TL;DR: Write a personal, reflective and/or narrative, question-driven exploration of some experience(s) that have shaped your assumptions about language, literacy, and learning, but that one or more of our course readings or concepts might help you rethink.

Elements: Design plan (with attention to 2-3 genre samples), project draft(s) & revision(s), rhetorical summaries (compiled into an annotated bibliography), a project page on your portfolio website (with an introductory note), & a project self-assessment.

Rationale:

We’ve said that the central task of this course is developing and articulating your own theory of writing, that is, “a systematic narrative of lived experience and observed phenomena that both accounts for (makes sense of) past [writing] experience and makes predictions about future [writing] experience” (Downs and Robertson, 2005, pp. 110-11). Our expectation is that a more fully conscious and critical understanding of your assumptions—about how writing works, as well as about language and learning work, more generally—can help you make the most of your efforts with writing and learning to write.

Task & Purpose:

One place to begin this effort, then, is to consider just what “lived experience” and “observed phenomena” you already have to work with, focusing on questions like these: 

  • What have you experienced or observed that informs your current ideas about language, writing, reading, information, knowledge, and how we learn?
  • How have your assumptions affected your identity or self-image as a writer, reader, and user of language?

To engage more deeply with those assumptions that might complicate our learning, however, we also want to bring them into conversation with research undertaken by scholars of language and writing, with questions like these:

  • How might one or more of our readings in the first half of the course challenge and/or help you to rethink some of your assumptions?
  • How might one or more of the “threshold concepts” or key ideas we’ve encountered help you to develop a more robust “theory” about what’s actually happening when people communicate with each other and/or when you set out to write something?

Genre:

One traditional genre that has served to help writers undertake this sort of genuine exploration is the essay, or more specifically a personal essay, one form of which is sometimes called a literacy narrative. Given our emphasis on exploration and narrative, however, by “essay” we do NOT mean the formal and tightly-controlled five-paragraph thing that explains everything in one paragraph, then proceeds to explain it all again in more detail, then concludes by explaining it one more time. No, we mean something closer to what Michel de Montaigne, the oft-credited originator of the essai (French: “attempt”), had in mind: writing to explore some genuine curiosity without any clear destination in mind. His goal was to write his way into a new way of thinking.

Genre Samples:

  • “On and On: Appalachian Accent and Academic Power,” by Meredith McCarroll, from Southern Cultures, vol. 22, no. 2, Summer 2016, pp. 44-48.
  • “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, originally published in The Threepenny Review, no. 43, Autumn 1990, pp. 7-8. 
  • “Aria,” by Richard Rodriguez, from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Dial Press/Random House, 1982, pp. 9-41.
  • “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” by Gloria Anzaldúa, originally published in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute, 1987 (fourth ed., 2012, pp. 75-86); reprinted here in Available Means: An Anthology of Women’s Rhetoric(s), eds. Joy Ritchie and Kate Ronald, U of Pittsburgh P, 2001, pp. 357-365.
  • “From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle,” by Min-Zhan Lu, from College English, vol. 49, no. 4, April 1987, pp. 437-448.
  • “Inglés in the Colleges” [excerpts], by Victor Villanueva, from Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, NCTE, 1993, pp. 66-77.
  • “The Quare Gene,” by Tony Earley, from Somehow Form a Family: Stories that are Mostly True, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2002, pp. 67-80.

Caveats:

Obviously, considering our own assumptions can be challenging, especially if we’re not aware that there are other ways of seeing things. This may take some time and effort to tease out. But the goal here is not to find the ultimate, complete, perfect answers—far from it. This is an EXPLORATION. So approach this project in a spirit of genuinely seeking to ask real questions that may or may not have obvious answers. Your goal is to see what you might discover about what you know (and what you don’t), what others know (and what they don’t), what troubles you, what intrigues you, and/or what you’re motivated to keep trying to sort out.

Format:

There are several options: you could write a traditional (if digital) “paper,” using Google Docs or an offline word processor, or you could instead compose and deliver this in the form of a blog, podcast, video essay, comic, animation, or something else you devise. What might best suit your purpose, audience, or message?

Process & Submission Notes: 

  • Our freewriting prompts during this unit (Jan 23-Feb 27), along with your project design plan, are designed to help you generate ideas
  • We’ll discuss at least one published personal essay focused on language, as well as a handful of student essays (Jan 25-27), in search of common rhetorical moves and features we’d like to identify as assessment targets for our own
  • We’ll write brief summaries of one or two scholarly research articles about writing to help you engage more deeply with their ideas, culminating in an informal annotated bibliography page on your portfolio site (due Feb 8)
  • We’ll share and discuss essay drafts with each other in class (Feb 10-22), in conversation with the assessment criteria we developed together
  • Submit project page (on your portfolio site), including revised draft and introductory note, by February 27. **If you’d rather not make your website public until it’s totally complete, let’s consult about alternative options for sharing your note and revision with me.**

What to Include in the Introductory Note (in your portfolio):

  • Your intentions: What are you trying to accomplish with the project? How do you see it fulfilling the goals of the assignment (or course)?
  • Your process: How has the project developed since you started on it? Why have you made the choices you have (about content, modality, organization, style, delivery, etc.)?
  • Your takeaways: What have you learned from your work on this project? How might your discoveries apply to future personal, academic, or professional concerns?

Initial Suggestions for Project Assessment Criteria:

  • Focus on storytelling about personal experiences, selected for the purpose of reflection
  • Structure the essay/narrative so that the audience can follow it and/or in a way that helps to convey the main message
  • For written elements, keep paragraphs on the shorter side to facilitate easier reading
  • For written elements, use an informal, conversational style
  • Work to create a sense of authenticity and an emotional connection with the audience
  • Work to engage and hold the audience’s attention, such as by stretching beyond conventional choices or strategies and/or by using visuals, quotes, references to other’s people’s experiences or ideas, or other multimodal elements that resonate with your essay/narrative