To complete this assignment, read through the Project One overview below and post a reply. Your reply can include questions you have about the project or possible topics and ideas you want to share. Your fellow students will be able to see your questions and thoughts, along with your instructor’s responses. Whatever else you include, please ensure your response addresses these bulleted points in 200 words or more:

• What do you know about any of the writing concepts listed below in the P1 Overview? If you don’t know a concept, what do you assume about it/them?
• Why do you think these concepts might be important to know for an everyday writer like yourself?
• Do you recognize any of these concepts from areas outside writing? If so, explain where you have encountered the concept and what you know about it. If you’re unsure take your best guess at explaining it.

Don’t worry if you don’t know some of these concepts. It’s no problem at all — we’ll learn about them in class. Feel free to guess or try to explain, so you can compare to what you know later in the semester — you’ll get credit for posting a response even if you don’t understand fully or get it wrong. No pressure, just do as much as you can!

Project One: Analysis of Writing Concepts

Writing is a constant in our lives, and yet different in each context in which we write. ENC 1101 introduces students to the writing knowledge and practices they can continue to develop for success across those contexts.

In this project we’ll explore common assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge about writing that we all share. When we approach a writing task, we all bring our “prior” with us – prior knowledge, prior beliefs, prior assumptions — and our attitudes toward what we think the role of writing is in our lives, both in and out of school. Since writing knowledge – like all knowledge – is socially constructed, it is easy to make general assumptions about what writing should entail or what makes some writing better than other writing. We will explore what it means to write in our society, as everyday writers who continue to learn and to make knowledge about writing. And we’ll begin to explore the knowledge we must continue to develop to contribute to the writing in our lives, academically, professionally, individually, and socially.

This first project will focus on the concepts of rhetorical situation and related concepts of purpose, audience, genre, and context, among others. It will also focus on practices of writing, such as drafting and revising, reflection, engaging in effective peer review, and other practices commonly used by writers in academic, workplace, and other everyday writing situations. By studying these key rhetorical concepts and examining practices of writing – our own and that of other writers – we’ll begin to develop a framework of writing knowledge that can be adapted effectively to any current or future writing situation.

The guiding question for writing the analysis essay in this project is: “What do I know about writing in different writing situations, and what writing knowledge will help me write for any situation, in college and beyond?”

What You’re Doing in Project One

You are writing a 4- to 6-page analysis essay about your writing knowledge, specifically constructed around the rhetorical concepts listed above and the practices and strategies you know or learn about, using your own writing and examples of writing provided in class to illustrate and support your analysis. You will include quotes or detailed descriptions from examples that you will integrate to support your ideas about writing.

Project 1 also includes a 2- to 3-page reflection essay (for which prompts will be provided).

This first project will help you begin to develop a framework of knowledge about writing – the concepts and practices we’ll study – that you’ll use and build on in the other projects in this class, and in ENC 1102. This conceptual writing knowledge you are beginning to develop will ultimately provide you with a more sophisticated framework for approaching the writing you will do throughout college and in your work and life beyond college, whatever your major, career, or other pursuits.