Mini-paper 1

Mini-paper 1

Final Draft due: January 29 by 11:59p.m., in the appropriate D2L assignment folder

Quick Reference Guide

• Word count: 500 words
• Genre: academic essay for the Humanities
• Exigence: to help develop knowledge and practices of writing transferable to future writing contexts
• Stance: defining, referencing, and using a key term
• Format: MLA or APA
• Audience: Me

·       Background

Since Harvard started requiring their students to take a writing class early in their college careers, U.S. higher education has followed suit. Now, the vast majority of schools require their students to take a writing class or test out it. One of the reasons for the lasting presence of these writing classes is the belief that the skills you learn will help you in future school writing contexts. Writing researchers have a name for this idea of skills honed in one area being used by a learner in a different: transfer.

To help student writers experience successful writing transfer, writing researchers believe students need to develop knowledge and practice of writing. And focusing students’ attention to key terms helps facilitate this process. The key terms we have introduced come from importantresearch at Florida State on how to help you transfer writing knowledge andpractices.

Objective

For this mini-paper, I invite you to select one of the key terms we have recently introduced (i.e., genre, audience, rhetorical situation, and exigence) and

• provide a definition of this term grounded in the Grant-Davie reading
• explain how you understand and use the term
• and detail how understanding and defining this term will help you in future writing contexts—be those contexts school related or non-school related.

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

• Pull appropriately from the Grant-Davie readings to offer a definition of your selected key term
• Construct a clearly articulated main point early in your writing
• Reflect and draw on examples from your life experience to illustrate how you understand the key term
• 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.