Exploring Communication and Literacy in Various Contexts
This essay sequence delves into the theme of writing about writing through personal experiences, academic synthesis, research plans, and final essays. It encourages students to view writing through the lens of a writing studies researcher and emphasizes understanding how communication, reading, and education operate in diverse contexts. The prompts cover topics such as majors, job experiences, hobbies, and specific communication scenarios, offering a comprehensive exploration of communication and literacy.
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Essay sequence and Writing about Writing Julie Townsend, Ph.D. College Writing II Cleveland State University
Essay 1: Argument from Experience No sources, all about experience and observation Essay 2: Synthesis Summarizing and connecting academic articles. Little opinion. All essays are themed writing about writing Essay 3: Prospectus Plan for final research essay Essay 4: Final research essay Writer has most flexibility. Focus should be on answering research questions. Can be a combination of experience, observations, and research.
Chances are, youve taken English courses that focus on analyzing novels, poems, or short stories. Maybe you ve had writing classes that focus on presenting arguments through writing and taking stances on topics. This course will be different. This course can be viewed as an introduction to writing studies. If you were to go to graduate school with a focus on composition or new literacy studies, the lenses and readings in this course would be very relevant to you. Writing about Writing I don t expect you to be a graduate student in writing studies. I do believe that if you practice seeing reading, writing, and communication in this course like a writing studies researcher does, you will better be able to understand how writing, reading, communication, and education operate in different contexts to get work done. You will be writing about how communication, reading, writing, and education are used in a specific context that you choose. To begin thinking about your essays, you will need to choose a place to study where communication takes place. All human activities include communication that you can study.
Your major. What kinds of communication, reading, and writing go on in your desired career? What about your major classes? If you don t have personal experience in this yet, it might be best to save this topic for essays 2-4. A job that you have. What kinds of reading, writing, and communication go on at your work? How does that communication work to get things done? How is communication used to resolve problems? How do you use reading, writing, and communication in your own life? Do you use YouTube to study? Do you use Instagram to stay in touch with family members? Focus on a specific platform and get into details instead of covering two or more online platforms. Prompts to write about Do you have experience teaching or learning a language or other skill? How did you learn? How do you teach it? How is communication involved in conveying how to learn the language or skill? Hobbies. Do you play cards? Boardgames? Are you part of an online fan community? Play sports? What kinds of reading, writing, education, and communication go on in these communities? How did you learn this activity? How would you teach it? How is reading, writing, and communication involved in becoming a member of the community?
Communication in physical therapy, a chemistry lab, a doctors office, a hospital, as a nurse, in a pharmacy Communication at Wendy s, Target s customer service desk, Chik-Fil-A, a golf course Communication at a grocery store Examples from previous semesters Communication for soccer, basketball, diving Literacy involved with Dungeons and Dragons Experiences learning a new language Communication on Instagram How athletes communicate and protest
The essay sequence is designed to fully explore topics from a variety of angles and to prepare you for writing a research essay. However, if you find that a topic is a dead end, or you become bored with it, it will be the best idea to switch your topics. You can change your topic for every essay, or stick with the same topic Some students have one topic all semester, and some students change topics.
Preview of topics that we will go over What is Literacy? Literacy in a variety of non-school contexts Studying communication and writing in workplaces African American English and other varieties of English Multilingual writing Writing and technology Audience Organization Thesis statements Plagiarism versus originality versus assemblage Sentence-level issues More! In addition to essay writing, we will read and discuss various essays and articles in writing studies. We will also do activities focused on writing essentials.
