Process

Getting Burned or Becoming Toast?: Problem-Exploring the Game “I Am Bread” as a Tool for Teaching Growth Mindset in First Year Writing

Laura E. Decker Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description First-year writers often struggle to take risks on projects, especially as they move from their composition courses to projects within new disciplines and contexts (Robertson et al.). However, taking risks by diving into new discourse communities, as Bartholomae argued, is required to participate effectively in the […]

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Using a Growth Mindset and Revision Plan to Interpret and Apply Instructor Comments

Roger Powell Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The purpose of this revision plan assignment is to help students in first-year composition courses effectively process teacher comments on their writing and make a plan to use them to revise their writing. The assignment rests on the notion that if students approach comments on their writing

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Dramatizing the Conversation: Creating Dialogue Scripts to Support Source Synthesis

Kim Fahle Peck Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor metaphor presents a picture of academic research as a conversation between ideas and perspectives: Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too

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A Full Class Annotated Bibliography: In-Class Community Building & Applied Social Composing Practice

Zoe McDonald Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity transforms a familiar annotated bibliography into a full class activity to give students hands-on knowledge of two central components of composing: writing as a social process (Adler-Kassner and Wardle) and “authority is constructed and contextual” (ACRL). As Tressie McMillan Cottom observes , “writing is always

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How Writing Happens

Zack DePiero and Ryan Dippre Volume 5 Chapter Description The writing process is often oversimplified as a series of linear steps: brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. While this notion enables students, like you, to conceptualize writing as something that improves over time, it also conceals the chaos of writing and its social, emotional, and

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We Write Because We Care: Developing Your Writerly Identity

Glenn Lester, Sydney Doyle, Taylor Lucas, and Alison Overcash Volume 5 Chapter Description Many college students write for one reason and one reason only: to complete a class assignment. But students who subscribe to this view of writing—writing as merely a means to an end, a tool to achieve a grade—are seriously limiting themselves. In

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Thinking Out Loud: The Prewriting Interview

Helen H. Choi Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The overall intent of this activity is to support a prewriting phase for invention and creative thinking, as students search for and develop a topic and craft a plan for responding to a writing assignment (Trim and Isaac 107). While invention can be explored through individual

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What’s the Diff? Version History and Revision Reflections

Benjamin Miller Volume 5 Chapter Description This essay recommends that writers use digital tools to keep track of what’s changing as they write—and to include a quick comment with each notable change, saying what they’re trying to achieve. These revisitable histories are helpful in several ways. First, when we notice what we’re changing (often unconsciously)

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Changing Your Mindset About Revision

L. Lennie Irvin Volume 5 Chapter Description Many freshmen enter college with a one-draft writing process where revision means tidying up errors and then submitting the final product. This chapter is about changing your thinking about revision as a foundation for changing your practice of revision. The chapter explores the false concepts about writing and

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