• What are the different expectations and interpretations that different audiences might have of a text?
• How can a writer imagine an audience?
• What kinds of information about the "world" must we have in order to imagine diverse audiences and their probable reading/interpretative strategies?
• What are the risks of imagining audience (or: what kinds of stereotypes and assumptions do we carry about groups of people on which we might base our assumptions of audience?).
• How can we increase our awareness of different reading/interpretative groups (audiences) and their different knowledges and perceptions?

What I Expect From You:

• An extensive writing log/journal that records the writing issues we define in class, your progress and process as a writer, your strengths and weaknesses and strategies for meeting the writing requirements of the class.
• Active participation in class discussion.  (This includes E-mail responses to the class list with ideas, thoughts, questions, emotions about the writing issues raised from our readings.)
• 4 short (2-3 pages) and one long (6-8 pages) formal papers. These assignments will be determined partly by the context of class reading/thinking; in this sense, the class's responses to and evaluations of the readings are as important as the reading itself.  Our discussion is, in fact, an important "text" of the class! In part, I will direct these writings so that they form an assignment sequence designed to help you progressively develop your writing voice, awareness of your own process as a writer, your      analytical and argumentative skills.
• .A final exam that defines your progress as a writer

• 10% -- Informal Writing (including discussion board postings, e-mail, quizzes, and workshops)
• 20% -- Final Exam
• 70% -- Formal Writing Assignments (Summary, Language Analysis, Film Review, Final Project)

• As you keep you writing log, pay attention to how your writing is changing, how you as a writer are evolving.
• Towards the middle of the semester, you should find that you are making fewer of the errors that you were making at the beginning of the term.
• Your final exam will be an essay evaluating your progress as a writer throughout the semester; this essay must cite specific writing issues on which you have worked, how you addressed them, and what kinds of issues you still have left to address.

Readings/Texts

• Our readings for this class are divided between the articles in the course packet, which you get from me, and the Internet.  It is important that you keep up with the readings and complete each day's quiz/writing log assignments for the readings.
• You will also need the Blair Handbook; a good portion of our work will use the support web site for this handbook at http://cw.prenhall.com/bookbind/public_html/pubbooks/fulwiler/-
• You will need a college level dictionary; I also have handbooks and dictionaries available online at http://www2.gasou.edu:80/facstaff/lamy/tools.html.

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Writing Log #3
    This writing log is intended to help you develop a concrete, specific understanding of the topic for your second writing assignment: what kinds of languages (verbal and non-verbal) do the identity groups you belong to (or choose to write about) use and what does their language use tell us about how they see the world.  The writing assignment is posted online at http://www2.gasou.edu/facstaff/lamy/teaching/1101/grplang.html
    Writing Log #3 is the first two bullet points of this assignment.  Label a
sheet of paper with the date 9-7, Writing Log #3, and free-write to this:

Think about the groups to which you belong.  These could be family
groups, religious groups, social or political groups.  Gender and race can
also function as identity groups, as can ethnicity, nationality, and
geographical regions.  For example, "southerners" in the United States
tend to form an identity group that is distinct from "northerners."
Similarly, sports fans that affiliate their identities with particular
teams-- "Gator fans" or "Bulldog" fans, for example-- constitute identity
groups. Free-write a bit about the identity groups to which you belong.
How does your affiliation with these groups shape your thinking, form your
relationships, or direct your use of your time (for example, do you go to
meetings? watch events?  Hang out with your group members?)

Writing Log #4
    After free-writing about the identity groups to which you belong and the ways in which your affiliation with them affects you, jot down some notes about the kinds of things your group talks about.  Include things such as common stories that the group tells, themes that are common to group discussion, words or terms that group members use to discuss themselves or others in the world.  For example, southerners might commonly tell stories of "Yankees" that "can't drive."
    Once you have spent some time free-writing and brainstorming your group identities and the language of these groups, carefully observe your next interactions with the group.  Add specific comments, terms, stories, or patterns of speaking to your notes.

Writing Log #5
Review today's workshop paper and decide:

1. Does this paper have good points but need more proof (concrete detail)?  Good detail but needs to draw more conclusions?
2. What is the thesis?  Does is specifically define what the paper will be talking about?  Can we improve the thesis in any way?
3. Organization: The thesis paragraph needs to lay out the major points the paper will make, and the paper needs to make those points in the order in which they are described in the thesis paragraph.  Each paragraph needs a good topic sentence that specifically defines the thesis point the paragraph is explaining, and every sentence in the paragraph needs to directly develop the topic sentence

Writing Log #10
Writing Log #10 is your last entry-- remember, the writing logs must be in your revision notebook with all of the work for this class-- they are 10% of your grade!
This log is intended to help you organize your revision notebook, to jump-start your final editing/revision for your final project, and to prepare you for the final exam.  In short, this is what you do:

1. Review each of the writing assignments we have done for this class.  Make sure you have all of your paperwork together.  Beginning with the summary paper and working all the way through the final project, review your first drafts, the comments from you peer review, my critique on the paper you submitted for my evaluation, my notes on the writing issues check list I returned with your paper.  Make a list of each of the writing issues identified for your paper, when and how your worked on the issue, what you learned (i.e., what actually helped you understand the writing problem... a conference? reviewing your handbook?  using online resources?), and when you revised
2. From your lists, format a readable and clear chart for me.
3. Write a paragraph explaining how well you think you revised each paper, what your best work is and why, and what was most help in your writing and revision process.  Assess yourself as a writer-- where do you think you are and what do you still have left to do.
4. Tell me what grade level you think your final project is at and why.

Example:

Writing Log # 10 Date Writing Progress/Revision Summary

Paragraph expaling how well you rvised each paper, best work and why, what strategies you learned most from, final project assessment
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

What grade level do you think your final project is
at?