Literacy Task 2

Literacy Task 2

Final Draft due: April 9 by 11:59p.m., in the appropriate D2L assignment folder

Quick Reference Guide

• Word count: 1500 words
• Genre: academic essay for Humanities
• Exigence: to help develop knowledge and practices of writing transferable to future writing contexts
• Stance: clarifying connections between school and non-school writing
• Format: MLA or APA
• Audience: Me

Background

Throughout this semester, we have focused helping you develop knowledge and practices of writing that will transfer to future writing contexts. Writing researchers believe transfer is facilitated by focusing on key terms. Writing researchers also believe writers draw on prior knowledge when faced with writing for any context.

Objective

For this literacy task, I invite you to develop an argument in which you detail how your prior knowledge about writing developed in a non-school setting helps or hinders the writing you are asked to do in a school setting. Just like Sean Branick showed us, non-school discourse communities, like athletics, are rich in examples of reading and writing. And like Kevin Roozen showed us, learners often draw on these non-school literate practices when asked to do school writing.

When writing, consider using these prompts to guide your invention and drafting:

• After deciding on a specific non-school discourse community (like your basketball team or church youth group or sorority), detail the reading and writing practices central to participating effectively in this space.
• How did you learn these reading and writing practices? What genres are most commonly used? What exigencies drive these genres and for whom are they written?
• How are these genres, audiences, and exigencies similar or dissimilar to specific writing you undertake in your classes?
• Highlight a school discourse community of which you are a member. What are the common reading and writing practices? What genres are most commonly used? What exigencies drive these genres and for whom are they written?
• How does your non-school writing affect your school writing? Can you highlight examples of successful transfer of unsuccessful transfer?
• Why is this issue worth exploring? What is the exigence of this literacy task?

Assessing

I plan on using this brief assignment to gauge your current writing level and will spend more time providing feedback on mechanical, syntactical, and grammatical areas of your writing than I will do for the longer literacy tasks. Specifically, I will be looking for you to

• Construct a clearly articulated main point early in your writing
• Pull appropriately from the class readings to supplement your argument
• Construct a title that orientates a reader into your argument
• Detail the writing practices of a school and non-school discourse community
• Illustrate a command of grammatical and mechanical elements of writing
• Trim superfluous words and, when needed, passive voice from your writing
• Properly format your essay according to MLA or APA guidelines

Good luck! I’m happy to help if you need some additional assistance at any stage of this paper. You can reach me as well via email at Michael.rifenburg@ung.edu or on Twitter @JMRifenburg.