Reflection, Writerly Identity, and E-portfolio

Purpose: to learn about portfolio content and how to demonstrate content related to First-Year Writing learning outcomes.

Content:

Review each of the sections below: Rhetorical Knowledge, Critical Reading, Composing Processes,
Knowledge of Conventions, and Critical Reflection. Complete the mini-assignment for each section.
Post all to Studio 8.

Rhetorical Knowledge
Rhetorical knowledge is the ability to identify and apply strategies across a range of texts and writing
situations. Using their own writing processes and approaches, writers compose with intention,
understanding how genre, audience, purpose, and context impact writing choices.

By the end of FYW, students should be able to:

Use rhetorical concepts to analyze and compose a variety of texts using a range of technologies
adapted according to audience, context, and purpose

Assess how genres shape and are shaped by readers' and writers' experimentation with
conventions, including mechanics, structure, and style

Develop the flexibility that enables writers to shift voice, tone, formality, design, medium, and layout
intentionally to accommodate varying situations and contexts

You've already done work around rhetorical analysis, genre, and audience.

Assignment:

Go through the work you've done for this class. Find a few examples of "rhetorical knowledge." Mark
the pages with sticky notes or take screenshots. Be sure to label the pages as Rhetorical
Knowledge.

Critical Reading
Reading critically is the ability to analyze, synthesize, interpret, and evaluate ideas, information and
texts. When writers think critically about the materials they use, they separate assertion from
evidence, evaluate sources and evidence, recognize and assess underlying assumptions, read
across texts for connections and patterns, and identify and evaluate chains of reasoning. These
practices are foundational for advanced academic writing.

By the end of FYW, students should be able to:

Use reading for inquiry, learning, and discovery

Analyze their own work and the work of others critically, including examining diverse texts
and articulating the value of various rhetorical choices of writers

Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias) primary and
secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and
professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal electronic
networks and internet sources

Use a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and
evidence, to patterns of organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements,
and to how these features function for different audiences and situations

Extending Ideas:
Peter Elbow (1973) articulates two useful ways of reading texts critically: the doubting game and the
believing game. When you play the doubting game, you intentionally look for the problems in a text;
you read as a skeptic. Elbow contends that is type of reading is much more common and accepted
by academics, including students. When you play the believing game, you accept the assertions of
the text and allow them to play as you read; the reader tries to see from the writer's point of view. For
Elbow, there is use in this type of reading, instead of always relying on an adversarial reading
method. If you would like to read his arguments for yourself, here is a link to the ebook (Links to an
external site.)Links to an external site..

I will contend that there is value in both kinds of reading; it is useful for us to "believe" texts as we try
to understand them. But it is still important to engage in the doubting game as we evaluate readings
and ideas.

Assignment:

Go through your assignments you've prepared for this class. Find examples of your "critical reading."
Mark the pages with sticky notes or take screenshots. Be sure to label these pages or files
as Critical Reading.

Resources Cited:

Elbow, P. (1973). Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Composing Processes
Writers use multiple strategies, or composing processes, to conceptualize, develop, and finalize
projects. Composing processes are seldom linear: a writer may research a topic before drafting then
conduct additional research while revising or after consulting a colleague. Composing processes are
also flexible: successful writers can adapt their composing processes to different contexts and
occasions.

By the end of FYW, students should be able to:

Demonstrate flexible strategies for drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting,

rereading, and editing

Recognize and employ the social interactions entailed in writing processes: brainstorming,
response to others' writing; interpretation and evaluation of received responses

Use their writing process in order to deepen engagement with source material, their own
ideas, and the ideas of others and as a means of strengthening claims and solidifying logical
arguments.

Extending Ideas:

In this video, writers talk about their composing processes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=12&v=YTRvqqDtKNk (Links to an external site.)Links to an

external site.

Assignment:

Go though your daybook and other assignments you have prepared for this class. Find examples
that demonstrate your composing processes. Mark these artifacts with sticky notes or take
screenshots. Be sure to label as Composing Processes.

Knowledge of Conventions
Conventions are the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres, and in so doing, shape
readers' and writers' expectations of correctness or appropriateness. Most obviously, conventions
govern such things as mechanics, usage, spelling, and citation practices. But they also influence
content, style, organization, graphics, and document design.

By the end of FYW, students should be able to:

Demonstrate how to negotiate variations in conventions by genre, from print-based compositions to

multi-modal compositions
Investigate why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, design, formatting, tone, and
mechanics vary

Use the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate
documentation conventions to practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work.

Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through
practice in composing and revising

Image courtesy of: Imgur (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Extending Ideas:
It is crucial to remember that conventions and genre are interconnected ideas. Conventions vary
from genre to genre, depending on the norms for that audience and context. Here is an article that
details the connections between genre and conventions, to help you learn to talk about conventions
in your own writing: http://stancock.iweb.bsu.edu/edrdg445/online/pdf/email.pdf (Links to an external
site.)Links to an external site.

Assignment:

Go through your assignments you have prepared for this class. Identify examples of your knowledge
of conventions (with particular attention to the genres in which you are working). Mark these pages
with sticky notes or take screenshots. Be sure to identify these pages or files as Knowledge of
Conventions.