own literacy; you may approach literacy either in the traditional sense or using our expanded, modern definition.

Purpose:

Literacy is a key component of academic success, as well as professional success. In this class and others, you will be asked to read and engage with various types of texts, so the purpose of this assignment is twofold. First, this assignment will allow you to write about something important to you, using an open form and personal tone instead of an academic one, allowing you to examine some of your deepest convictions and experiences and convey these ideas in a compelling way through writing. Second, this essay provides us an opportunity to get to know each other as a class community.

Audience:

For this assignment you should imagine your audience to be an academic audience. Your audience will want a good understanding of your literacy, past, present, or future, and how you seek to comprehend the texts around you.

Requirements:

Choose ONE prompt below to tell about an important time in your life when you engaged with or were confronted with literacy, using the traditional or broad definition. We’ll discuss various types of literacy, so you will identify and define the type of literacy you’re discussing.

  1. Describe a situation when you were challenged in your reading by describing the source of that challenge (vocabulary, length, organization, something else). How did you overcome that challenge to understand what the text was saying? What strategies or steps do you plan to take in the future to make the process easier?
  2. Describe the type of texts you read (watch, listen to, etc.) most often. What makes them easy or challenging to read and interpret? What strategies do you use to ensure that you fully understand them or can apply them?
  3. Describe what kind of texts you think you will have to read or interpret in the future and where you will encounter these texts (i.e. future classes, your career, etc.). How do you think they might challenge you? What strategies will you use to overcome these difficulties?

Formatting:

  • Narratives should be between 500-600 words (around 2-3 pages). Be concise, and choose your details carefully.
  • Your work must be typed in size 12, Times New Roman font and double spaced, 1” margins, following MLA requirements.

Week 1: Introducing Rhetoric

The foundation of our course is built on your ability to read closely and critically. To engage with this skill, and the multiple literacies we navigate on a daily basis, this project is a personal piece in which you will explore a significant moment regarding your own literacy; you may approach literacy either in the traditional sense or using our expanded, modern definition.

Exploring Literacy

What comes to mind when you hear the term “literacy“? Traditionally, we can define literacy as the ability to read and write. To be literate is to be a reader and writer. More broadly, this term has come to be used in other fields and specialties and refers generally to an ability or competency.

literacy: the ability to read and write; more broadly, a specific ability to navigate a specialized discipline

For example, you could refer to music literacy as the ability to read and write music; there are varying levels of literacy, so while you may recognize the image below as a music staff and the symbols for musical notes, it’s another thing to name the notes, to play any or multiple instruments, or to compose music.

Photo of sheet music

Or, you may be a casual football fan, but to be football literate, you would need to be able to understand and read the playbook, have an understanding of the positions, define terms like “offsides” or “holding” as they relate to the sport, and interpret the hand signals used by the referees.

Educator and writer Shaelynn Faarnsworth describes and defines literacy as “social” and “constantly changing.” In this unit, we’ll explore literacy as a changing, dynamic process. By expanding our definition of literacy, we’ll come to a better understanding of our skills as readers and writers. We’ll use this discussion so that you, as writers, can better understand and write about “…what skills [you] get and what [you] don’t, [and include your] interests, passions, and quite possibly YouTube.”

Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Consider our expanded definition of literacy. In what ways are you literate?
  2. When, where, and how do you read and write on a daily basis?
  3. Thinking of traditional literacy (reading and writing), what successes or challenges have you faced in school, at home, in the workplace, etc.?

Close Reading Strategies: Introducing the Conversation Model

Reading is a necessary step in the writing process. One helpful metaphor for the writing process is the conversation model. Imagine approaching a group of friends who are in the middle o

Graphic illustrating the conversation model
The Conversation Model: Listen first, investigate, then make your contribution

f an intense discussion. Instead of interrupting and blurting out the first thing you think of, you would listen. Then as you listen, you may need to ask questions to catch up and gain a better understanding of what has already been said. Finally, once you have this thorough understanding, you can feel prepared to add your ideas, challenge, and further the conversation.

Similarly, when writing, the first step is to read. Like listening, this helps you understand the topic better and approach the issues you’re discussing with more knowledge. With that understanding, you can start to ask more specific questions, look up definitions, and start to do more driven research. With all that information, then you can offer a new perspective on what others have already written. As you write, you may go through this process — listening, researching, and writing — several times!

Close reading: a process to understand what is being said

This unit focuses first on the importance of reading. There are two important ways we’ll think about reading in this course. Close reading and critical reading are both important processes with difference focuses. Close reading is a process to understand what is being said. It’s often used in summaries, where the goal is to comprehend and report on what a text is communicating. Compared to critical reading, an analytical process focused on how and why an idea is presented, close reading forces us to slow down and identify the meaning of the information. This skill is especially important in summaries and accurately quoting and paraphrasing.

Close reading, essentially, is like listening to the conversation. Both focus on comprehension and being able to understand and report back on what is written or said. In this project,

Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Within close reading, your processes could be further broken down into pre-reading, active reading, and post-reading strategies. What do you focus on before and after you read a text?
  2. There are many ways to read closely, and being an intentional reader will help ensure you process what you read and recall it later. However, there are many ways to actively read. Consider assignments you’ve been given in the past:
    • Have your instructors asked you to annotate a text?
    • Do you find yourself copying down important lines, highlighting, or making notes as you read?
    • What strategies do you rely on to actively and closely read?
    • What are your least favorite strategies?

The Rhetorical Situation

You may have heard of “rhetorical questions” or gotten frustrated watching the news when a commentator dismisses another by saying “that’s just empty rhetoric” — but what does rhetoric mean? With definitions dating back to Aristotle and Plato, this is a complex concept with many historical and contemporary definitions. We define rhetoric as the ways language and other communication strategies are used to achieve a purpose with an audience. Below, we’ll explore the rhetorical situation, examining how many different factors contribute to how a writer can achieve their goals, and what may influence them to make different decisions.

rhetoric: the ways language and other communication strategies are used to achieve a purpose with an audience
Graphic depiction of the rhetorical situation
The Rhetorical Situation: Each component influences the others, giving a more complete understanding of a text.

The rhetorical situation is composed of many interactive pieces that each depend on the other. Let’s start by defining each component:

  • Author: The creator. This is the person responsible for making the decisions in a text. For your writing, you are the author, even though you’ll get ideas and feedback from many other places. Though it seems like this component may be an easily determined constant, sometimes publishers have an idea and then approach a specific writer to accomplish the task, which could limit the choices and decisions that the author makes.
    • Ask yourself: Who created this?
  • Audience: The intended readers or viewers. There are many ways to identify this group — you may describe characteristics of the group, like their nationality, gender, age, or other relevant factors. It may help to think of the audience as an identity group: for example, you probably identify as a student, and that means you have something in common with other readers of this text: you are interested in learning, you are educated, and you speak English. You may have different backgrounds and experiences, but there are some qualities we can assume a student possesses. Your role and experience with this text as a student is different than the role of instructors who are using this book for their course, and instructors similarly share some qualities while others differ. This process does force you to make some assumptions, but taking steps to define and describe the readers of a text helps understand who they are, what’s important to them, and how they’ll interpret a text.
    • Ask yourself: Who is likely to, or supposed to, see this?
  • Text: The artifact. This paragraph is a type of text, which is a little different than this entire book as a text. More broadly, we can think about texts as whatever is being consumed: the billboard on your drive home, the trailer you watch before the actual movie, the clothes you’re wearing, and the birthday card you’re sending could all be interpreted as different types of texts, each with a different author, intended for different audiences. Often in academic contexts, we’ll use the term text and genre interchangeably because they both refer to the category type of what is being read or consumed. For example, novels are categorized by genre, such as science fiction or romance. There are many academic genres that we’ll review, such as editorials, book reviews, peer-reviewed journals, and more.
    • Ask yourself: What am I looking at?
  • Purpose: The goal. Whatever the text, every genre or author has a goal in mind. This can be more simply reduced to a strong verb that describes the goal: to persuade, to refute, to argue, to defend, to sell, etc. Some genres have easily identifiable purposes. That billboard is clearly trying to sell the product, while the movie trailer is trying to entertain or to sell tickets. While texts may have several goals, we’ll try to identify the primary, most appropriate, goal to help focus our close and critical reading of the text. In this book, our goal is to educate you by introducing all these new concepts so you can apply these strategies in your writing.
    • Ask yourself: Why was the text created?
  • Context: The situation around the text. Context is compiled from a lot of different factors. When reading, you may have been told to guess the meaning of a word based on context clues and this definition is similar. Consider the situation around the text and what influenced the creation of the text, and how it may influence the other components. For example, reading a text about rhetoric from 400 BCE would be very different than one written 100 years ago, and this one you’re reading now is also different. Or, 1,000 words may seem like a lot, and it would make for a very long poem or text message, but the average novel is at least 50,000 words and hundreds of pages. All of these different factors fall into the context that shapes what is created. The writing you’ll do in this course is shaped differently than what you might accomplish for your history or psychology courses because the context changes for each course and assignment.
    • Ask yourself: When was this created? How did it get developed? Where was the text published? What shaped the creative process?

Each of these categories intersects and influences the other. When we think about a complete rhetorical situation, you’ll need to define all these different pieces to best understand the text. As we begin practicing close reading, drawing the rhetorical situation will be a helpful tool.

Let’s examine this project, the literacy narrative.

  • Author: You! While you have a unique background, you’re a student in this course, and your individual writing experience will influence what you write about.
  • Audience: Your classmates and instructor. This is a collaborative course, and your instructor will read what you produce.
  • Text: Literacy Narrative. This type of text has different goals and requirements. We’ve examined literacy already, and we’ll review narratives soon. Together, these guidelines will help us construct this specific type of text (rather than a poem about reading or your personal memoir about how you became a writer!).
  • Purpose: To reflect. To introduce yourself. To define your literacy. These are all goals of this assignment. Throughout your assignment, you’ll want to check in with yourself and ensure that you’re accomplishing these goals. If not, you won’t meet the demands of the assignment.
  • Context: This assignment — the assignment sheet above has specific requirements that will influence what you create. Your writing background — no one else has the same life experience with reading and writing as you. The goals of the course — there are specific tasks to accomplish with this project that are specific to CO1 objectives. Each of these aspects will influence how you put the project together. Since you didn’t just wake up and decide to write about literacy, the context of this assignment will determine what you create.
Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Which of the elements of the rhetorical triangle influence your writing decisions most? Why?
  2. Are there any elements you don’t consider? Why don’t they seem as important?

Week 2: Defining Narrative and Organization

This week, you’ll review the assignment more fully, begin drafting, and work more closely with feedback from others. A literacy narrative is a specific type of genre, so there are certain requirements for this text. Using examples from other students, we’ll begin to develop your first draft.

Introducing the Literacy Narrative

narrative: a method of story-telling 

A literacy narrative is a common genre for writers who want to explore their own experiences with writing. Just Google “literacy narrative” and find endless examples! While this assignment will respond to specific prompts and follow a more specific structure than some of the examples you’ll find on Google, there is a common theme in each essay that revolves around your relationship with literacy. Week one defined literacy,  but what about narrative? Narrative can be defined as a method of story-telling. In the simplest terms, your goal in this literacy narrative, in this assignment, is to tell the story of your personal experience with literacy, either from a past event, something you’re working with now, or looking to the future. Let’s review the three sets of prompts from the assignment sheet:

  • Describe a situation when you were challenged in your reading by describing the source of that challenge (vocabulary, length, organization, something else). How did you overcome that challenge to understand what the text was saying? What strategies or steps do you plan to take in the future to make the process easier?
  • Describe the type of texts you read (watch, listen to, etc.) most often. What makes them easy or challenging to read and interpret? What strategies do you use to ensure that you fully understand them or can apply them?
  • Describe what kind of texts you think you will have to read or interpret in the future and where you will encounter these texts (i.e. future classes, your career, etc.). How do you think they might challenge you? What strategies will you use to overcome these difficulties?

Each of these prompts gives you the chance to tell your story and examine your experience with a specific type of literacy. As you consider the prompts, think about how you could tell a story to answer these questions. With this frame of mind, review the questions and activities below.

Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Which prompt from the assignment sheet will you address? Why does this prompt appeal to you?
  2. Consider the brainstorming you did about the ways that you are literate. Which prompt matches those skills best? Are these skills you struggled with at first, skills you currently practice, or a skill that you’re learning and will use in the future? Use these notes to decide which set of questions you’ll focus on in this project.

Organization: PIE Method

Each prompt includes three questions, which we’ll use as the starting point for three paragraphs. In each set of prompts, your first paragraph will describe the text; remember, when thinking about reading a text, we can interpret this broadly, like with music and sports. The second paragraph will explore the challenges or successes you’ve experienced. Then, the third paragraph will focus on strategies and techniques for improvement. This way, you can tell a more complete story of your experience, sharing the details and emotions along the way and making readers feel like they’re right there with you. But how do you capture all this detail in a way that helps you organize your thoughts and keep your reader interested in the story?

We’ll use a formula for the paragraph structure called PIE, which stands for Point, Information, and Explanation. This method will help you plan what you want to say, and then give examples so you can show why each step was so important to you. Let’s review each part of the paragraph, and then we’ll look at how this applies to your literacy narrative with a student sample.

  • Point: To start, every paragraph needs a Point, a main idea and the reason you’re writing. The goal of this first line is to summarize what you’re going to tell your readers.  You can usually present this idea in a single sentence. Introduce the main idea of the paragraph.
    • In the literacy narrative: Since each paragraph responds to a question from the prompt, the Point of each paragraph should tell readers which question you’re answering. By rephrasing the question in your Point, you can signal to your classmates and instructor so that they know which question you’re answering.
  • Information: Every paragraph needs evidence or specific examples. These are the details that you can report. You may have several examples in mind, and you may need to offer names, quotes, or paraphrases of what you said or read. This could take multiple sentences to describe but should rely on the facts that you can name, NOT your reaction or analysis.
    • In the literacy narrative: Most of your evidence, in a narrative, will be from your experience. Report what happened, what you read, or what you learned. Naming these details can help your readers see through your eyes when you give specific examples.
  • Explanation: This is how you make your examples come to life! In the Information, you reported on the what, and now it’s your chance to describe the why  and how. This is the most important, and therefore the longest, part of the paragraph where you make sense of the Information and tell your readers what it all means to you. The explanation includes analysis that builds on the evidence provided.
    • In the literacy narrative: Help your readers get inside your head and feel like they’re with you. Keeping the Point in mind and showing how all these ideas relate will bring the paragraph together by developing each example clearly and offering a thoughtful response to each prompt. How did you feel about the examples from the Information? Why was it was so significant? Why should your readers care about this experience? Answering these questions will help show your readers what you experienced so they can understand the significance and connect with you.

Together, these pieces all come together to create a strong, developed paragraph that responds to the question from the prompt more fully.

Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Below is a sample paragraph that follows the PIE structure. It is coded for the different parts of the paragraph above, with the Point in bold, the Information in italics, and the Explanation underlined. The second paragraph has been shortened and has not been coded. First, review the parts of the coded example. Then, review and identify PIE in the paragraph.
When getting into different types of literacy the hardest part of interpretation and understanding for me was in calculus. For example, when learning calculus (a type of literacy in cases) the difficult aspect of the class is actually learning the meanings of certain letters or numbers, such as x and y, and how to apply them to the course. The reason this is so tough is because I feel uncomfortable and feel jumbled when learning new things. Application of these newly learned terms takes time and practice to join the base set of literacy that I use on a day to day basis. Another illustration of why calculus is hard comes to test day. When I sit down for that big exam, I never feel at ease. I first have to remember what I learned in class and then apply it to the new problems. This is the most frustrating part because I practiced for so long, but the test always makes me question myself. On top of that, the anger I experience with this difficult task of learning will slow down this process making it hard to focus, so the test is the most challenging portion.
When learning different types of literacy, there are a lot of good strategies that I use. One comes from a very cliche quote, “Practice makes perfect.” For instance, when learning a new calculus formula the best way to engrave it into my head is to continuously use it over and over until it becomes muscle memory for the brain. This is a good strategy for application of information specifically because when practicing with something for a long amount of time, my brain begins to recognize certain patterns that correlate with the task at hand. These patterns allow the brain to recognize learned information and apply that knowledge in a certain situation or “pattern” that I have experienced previously.

Planning a Draft

Now that we’ve reviewed all the components and the foundation for this assignment, you’re ready to begin your draft! We’ll focus just on the first paragraph here, but you can use these steps for each paragraph to construct your draft.

Consider the first question from each prompt, copied below, to decide if you’ll focus on a past experience, the present, or the future:

  • Describe a situation when you were challenged in your reading by describing the source of that challenge (vocabulary, length, organization, something else). 
  • Describe the type of texts you read (watch, listen to, etc.) most often. 
  • Describe what kind of texts you think you will have to read or interpret in the future and where you will encounter these texts (i.e. future classes, your career, etc.). 

Literacy Narrative Rough Draft

Using your brainstorming from previous weeks, and using the student sample as a reference, begin drafting using the PIE structure, following these steps below to build the first paragraph of your draft. This is just a first draft, so let yourself write freely! This doesn’t need to be perfect or even good — instead, the goal is to put ideas on paper.

  1. In your Point, rephrase one of the questions above. You can borrow some of this same language to signal to your readers and show which question you’re answering. Remember, this only introduces the main idea — no details yet!
  2. Review your brainstorming. Did you name specific examples? Add these to your paragraph to develop the Information. Name at least two examples. Each example you give should connect to the Point, providing evidence from your experience.
  3. Review the examples and start to Explain. How did you feel about the examples from the Information? Why was it was so significant? Why should your readers care about this experience? Ask yourself these questions for each example you include.
  4. Repeat this process for each paragraph, answering the second question from your prompt in the second paragraph, and the third question in the third paragraph. For this assignment, try writing everything first — resist the urge to go back and review and edit right away! Instead, give yourself permission to write and respond to each prompt.
    1. Depending on your drafting process, it might be easy to tackle all three paragraphs at once and get everything down, or you might prefer to write one paragraph at a time.
    2. Throughout the course, practice with drafting one paragraph per day, or setting a timer to see what you can write in a specific amount of time.
  5. Review what you’ve written, and see if there are more details to add. Remember, the goal is to get as much as you can out of your head. Revisions will take place next.

Week 3: Peer Review and Revision

Peer Review

Peer review is an important part of the drafting process. It helps us learn from our classmates and see our own work in a different way. Writing can be a lonely and isolating experience that makes the process frustrating and unsatisfying. Getting to share your work with others can break that uncomfortable pattern!

That said, you may be new to sharing your work or have different experiences with peer review. Good peer reviews can spark creativity, help build on good ideas, and revise the rougher ideas. But, sometimes peer review can be challenging if your peer is too critical or too complementary, or maybe you can’t read and understand what they wrote! The tips below will help reinforce best practices, as well as avoid some common mistakes with peer review.

When completing peer review, one important rule is to focus on the big picture and NOT to edit. Think about it like this: If you add a comma, then you’ve helped make one sentence of the paper better. In a paper that’s 1,000 words long, that’s not so helpful! Instead, consider the rhetorical triangle. If you can make observations and ask questions to help your classmate understand the audience or the genre better, then the entire paper is going to improve, because you focused on a higher order concept that affects not just one sentence, but the paragraph and the whole paper. Throughout these projects, we’ll practice several strategies for peer review so you can see several example methods and find what works best for you.

Peer workshop

When you sit down with your peer’s paper, we’ll practice a three-step process. This gives you a chance to explain exactly what you mean while offering specific advice for your peer. Review the steps below:

  • Observe: Make a statement or summarize what you see. Identifying a pattern in your peer’s work or repeating what you think your peer is saying can help your peer know if they’re communicating clearly. Using the rhetorical triangle to support these observations could be a helpful strategy!
  • Explain: Critique what you see, explaining if the writer has a strong idea or if it might need work. Using adjectives to describe what’s going well or what’s not working is important so that you peer can learn more about your observation. Was this “clear” or “confusing”? Is the writer “engaging and interesting” or is the writing “plain and repetitive”?
  • Suggest: Tell the writer what to do about your comment.  This is most important! In order for your peer to know what to do with the information above, you need to make a suggestion. You could share a strategy that you use, or refer your peer to the assignment sheet and readings so that they can make changes or keep up the good work. If you’re not sure, you can always ask questions, too! Questions will help your peer think more critically about their writing.
    • EXAMPLE: 1) You give a few examples for information, then a sentence of explanation. 2) It doesn’t look like this meets the word limits from the assignment sheet, and I’m not sure which part you’ll focus on as the main form of literacy. 3) Could you clarify this? More explanation about why these are important could help you meet the word limit, too!

All together, these comments will need to be a few sentences long. Since we’re NOT focused on grammar or editing, the changes that your peer can make will have a big effect on the final product. With these more developed comments, your goal is to make 1-2 comments per paragraph. Give your classmate something to consider, using our course vocabulary, to really help them improve. As you read and practice this method, it’s likely that you’ll get ideas for your own paper, which makes this process doubly helpful!

Assignment Rubric

An “A” (excellent) summary (90% +):
  • Will clearly and accurately define a specific type of literacy, explaining the connection and development of literacy. Will clearly establish the identity of the writer and the influence and importance of literacy.
  • Will communicate significant experiences to an academic audience. Will give the reader something new to consider. Will interest the reader through storytelling.
  • Will remain focused on literacy and the individual prompts. Will include specific details from a variety of experiences. Will engage readers with details and examples. Will explain the connections and development of growth through chosen examples.
  • Will follow PIE structure closely.
  • Will be clear and readable without distracting grammar, punctuation or spelling errors.

A “B” (good) summary (80% +):

  • will define and discuss literacy for an academic audience with examples and explanation of significance but may have one or two of the following issues:
    • The concept of literacy may not be as clearly connected or central  to the writer’s development.
    • More attention could be paid to engage or interest the readers. May lack context to help the reader understand the writer’s experience.
    • Focus may lack through discussing events outside of the prompts. May include few specific examples. May lack explanation to show connection between examples.
    • PIE may not be followed in one paragraph. Either the point, information, or explanation could be further developed or clarified within a paragraph.
    • The writer may need to work on communicating information more effectively. The narrative will be generally clear and readable but may need further editing for grammatical errors.

A “C” (satisfactory) summary (70% +):

  • Will discuss literacy for an academic audience with examples and explanation of significance but may have more than two of the following issues:
    • Literacy is not defined or explained clearly in connection to skill.
    • Awareness of audience is lacking, making sections confusing for an unfamiliar reader.
    • Prompts may not be clearly connected to the paragraphs. Examples are not included or are not clearly explained.
    • PIE may be missing or underdeveloped in multiple paragraphs.
    • “C” narratives may also need more editing for readability.

A “D” (poor) summary (60% +):

  • Will show an attempt toward the assignment goals that has fallen short. May have several of the above problems.

An “F” (failing) summary:

  • ignores the assignment.
  • has been plagiarized.
Checking In: Questions and Activities
  1. Review the same sample paragraph below from a previous student. Identify one strength and one area for improvement in the draft, following the 3-step method above. As you review, consider how to balance praise and criticism. Something is going well in your peer’s draft, and something can be improved!
When getting into different types of literacy the hardest part of interpretation and understanding for me was in calculus. For example, when learning calculus (a type of literacy in cases) the difficult aspect of the class is actually learning the meanings of certain letters or numbers, such as x and y, and how to apply them to the course. The reason this is so tough is because I feel uncomfortable and feel jumbled when learning new things. Application of these newly learned terms takes time and practice to join the base set of literacy that I use on a day to day basis. Another illustration of why calculus is hard comes to test day. When I sit down for that big exam, I never feel at ease. I first have to remember what I learned in class and then apply it to the new problems. This is the most frustrating part because I practiced for so long, but the test always makes me question myself. On top of that, the anger I experience with this difficult task of learning will slow down this process making it hard to focus, so the test is the most challenging portion.

Most of this week revolves around drafting activities. This week brings our first revisions and peer reviews, an important part of the writing process. With your peers, you’ll get to review what they’ve been working on while receiving feedback on your own work. Similar to the sample, it will be your responsibility to identify strengths and praise your peers’ writing, as well as identify areas for improvement and explain why this is an important revision they must make.

Applying Peer Review: Taking Suggestions and Revising

Once you’ve completed peer review, you’ll likely have lots of ideas — reviewing others’ work often ignites a creative spark for your own work! You should feel free to apply strategies from your peers and reexamine your work, but you want to focus on your peers’ suggestions for you. This way, you can see how your ideas and their commentary lines up. In our 3-step feedback process, the last step is to make a suggestion. While the notes from your peers should be valuable, it’s ultimately your draft and your decision about what feedback to include. As you read through the commentary, review the assignment sheet, and begin making changes to the draft. This is one of the most important steps in the writing process and what makes the difference between a rough first draft and a polished, complete draft.

Suggested schedule and pacing

This module is intended to take 3 weeks and would work well as a first, introductory assignment or as a final, reflective assignment. Each unit is designed to help instructors offer feedback at critical stages of the drafting process, assisting writers strategically before they offer their drafts for peer review. This does require a quick turnaround from instructors; for planning this three-week unit, drafts would be due to you after the two-week mark, and peer review is recommended to take place a few days after, once your feedback can be reviewed and used for revisions. This necessarily leads to less intensive feedback on the final drafts, helping to disperse workload and making for faster turnaround of final submissions.

Writers may experience typical growing pains throughout these assignments, especially when used as a first assessment and adjust to your style and teaching practice. Overall, writers seem motivated and engaged in the narrative aspect and less intimidated when starting the course with a less formal, less academic assignment. This is intentional so that everyone begins from a familiar place. As a last, reflective project, this can be used to help writers process and digest rhetorical concepts and their growth throughout the semester.

This unit focuses on close reading skills and introspection to allow students to orient themselves to writing in a constructive and open-minded way. By focusing on literacy and setting the tone for the semester, students tend to be more receptive to rhetorical concepts and understand the time investment required for this course.

Assessment notes

This project includes three, three-part prompts. Writers are given the option to review their literacy of the past, present, or future — some writers will try to respond to all nine questions provided. The separation of these prompts has been emphasized through multiple assignments and as writers begin to draft; reinforcing this through direct feedback will be an important reiteration to keep writers focused.

Through this three-week unit, students will explore their past literacies and expand the definition of literacy beyond the traditional sense to grow comfortable and familiar with the idea of reading and writing in academic English.  

definition

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First-Year Composition Copyright © by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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