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assignments ENGL226 Writing About Writing: WRITING STUDIES (composition & rhetoric)

Need to be in touch with me? 
LEE TORDA
310 Tillinghast Hall
Bridgewater State University
508.531.2436
ltorda@bridgew.edu
www.leetorda.com
FALL 2013 Office Hours
Monday & Wednesday: 3:30 to 4:30
Tuesday: 2:00 to 3:00
and by appointment.
Overview. Sometime in the 1970s, American Higher Education saw a sea-change in the demographics that rocked the landscape of the University. Particularly hard hit were English departments. Open Admissions, a policy that gave access to more and more students who would not otherwise have had a chance to attend college--immigrant, first generation, less academically-prepared, financially at-risk, non-native speaking students--flooded the college classroom with students that other faculty all over the university deemed unfit writers. While some English faculty threw up their hands at the state of things, some folks became interested in thinking about how they could help these students become better prepared, become better writers and readers. And that is how the field of Rhetoric and Composition came to be. That was forty years ago and what started out as a field interested in thinking about new writes in the college classroom has expanded to cover a crazy-wide range of topics related to writing, writing instruction, rhetorical analysis (of just about anything you might even vaguely be able to call a text), the politics of literacy and literacy instruction, pedagogy, histories of writing instruction and text production, underrepresented rhetorics, the interwebs, and, sometimes, it feels like, the kitchen sink. 

This section of the course is designed to give you 1) a brief background of how the field of Rhetoric and Composition came to be; 2) the most general sense of the kinds of scholarship this field focuses on and how it is different than what a scholar of literature would engage in; and 3) the opportunity to identify an area of scholarship that you yourself would be interested in exploring. 

Details. We could spend an entire semester on the three items listed above, but we are spending roughly three weeks on it. Therefore, it is not really possible for you to research and write a scholarly argument in this new field. What is possible, though, is for you to read around in the field and develop what could possibly be an actual research paper. So, essentially, I'm asking you to do the front half of a research paper without actually having to do the research paper part. 


You will be responsible for the following components for this project: 
  1. After class reading and discussion about what is possible to study in C&R, you will identify and clear with me a research focus. 
  2. You will locate 7-10 articles that discuss your research focus. We will got to the library for some training in research in a specific field. 
  3. After I model how to write an annotation and we practice it in class, you will annotate your 7-10 articles. This is an opportunity to practice some precision moves in your own academic writing style.
  4. Finally, you will write a three page, double-spaced, typed introduction to your annotations. Your introduction should tell us the following: 
  • What seems to be the central concerns of your topic?
  •  If you can tell, who are the important theorists or practitioners? 
  • Are there any debates among scholars going on about different aspects of the topic? 
  • What seems to be important to these scholars--what students, what ideas, what practices, what outcomes do they value?

OTHER THINGS
We will workshop the annotations and the introduction in class at different times and in different ways. You will do a brief presentation of about five minutes to the class about what you learned on the class before the material is due. That due date (check the syllabus) is the day you will turn in your midterm portfolio. The completed version of this project is due as part of that portfolio. 
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  • Home
  • ENGL 226 policies
    • 226 Discussion Board space
    • ENGL 226 syllabus
    • ENGL 226 PORTFOLIO
    • ENGL 226 PARTNER INTERVIEW MINI-PAPER
    • ENGL226 READING JOURNALS (assignment)
    • 226 BLOG INFORMATION
    • ENGL 226 Writing Studies Timeline Project
    • ENGL 226 Professional Writing Project
    • ENGL 226 SUPER FAST CAREER PRESENTATIONS
    • ENGL 226 Writing As Art
  • Previously Taught Classes
    • ENGL 301 >
      • ENGL 301 SYLLABUS >
        • PARTNER INTERVIEW ENGL 301
      • ENGL 301 Discussion Board When We Need it
      • ENGL 301 PORTFOLIOS
      • ENGL 301 READING JOURNALS (assignment)
      • ENGL 301 INTERVIEW WITH A TEACHER (assignment)
      • ENGL 301 BOOK CLUB (assignment)
      • ENGL 301 FLASH MENTOR TEXT MEMOIR (assignment)
      • ENGL 301 RESEARCH IN TEACHING DIVERSE POPULATIONS (assignment) >
        • ENGL 301 RESEARCH IN TEACHING DIVERSE POPULATIONS (instructions & sample annotations)
      • ENGL 301 ASSIGNMENT DESIGN (assignment)
    • ENGL102 >
      • ENGL 102 Class Discussion Board
      • ENGL102SYLLABUS
      • ENGL102 PORTFOLIOS/Research Notebook
      • ENGL102 ASSIGNMENT: Class Profile Page
      • ENGL102 ASSIGNMENTS: Reading Journals
      • ENGL102 ASSIGNMENT: OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH PROJECT >
        • ENGL102 ASSIGNMENT: POSITIONING YOURSELF
        • ENGL102 ASSIGNMENT: Locating & Evaluating part I
    • ENGL 202 BIZ Com >
      • ENGL 202 Business Writing SYLLABUS
    • ENGL 227 INTRO TO CNF WORKSHOP
    • ENGL 298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
    • ENGL406 RESEARCH IN WRITING STUDIES
    • ENGL 493 THE PERSONAL ESSAY
    • ENGL 493 Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies: The History of First Year Composition >
      • ENGL 493 Assignments: Annotated Bibliography & Presentation
    • ENGL 511 Reading & Writing Memoir
    • DURFEE Engl101
  • BSU Homepage