Rhetorical Situation
Teaching Writing for Critical Language Awareness
The resources on this page, inspired by a critical language awareness (CLA) framework, teach students to examine language as a social practice and to reflect on the ideologies and power dynamics embedded within language use. Thank you to the Writing Program’s Curriculum Committee, who worked intensively on these resources in 2022-2024.
WR 112 Discussion Leader Presentations
For this assignment, students in WR 112 work in teams to explore a short assigned course reading in greater depth and practice their oral presentation skills at the same time. Refer to the Faculty Guide to WR 112 if you are not sure how this assignment fits into the arc of the WR 112 semester. Objective […]
Rhetorical Analysis in WR 111
Though all sections of WR 111 ask students to write and revise a rhetorical analysis of a passage from a course text, instructors have their own preferred ways of introducing this assignment. You may decide whether you wish to refer to Aristotelian models or not; this page gives you two possible approaches to this assignment. […]
Critical Conversations
In this activity, students work in pairs to create and stage critical interview-style conversations about their research and perform them in front of their classmates. This assignment works especially well near the end of a WR 151 class. Objectives To engage in a vital conversation about our course topic and your research interests; to converse […]
Sample WR 120 Assignment: Op-ed
Use, or adapt, the following to structure an op-ed (or “guest essay”) assignment as an alternative genre assignment to an academic paper in WR 120 or another class. Objective To analyze one or more model op-eds; to argue effectively for a point or claim in the context of an op-ed, while providing evidence and considering […]
Teaching with Student Journals in WR 111 or WR 112
In this activity, students will examine and analyze prize-winning papers written in WR 111 or WR 112 (or the equivalent) and published in the WR Journal. You might consider doing a shorter, more focused version of this activity in WR 111 when introducing key features of the academic essay, and a longer, more expansive, student-driven […]
Interview a Professor
In this exercise, students interview another professor about writing in their field and then reflect on what connections they might make between writing in different contexts. Guide to Oral/Signed Communication in Writing Classrooms Objective To learn about the role of research and writing in different disciplines and professions; to learn about how research and writing […]
Video Presentation and Reflections
For this assignment, students work in small groups to create and edit short video presentations (flexible in genre) to recast their research for a new audience. Students then reflect on their presentations. Guide to Oral/Signed Communication in Writing Classrooms Objective To remediate the findings of a research project into a different genre; to work […]
Dork Short Oral Presentations
“Dork Shorts” are a form of presentation popularized by researchers in the Digital Humanities. They combine a formal structure (a specific number of slides) with a short time limit that keeps things light and allows the audience to learn a lot in short period of time. They’re sometimes also called “Lightning Talks.” Guide to Oral/Signed […]
Sample WR 120 Assignment: Rewriting a Fairy Tale
For this non-academic genre assignment, you will research a traditional fairy tale and then write a version of that fairy tale. You will also write an analysis of how and why you wrote your version. In the creative portion, you will need to reimagine the fairy tale you have chosen. In the analytical portion, you […]