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Essay One

Overview
As you've read in our syllabus, this is a course in "critical reading and writing"--aspects of literacy. The course invites you to develop your literacy more fully. But what do we mean by "literacy"? If we're diligently developing literacy skills, we ought to have some idea.

Essay One grows out of Chapter One in Reading Culture: "Analyzing Literacy Events." Here, authors Diana George and John Trimbur invite us to consider "how people use reading and
writing and the purposes literacy serves in their lives." They challenge us to expand our definition of literacy--to see it not just as a school subject but to investigate "the role it plays in social interactions, and the cultural meanings given to it."

We'll read definitions of literacy, literacy narratives, literacy analyses, and two student sample papers. The chapter offers opportunities to think, talk, and write about the role of literacy in our lives.

Your writing process for Essay One will include reading and writing responses to the texts in Chapter One. You'll have the opportunity to discuss these readings with classmates and write about the role of literacy in your own life. You'll write a "literacy narrative" to share with classmates. These activities will generate raw material for the Essay One--an essay in which you analyze a literacy event in your own life. Along the way, you'll have the opportunity to share drafts with classmates and instructor and to give and receive feedback.

Learning Objectives
The reading and writing you'll do in this first essay assignment provide opportunities to enrich your understanding of literacy and work on skills important to your success as an academic thinker and writer. The goals are to
  • Develop your repertoire of active reading strategies--exploratory writing, highlighting, annotating, summarizing--to engage and "talk back to" texts 
  • Strengthen your critical reading skills by "coming to terms" with challenging texts* 
  • Strengthen your critical writing skills by "forwarding" texts
  • Begin to develop a writing process that might work in a variety of writing situations
  • Extend your understanding of literacy
Such skills, knowledge, and habits of mind are important in the kinds of intellectual work you'll encounter throughout the academic curriculum--and beyond the classroom as you engage in work and the civic life of the community.

*Throughout the semester, I'll use terminology suggested by Joesph Harris in his book,"Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts," to describe basic skills academic writers use to understand, interpret, and add their own ideas to the texts of others.

Writing Process (deadlines for each step are listed in the Course Calendar link)
For Essay One, we'll use parts of the writing sequence suggested by the George and Trimbur in Chapter One. (Click on links to see instructions each assignment.)
Length, Format, and Documentation of Your Writing Process
  • The final draft of your essay should be about 750 words long.
  • Use the manuscript format laid out on pp. 197-199 of Easy Writer. To see how the final draft should look on the page, see the sample paper starting on p. 226.
Be sure to save all the writing you do (including exploratory writing and exercises) leading up to your final draft. When you submit your essay for grading, the following exercises and drafts must be included:
  • Exercises One, Two, and Three
  • Rough draft with feedback from classmates and instructor
  • Final draft
Arrange these materials in a pocket-folder in the order listed above, with the earliest materials on the bottom and the final draft on top. Be sure each exercise and draft is clearly labeled in the last line of the heading ("Exercise B," for example, or “Rough Draft”).

Grading
  • I will use a scoring guide to grade the essay on a 100-point scale.
  • Essay One will count for 15% of your final grade in the course.