The Writing Process Assignment
OVERVIEW:
Purpose of the Assignment: To learn about your writing process. To learn that you have a writing process that can be shaped and reshaped. To learn how to think about that process.
Intended Audience: Instructor. Classmates. Writing teachers. Scholars interested in studying the writing process.
Assignment Topic: What have you learned about yourself as a writer from studying the theory of the writing process and also collecting and analyzing your own data in light of this theory? Describe data that you collect about your writing process over the course of two weeks, then analyze the data to describe your writing process. Use the concepts and terms from the course readings to frame your analysis.
Assignment Description: For this assignment, I want you to examine your writing process and literacy influences and then reflect on your process and influences. You will write an essay describing your own writing process based on a) concepts you’ve learned from the course readings and b) data that you have collected about your writing process. You’ll use discussions and readings from this unit to write a 3-4 page analysis of what you learned from studying your writing process. The idea behind this paper is very similar to that of the Rhetorical Situation Assignment: read and learn what the parts of the writing process are, then compare your own writing process to what you’ve learned and write a paper that a) describes your own writing process using the theory you’ve learned and b) considers what shaped your writing process and how you might reshape it. (If you think about it, that is similar to the first paper, where you learned the parts of the Rhetorical Situation, then analyzed a text that you wrote and described the parts of the rhetorical situation of your text. The third and last paper for this class will also follow a very similar process.)
Step-by-Step Instructions:
1) TODAY, start creating some data about your writing process. You’ll keep this log for two weeks. You’re going to post the log and a list to a discussion forum/peer review two weeks from today. You’ll also be attaching your writing log to the end of your second essay, the Writing Process Assignment. It’s going to be one of the sources that you cite for this paper, along with the class readings. Make sure to keep up with it as it’s part of the final grade for the work for this paper.
- Document your writing process every time you write something for any purpose (a class assignment, social media post, blog post, website page, etc.) over the next two weeks.
- Keep track of all your writing journal notes in a writing log. If it were me, I would print out a paper chart to keep at my desk, so that I can easily jot down notes in it during writing sessions. Then I’d scan it to a file to save for submission later.
- Look over this sample of a writing log kept in an Excel spreadsheet (just one possible way to keep track of your writing data–you could also create a chart by hand, in Word, etc.):Download sample writing logto get an idea of what a writing log should or could look like. The writing log should keep track of:
- When did you write? Write down the date and time you wrote.
- How long did you write?
- Where did you write?
- What did you work on during each writing session?
- What course or purpose did you write for? If you wrote for a course, what was the assignment?
- What was hard about each writing session? What was easy? Why?
- When and how did you get distracted? What distracted you?
- How long did you plan for your writing?
- How many times did you revise your writing?
- When did you have writing bursts? What type of writing?
- What types of writing did you write well?
- What types of writing were you doing when you struggled and when you did not struggle?
Keep all of the answers to these questions in a journal or log. Keep as many notes about your writing process as you possible over the next week or two.
- Finally, when you start to write the paper, look over the writing process data from your log/journal and tell us what you are seeing about yourself as a writer. Here are the questions to try and answer as you write your first rough draft:
- a) What are you noticing about yourself as a writer, and what do you need to do to develop your writing processes?
- b) Which phases of the Writing Process) did you tend to lean more strongly on?
- c) Which phases did you spend less time on, or skip?
- d) Has your experience as a student had any similarities or differences to the student’s experience in the case study in the course reading from Malowski? To Villanueva’s in the excerpt from Bootstraps?
- e) What are your strengths in terms of the writing process, and which ones can you work on developing?
- f) Overall, what have you learned about yourself as a writer from studying the theory of the writing process and also collecting and analyzing your own data in light of this theory?
- g) Where do you see the potential to develop your writing process and why? What can you say about your writing process or writing processes?
To get an idea of what to aim for and grading criteria:
Look over this sample final paper for an idea of what the paper could look like. (Link forthcoming.)
Look over the Evaluation Standards for The Writing Process Assignment
