Classtineness!

Questions from last class...

What research questions guide your study?

Why is this question important to ask?

How did this text come to look the way that it does?

Why does the text achieve some goals & not others?

How could the text be improved?

Initiating text...

writing prompt, it prompts the writer to compose another text (like the job ad, the initiating text is the assignment description)

what happens to the text?

it gets interpreted by the writer (the student); gets negotiated (we're looking for the HOW for each of these points)

How can we discover answers to these points, using the packet we have?

How does he interpret the initiating text, and how does it get negotiated?

I'd say that the first text to come after the initiating text is the rough draft.  If not the rough draft, it would be whatever writing took place concerning that text before the rough draft.  

The rough draft would show how the writer interpreted the initiating text, and then the responses from peers and the teacher would show how the text is negotiated.

The teacher notes most likely came before the writing prompt, but the notes are geared more toward the teacher, and not the assignment.  The teacher would use his notes to start the discussions and such.

We are doing this to track the whole writing experience; if we start with the final paper, we have overlooked many important aspects that influenced what went in to the finished project.

Interpret--

Texts: assignment description (look for key words, what goals were set, what purpose was established, look for words that give emphasis); post write (to figure out what worked and what didn't; he states what his opinion was, how he interpreted it);

Interview: stimulated elicitation interviewing "prop";

Negotiate--

Texts: workshop package (peer review questions, focus us on specific moves the writer should make), teaching notes (to see what was emphasized, repeated); 

1. Final documents
   
2. Post write (3 times: before, after drafts; after writing final)
3. Rough draft(13.14; 17.18); peer reviews
4. Free writes (21.22--job skills; 23--audience)

Trying to collect all the papers that the person wrote, in order, 

1. Free writes
2. Rough draft
3. Post write 1 &2
4. Final draft
5. Post write 3
6. Rhetorical analysis memo

Collect all the info, and put it in order.  Ask the person to explain the brainstorming process; try to piece it together. Writing log--not every day, but ask them to write down everything they did writing for a particular project.

Group work: carefully analyzing the documents, p. 175-180 of Prior

1. Free writes--the skills he writes about continue through the documents; he realizes that this is an important aspect of the assignment, and he begins this in a free write
   
2. Rough draft--the skills mentioned in the free write come to play in the rd; he uses the skills that he thinks are the most important and uses them to persuade his audience
   
3. Post write 1 &2--the skills
   
4. Final draft--he connects skills to company needs, as opposed to just pointing to the company itself; he explains the courses by specific name, instead of alluding to them
   
5. Post write 3
   
6. Rhetorical analysis memo
   

(topics may stay the same, but examples change. what motivated you to bring examples into one cover letter that you didn't bring into your other?)

Classness!

Kairos questions: the rhetor needs to know the pressing questions about the topic.  He/she needs to keep in mind the people in the audience--rhetor writes in a way that stresses the main point.  Rhetor can bring in the people who are removed by miles--makes the problem present.

Tracing the writing processes--

ex. Start with a successful text, we try to understand the text, in order to find out how it was written...this helps when we want to study how the writer writes...how did it come to look the way it does? Why does the text look the way it does?  Why?/So what?  help us to understand what effective writing process looks like?  

ex. How could this text have been written better?  Only looking at the text...removes the writer from the text (when we're not the writer).  How did the text come to meet certain goals, and not others?  The people writing may have understood the ideas differently.

ex. The process of the person--they did all the mapping of the people included in the other people...

Class handouts

Analysis of the texts--

Assignment description--3--we know what the writer was aiming for; we see this through the way in which the writer interprets the text and prompt. Description of the "target document", what it looks like. To understand the writer's objectives. Guidelines for writing the final text.  

Old one--

how the person is writing, broad audience, specific?  e.g.--If it is broad, the reader might think that the writer does not have a particular direction in mind.

teacher comments--the student needs to 

FROM AARON AND ERIN
---

AUXILIARY ASSIGNMENT:

The "finishing" process of the text hinges entirely upon the peer review comments of the young man's contemporaries and instructor. At this point, he has assembled a text that he finds at least satisfactory, but the final polish is added after direct criticism is supplied from sources outside of the audience. In examining the notes taken during this finishing process, we can begin to understand what aspects of the paper-- in its nearly completed form-- were cut entirely, and what aspects were found to be satisfactory and/or deserved further focus and enhancement.

Example:
Professor Wible's comment on a sentence in which the student discussed a previous internship as well as many hours spent working on a farm-- in the original draft this is a small sentence, after peer review, it is very much expanded and therefore manages to augment the student's "argument" that he is the best candidate and deserving of the position for which he is applying.

PAGE BY PAGE BREAKDOWN

Page 13: The peer review comments enable the writer to see how his audience is interpreting his text, to see if he is meeting his goal in the text.

Page 14: Again, the structure of the outline lets the audience know how organized the person is, this influences how the audience views the outline.

Pages 15-16: Skipped by instruction

Page 17: The instructor's comments work in association with the peer comments. They both let the writer know what is important to say. This is important because it allows the writer to have an idea of how affective the document is. The instructor's comments will help the writer to bring out the details in his text that otherwise would not have been expanded upon.

La Question et La Pregunta y The Question

This is another of the homework assignments for my English 301 class.  For this homework, though, I have to make a drawing that represents my writing process for my exploratory essay.  I'm going to talk about my writing process for this paper, but I will try to draw a representation of this, too.  I don't have paint (the drawing program) on my computer, so I'll have to show it in class.  

My writing process: The Exploratory Essay

When I write a paper for a class, I always, or try to, pay attention in class.  This way, I'll get any helpful hints that the teacher throws my way, and I'll have input from my classmates.  For this exploratory essay (EE) I paid attention in class when my professor explained the instructions.  (See picture of me sitting in front of an amazing iMac) I listened when my classmates gave out ideas, and I even helped out by adding my question to the board. (See picture of me writing on board) I took lots of notes to help me with this process, and I used the notes as building blocks to start the paper.  (See picture of me playing with blocks--they represent the notes I took) I did a lot of searching on the Internet for listings of editors in the area. (See picture of me sitting in front of my MacBook surfing the web) Since I already had a research question in mind, I began to brainstorm ways in which I could put the question on paper as an idea.  (See picture of me writing in my journal/notebook) I spoke to several people about the ideas I had, wondering whether it was a good question and if I needed to incorporate something more. (See picture of me talking to other stick-figures, err, humans) I finally sat down at my computer and wrote the paper.  (Another picture of  me in front of my computer, typing away)

Now, I must create a visual metaphor for my drawing that I have done.  This ought to be interesting...

Once I have done this, I need to compare the two, saying what each includes/excludes.

Both drawings exclude the exact details of the real-life situation.  This is to be expected, as I am not a good drawer (meant as one who draws pictures, not the rolling thing in the kitchen).  The drawings did not include me talking to the editors themselves.  I'm sure that would have greatly helped with my writing, but I could not pin-point an editor to ask.  I believe I have pin-pointed one now, though.  I'm sure I have left out major ideas not incorporated in the drawings, but I am not positive.  

If you're in my class, I'll be able to show you the pictures.  If not, however, I'm trying to figure out how to upload images.  I think the "upload images" button might play into this query, but I'm too confused to ask.  Anyways...to class!