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June 30 submission deadline for Young Scholars in Writing approaching!

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Hey, All —

Solistice is almost upon us, which means that so too is the June 30 deadline for submissions to this year’s volume of Young Scholars in Writing — less than two weeks to go! Already, our undergraduate peer reviewers and faculty advising editors are reviewing the intriguing group of submissions we’ve received so far this year, and we covet an opportunity to consider your students’ research on  writing, writers, rhetoric, discourse, language, and related topics. You and your students can find more information on submissions at the journal’s new website, http://arc.lib.montana.edu/ojs/index.php/Young-Scholars-In-Writing/about, under the Submissions heading.
We’re also happy to announce that volume 12 of YSW, which printed earlier this spring, is now available in PDF on the site as well. If your students need inspiration, they could look among a wonderful collection of articles such as “Feminist Research as Journey,” “Value in Academic Writing,” “God Terms as Exigence in the Rhetorical Battle over Keystone XL,” “The Art and Rhetoric of Letter Writing,” “An Investigation of D/deaf Literacy Theory and Narratives,” and the intriguingly named “The Enthymeme: An Analysis of Sexist Advice Animals.” (We don’t make this stuff up, the students do!)  And that’s less than half of what’s in the current table of contents. We would, of course, encourage you to consider pieces in the journal as you’re selecting readings for your courses this year as well.
Feel free to send any questions to me in my Editor hat, doug.downs@montana.edu.
Cheers —
Doug
Assignments, Blogs, Teaching Strategies

Teaching Writing about Writing 4C15 SIG

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Our CCCC 15 WAW SIG (gotta love acronyms) teaching group shared some really interesting ways to teach Writing about Writing.
We had a diverse group, from people teaching at a fully integrated WAW school to STEM WAW to WAW going rogue. Thanks to all of our participants. I walked away from the SIG with many, many great ideas!

Part of our discussion seemed to circle back on ways to get students “over the hump” of a difficult and rigorous writing curriculum. Here are some ideas we discussed:

  • Teach the literacy narrative first to ease them in.
  • Use children’s literacy TV shows to get them thinking about literacy (Reading Rainbow, Dora the Explorer)
  • Use the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (http://daln.osu.edu) as a resource.
  • Teach some reading strategies such as reading the first time very quickly for main ideas, reading headings and subheadings, skimming methods and data sections while concentrating on introductions and conclusions.
  • Understanding that this difficult materials is about treating students as adult/college level learners. We don’t “water down” anything for them.
  • Reminding them that they’ll be proud of their own hard work at the end of the semester.

We also discussed a variety of ways to think about WAW courses:
STEM WAW can focus on STEM genres, using a science accommodation assignment, reading Jeanne Fahnestock’s 1986 article, “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts.”

Approach WAW thematically by deconstructing preconceived notions of writing that students bring with them.

  • What about a whole course on revision?
  • What if a first-year course focused on deconstructing the five paragraph essay? Think of White’s “Five Paragraph Theme Theme.”
  • How might we deconstruct the use of “I” in academic writing?
  • This could also be a course around one of our Threshold Concepts
  • Why not construct a course around major people in writing studies? Read and write about Donald Murray’s ideas and how they’ve changed over time. What other figures might work for this approach?

Please consider using this space to comment about other ideas or assignments that work for you!