1. We Write Because We Care: Developing Your Writerly Identity

by Glenn Lester, Sydney Doyle, Taylor Lucas, and Alison Overcash

Author’s Overview — Many college students write for one reason and one reason only: to complete a class assignment. But students who subscribe to this view of writing—writing as merely a means to an end, a tool to achieve a grade—are seriously limiting themselves. In this chapter, a writing teacher and three recently graduated writers argue that writing can be used as a tool to build personal agency, develop resilience, and achieve social goals. In doing so, we introduce you to a variety of concepts that you can use to construct your writerly identity. Ultimately, we ask you to reconsider the role of writing in your life, and invite you to take that first, radical step of calling yourself a “real” writer.

Discussion Questions

1. Which of the three sections of this chapter resonated with you the most, and why? Which section was most confusing or surprising? What does your response tell you about who you are as a writer?
2. What role has writing played in your personal development so far as a student? How about outside of the classroom? What ideas in this chapter do you anticipate using in this course or semester?
3. One way to develop your writerly identity is to compare various writers’ reasons for writing and ideas about writing. To that end, read Sarah Allen’s “The Inspired Writer Vs. The Real Writer,” also found in Writing Spaces. Identify the common themes between that chapter and this chapter, as well as any differences in perspective.
4. Create a two-column chart. Label one column “writing for school” and the other “personal writing.” Then, use the chart to describe how your experience differs when you’re writing for school versus engaging in personal writing. (Remember that personal writing isn’t always poetry, diaries, or short stories!)

Teacher Resources

2. The Inspired Writer vs The Real Writer

by Sarah Allen

Author’s Overview — I work to dispel the myth of the “inspired writer” (the figure who generates perfect prose without the frustrated process of revision or failure) and to tell the truth about the writing process as I and many of my colleagues and students experience it. I find that a good writer is not an inspired genius but a navigator—among ideas, words, readers, etc. To help student writers, I share what tricks I’ve learned in navigating on the page—e.g. imitating other successful writings and finding good readers.

Discussion Questions

1. What are you most anxious about, when writing? For example, do you worry most about grammar and mechanics? About organization? About the deadline? About page length? Why?
2. No doubt most students are at least peripherally, if not entirely, concerned with what grade they get on a paper. Given that pressure and/or in addition to that pressure, what are you most anxious about, when sharing your writing with others—e.g. classmates and/or the teacher? For example, do you worry most about your audience thinking your ideas are stupid? About readers misunderstanding your argument? About your peers/ teacher judging you according to how well you write?
3. How are your answers to numbers 1 and 2 related? For example, does your anxiety about the deadline have anything to do with your anxiety about readers misunderstanding your argument? If so, how and/or why?
4. What, if any, strategies do you use to address these anxieties? Do they work?

3. Storytelling, Narration and the “Who I Am” Story

by Catherine Ramsdell

Author’s Overview — This chapter focuses on the importance of storytelling to successful personal and professional communication in the 21st century. Because narration transcends experience, and because stories “can be found anywhere from a movie theatre to a corporate boardroom, everyone should know how to tell a good story.” While the chapter covers some theoretical aspects of narration, it will also help you show students how to create a “Who I Am” story and give them the opportunity to craft their own stories.

Discussion Questions

1. Maxwell and Dickman believe that “a story is a fact, wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action that transforms our world.” How would you define the term story? What do you think are the most important elements of a good story? What examples help support your thoughts?
2. How could stories and storytelling fit into your major field of study? What types of stories do you think professionals in your field might find useful?

4. I Need You to Say “I”: Why First Person Is Important in College Writing

by Kate McKinney Maddalena

Author’s Overview — In this essay, I argue against the common misconception that “I” has no place in formal writing. I discuss many theoretical and rhetorical ways (objectivity and intellectual integrity, and clarity and organization, respectively) in which first person, used prudently, can improve written argument. I then show some examples of academic prose that illustrate the rhetorical concepts I’ve described. Finally, I list some hypothetical writing tasks where “I” might work and warn against some where it won’t.

Discussion Questions

1. Can you remember a writing task during which you struggled to avoid using the first person? What about the nature of the content made “I” hard to avoid? Can you link the difficulty to one of the four values that first person “supports,” according to this essay?
2. McKinney Maddalena claims that scientists use “I” more often in research reports, nowadays. Find a scientific article in your school’s research databases that employs first person: “I” or “we.” In what section is first person used, and how? Does its usage reflect one of the values this essay points out?

5. Workin’ Languages: Who We Are Matters in Our Writing

by Sara P. Alvarez, Amy J. Wan, and Eunjeong Lee

Author’s Overview — The steady increase of movements of people around the world has transformed the face, potential, and expectations of the US writing classroom. These intersecting shifts have also contributed to critical discussions about how writing educators should integrate students’ linguistic diversity and ways of knowing into literacy instruction. This chapter’s central premise is to share with students how the work that they already do with languages has great value. Specifically, the chapter introduces terms, concepts, and strategies to support students in identifying how their own multilingual workin’ of languages contribute to the making of academic writing. Our goal is to support students in recognizing the value of their own language practices and to provide strategies that students can use to rethink their own relationships with writing. Orienting practices around translingualism and envisioning students’ language work as that of “language architects” creates opportunities to uplift, value, and sustain students’ rich language practices, as well as ways to critically understand their academic writing experiences.

Discussion Questions

1. What is your current understanding of “good writing” and “a good writer?” What does “good writing” sound, look, and feel to you? And what do you think has shaped your current understanding? How do you think your understanding influences the way you approach your writing assignments in our/other classes?
2. Reflect on your experiences across different languages (e.g., Englishes, Spanishes, Black Languages, etc.) How are your relationships, experiences, and practices of these languages similar or different? What do you think shapes these different relationships, experiences, and practices?
3. Think about your last writing assignment. What was your process like? Who did you think about? What did you pay attention to? What did you particularly consider throughout the process?
4. Think back to a time when writing felt good, when communicating with someone felt comforting. Who were you writing to or communicating with? You can go back as early as primary school.
5. Imagine if none of the writing assignments in college were ever graded or read by your instructor, what would you like to communicate to the world? As you think about the people in your life and the moments your communities might be facing now, what feels important for you to write?
6. Consider your experiences with writing. What feelings come up? Examine these writing feelings. What emotions and experiences do these feelings prompt for you about writing?
7. What stalls your writing? Is it internal or external? What if you could speak to that “stalling” force? What would you say?
8. Can you describe any moments when you experienced or recognized linguistic injustice? How would you explain what happened? How might it have affected your future attempts to write or communicate with others?

Teacher Resources

6. Changing Your Mindset About Revision

by L. Lennie Irvin

Author’s Overview — Many freshmen enter college with a one-draft writing process where revision means tidying up errors and then submitting the final product. This chapter is about changing your thinking about revision as a foundation for changing your practice of revision. The chapter explores the false concepts about writing and revision and replaces them with new mental models of the revision process. Specifically, it details the big picture concept that writing is an inquiry process where we discover what we mean as we write it: through revision, we discover ways to get what we mean closer to what we say and what we say closer to what we mean. Writing is ultimately about thinking and developing our thinking, and one-shot drafts cut short this growth in our thinking and the development of a piece of writing. With this new mindset of writing as an inquiry process in mind, the chapter presents four practices to guide your new approach to the writing process: follow a three-draft sequence to write your papers, always get feedback, reflect between drafts to set revision goals, and save editing for last.

Discussion Questions

1. Write about some everyday non-school writing that you have done in the last week (like text messages, emails, social media posts or any writing). How much revision do you do on these pieces of writing. Why? Describe the kinds of changes you made?
2. What has been your approach to revising essays in school previous to this class? Describe what you have done in the past to “revise.” Talk about one instance of revising following your method.
3. What have been your greatest challenges when you have been asked to revise a draft? Talk about a past experience before this class and a more current experience from revising a draft in this class.
4. Why should your first draft of a college essay never be your last draft (even if you tidy it up)?
5. How is this concept of writing as an inquiry process founded upon revision different and foreign to what you have thought before?
6. How does this essay help you understand what you have been learning about writing and revision so far in this class? How do you think it will affect how you will go about revision in the future?

7. What Are We Being Graded On?

by Jeremy Levine

Author’s Overview — Grades are an (often) unmentioned but all-powerful force in the writing classroom. We know that grades mean a great deal to students, motivating many of their decisions in the classroom. But because grading is uncomfortable and inexact work, we rarely discuss it openly in class — a silence that can leave students in the dark about the standards toward which they should write. This essay is a guide to that imprecision; it seeks to lay out for students the different considerations that go into a grading policy so that they can read assignments and rubrics with a more discerning eye. In showing students the many ways that grading standards shift across writing situations, this essay will help students adjust to new and even unclear sets of standards as well as equip students to assess their own writing on terms other than grades.

Discussion Questions

1. When reading this essay, could you think of any specific writing assignments from your past where you felt like there was a miscommunication of expectations? What happened? What was the teacher expecting, and what did you offer instead?
2. What should the writer of this essay have done with the problem he posed in the beginning? What would have been a fair way to grade all of these essays while still offering guidance on how to meet expectations?
3. Near the end of the essay, the writer suggests that you can set your own assessment standards for yourself. Think about a paper that you have coming up: what do you want to get out of it? How do you think you can use it to improve your writing?
4. How does hearing about the imprecision of grading methods make you feel?
5. How else can students get to know the expectations of a given writing assignment? What strategies have you used in the past?
6. Can you think of a time that your writing or speaking marked you as an outsider to a group, or where you noticed someone did not belong to a group you are part of because of the way they spoke or wrote? What was the marker of difference, and what happened?

Teacher Resources