English Assignment

The first chapter of the textbook focuses on the idea of constructs about writing: "Constructs are mental frameworks that people build in order to make sense of the world around them. One of the key features of an effective construct is that it quickly begins to seem 'natural' or inevitable, rather than made-up."

Another way to think about this is by considering that many of our thoughts and conceptions about writing might actually be inaccurate when put to the test. For example, many of us has heard nothing but negative comments about plagiarism; however later on in the semester you will encounter authors who challenge such negativism and actually provide an argument that in some justifies using other people's thoughts.

Context:

The authors in this chapter clearly believe that good writing takes hard work and multiple drafts and that many of us are hampered from being better writers by the "rules" and misconceptions we have been taught about writing. This is true even of very famous people who write a lot every day. Sonia Sotomayor, who at the time your textbook was written, had recently joined the United States Supreme Court, has been widely criticized for her writing. She even criticizes herself, saying, "Writing remains a challenge for me even today-everything I write goes through multiple drafts-I am not a natural writer." Here she conflates being a "good" writer with being a "natural" writer; she seems to believe that some people are born good writers and some people aren't. Her conceptions is that a "good" writer only has to write one draft; anyone who has to write multiple drafts must be a "bad" writer. Even from this one short quotation, you can see that Sonia Sotomayor's conceptions of writing are limiting and would not hold up if closely examined by the researchers and professional writers in this chapter.

Audience:

As always, audience is extremely important. For this paper, I'd like you to address writing instructors at any level (K-12th and college).

Purpose:

For this assignment, your purpose is to analyze a preconceived idea that you might have about writing. Ultimately, your job is to inform the audience you've chosen about this preconceived idea and use what you've learned about through the articles to suggest to your audience alternative ways to address that issue with future students. For example, perhaps you've believed your entire life that good writing means perfect grammar. Perhaps this notion arose from teacher after teacher placing way too much emphasis on grammar instead of content. So, in your paper, you would suggest to educators a more effective perspective on grammar based on what you've learned in this class.

Sources:

As far as sources, you need to use and incorporate at least two of the class readings into your paper and at least two scholarly journal articles. View the following video finding articles using the Library's databases:

Finding the Library's Databases (Links to an external site.)

Database Tutorials (Links to an external site.) - Watch the 3 videos under the EBSCO Database Tutorials box because you will most likely use an EBSCO database like Academic Search Premier to find articles. If you go into a database that is not EBSCO, you can watch the tutorial for that database too.

Assignment:

Use what you have read in this unit to consider the story you have to tell about yourself as a writer. How do you see yourself as a writer? Is that self-perception helping you be the best writer you can be? In this assignment, I'd like you to take a 'construct' or 'conception' about writing and analyze it. For example, you might want to define:

a) What do we really mean by "good writing"?

or

b) Is writing really an individual activity? Or is it a social one?

or

c) Is being good at grammar mean that one is a good writer?

Keep in mind that these are just suggestions. You are certainly free to write about any other constructs about writing that you might have.

Length: 1000-1200 words.