Fifth Annual CEIT Instructional Innovation Conference David Larson amp Sarah Madsen Hardy Motivating questions Why do students write fluently and correctly in some writing situations and not in others ID: 463490
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Slide1
Genre-Crossing Writing Assignments
Fifth Annual CEIT Instructional Innovation Conference
David Larson & Sarah Madsen HardySlide2
Motivating questions
Why do students write fluently and correctly in some writing situations and not in others
?
Can we draw on writing skills students already have to help them write better papers in our
writing classes
?
How can
we best position students to draw on the skills developed in our writing classes in the future, when they
are tasked
with writing something quite
different?
Slide3
Scholarship
Perkins and Salomon’s
distinction between
low road
and
high road
transfer
Genre and transfer:
Barwashi
and
Reiff
on
boundary guarders
vs.
boundary crossers
:
“Reformulating
and transforming existing resources may serve students well in accessing and adapting to future writing contexts.
In other words, ‘crossing’ may be a key element of transforming knowledge and learning
.” Slide4
Genre-crossing assignments
Enhance WR
students’ awareness of the
similarities
and
differences
between thesis-driven, source-based
humanities arguments
and other genres of writing.
H
elp
students realize the
need to transfer
skills and strategies they learn in one context
to anotherSlide5
Teaching students to be boundary crossers
1. David Larson’s genre-crossing assignment for WR 150 Writing and Research Seminar “Fear in Society: Political Philosophy and Monster Movies”
Purpose:
This
assignment provides practice with one “creative” aspect of argumentative writing: entering into another author’s mindset and imagining an issue/theme/source from their perspective.
Assignment:
Write a 700-750
word
critical review of
Dawn of the Dead
from the Marxist perspective.
Then
, write an 800-1100 word explanation of why this review reflects the views of Marx, whether “his” argument is correct, and what we can learn (if anything) from “Marx’s” interpretation of
Dawn of the Dead
regardless of its accuracy. Slide6
What students learned
To argue such a point,
students
must initially withhold their judgment. This critical conclusion can only come into focus once the legitimacy of a view the student rejects has been granted
.
Students
clearly
build
from
their comfort with film analysis and interpretation. This
allows
them to find an interesting angle from which they
can critique
a challenging text.Slide7
Teaching students to be boundary crossers
2. Sarah Madsen Hardy’s genre-crossing
assignment for WR 150 Writing and Research Seminar
“The Language of Illness and Healing”
Purpose
: This assignment will help you transfer what you learn in this class to other writing contexts. It will help you become more aware of the other genres of writing you are familiar with and more aware of the humanities research paper
as
a
genre
Assignment
: Write up your current thinking about the argument you plan to make in Paper 3 in a genre of writing
other
than the one that this class is dedicated to, the
humanities research paper. Slide8
What students learned
Teddy Meagher on presenting the
shape of an argument as a card
trick:
“This
genre translation project was very helpful for me. I wrote it as an explanation of a magic trick, which
allowed me to visualize my paper developing
. It helped me see the beginning with the
background information
like having the audience select a card and become familiar with it. Then I could see how in the
middle I would take the two ideas in my paper and mix them together
, which was like mixing the cards in the card box. Finally I
could
see the
end result were there were new ideas after mixing the two starting ideas
, which were the two new cards that changed in the box
.”Slide9
What students learned
Paige Coles on presenting a humanities research paper
as lab
report:
“The
introduction and discussion sections of the scientific paper version of my paper were most similar to the introduction and conclusion of my
humanities
research-based paper
, which allowed me to draft these areas early on. The
results section of the scientific paper was also helpful in identifying which evidence
from my sources supported my thesis. The
language of a scientific paper is different
than that of an academic paper, so in the final version of my paper there are changes to word choice and sentence structure.
”Slide10
Uses beyond the WR classroom
Ask how the “WR paper” students were taught is similar
and
dissimilar to writing in your discipline.
Draw
on familiar genres rather than working
against
them.
Teach disciplinary style
in relation to genre, drawing on what students have already learned or intuit about more familiar
genres.
Help students break up “blocking concepts” into their component parts.