The purpose of this unit is to give students concepts (vocabulary) for thinking about and reading texts of all kinds in a rhetorical way (e.g. examining purpose, audience expectations, the influence of context, etc.).

Suggested readings:

• “Assess the writing situation,” section C1a (Hacker)
• “Backpacks vs briefcases” (Open Spaces, Carroll)
• “Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)” (OS, Boyd)
• “So you’ve got a writing assignment. Now what?” (OS, Hinton)
• “Navigating genres” (OS, Dirk)
• “Genres: Shapes of Meaning” (OS, Catherine McDonald)

This unit explores with students ways to conduct research in various contexts and for various purposes, and find and interrogate sources for use in their writing. In some cases, the library and/or the writing center may provide support for this unit.

Suggested Readings:

• “Researching,” sections R1, R2, & R3 (Hacker)
• “Walk, Talk, Cook, Eat: A Guide to Using Sources” (OS, Haller)

This unit provides methods to incorporate textual and other sources into one’s writing, covering typical conventions of summarizing, quoting, and documentation attribution. In some cases, the library and/or the writing center may provide support for this unit.

Suggested Readings:

• MLA/APA Resource Guides (Hacker)
• “They Say” Chapters 1-3 (Graff & Birkenstein)
• “Finding Your Way”  (OS, Lessner & Craig)

• “Annoying ways people use sources” (OS, Stedman)

This unit explores ways to come up with ideas for writing in meaningful ways and incorporating those ideas into a written discussion.

Suggested readings:

• Academic Reading, sections A1, A2, A3, A4 (Hacker)
• Chapters 4-7 (Graff & Birkstein)
• “Looking for Trouble: Finding Your Way Into a Writing Assignment” (OS, Savini)
• “The Writing Revolution,” Peg Tyre (October 2012, The Atlantic)

This unit helps students through the process of reviewing one’s reading and writing practices and drafts in order to revise or change drafts or practices, considering what to include in a portfolio, and how to reflect in writing (what to talk about) for the portfolio.

Suggested readings:

• “Preparing a portfolio,” section C4 (Hacker)
• “Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?” (Giles, OS)
• “Reviewing, revising, and editing” (Hacker, C3)

This unit compares the reasons for conflicting peer judgments on students’ writing/drafts, which leads to some kind of formal reflection activity that asks the student to make sense of the comparisons. The unit considers questions like: In what reasonable ways can each of the conflicting judgments of the student’s writing be found correct? What do these different judgments suggest about the different language assumptions that the readers have concerning writing and what is appropriate? How are the language assumptions of readers different from the writer’s?

Suggested readings:

• Style, Grammar, and Multilingual Writers, sections S1-S7, W1-W6, G1-G6, M1-M6 (Hacker)
• “The ‘Standard English’ Fairy Tale” (Greenfield)
• “I Just Wanna Be Average” (Rose)
• “Should Writers Use They Own English?” (Young)
• “Inglés in Colleges” (Villanueva)
• “Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone” (Lu)
• “Reflections on Academic Discourse” (Elbow)
• “How To Tame A Wild Tongue” (Anzaldúa)