Writing Project 2:
Conventions of Academic Writing

Teaching Assistant: Patrick Mooney
Writing 2
Spring 2015

Writing strategies we are working on here

In Writing Project 1, you were required to think and write about how genre and conventions influenced the meaning of your previous non-academic writing. For Writing Project 2, you will turn your attention to genres you can find here at UCSB. In this WP, our goals include:

Analyzing how context and discourse communities shape the conventions of genres
Conducting observational and other research focused on literacy practices
Understanding effective use of evidence and proper citations
Critically reflecting upon the processes of the various kinds of reading and writing encountered in academic settings

Readings for WP 2

Paul Graham, How to Disagree
Kyle D. Stedman, Annoying Ways People Use Sources
David Bartholomae, Inventing the University (warning: this is pretty long, and it's rather dense — you may want to plan some extra time to read it, perhaps twice)

Assignment Description

For this assignment, you will choose a class that you are taking this quarter at UCSB (other than Writing 2) and identify and explain the what makes a person competent to understand, comment on, and speak and write about that discipline. (You might think about this in terms of the literacy practices for that discipline, or about what is required to be a full member of that academic discipline's discourse community — we'll talk in class about what these terms mean.) It might benefit you to chose a class from your major (or anticipated major), though this is not required. The purpose of this project is to develop tools to identify these practices in academic contexts by understanding how, where, and by whom these elements are communicated.

In order to answer these questions about your class, you are required to conduct research in the following ways:

Spend time observing in class. We'll work on this in our class and discuss how to conduct successful observation. Plan to spend about two to three hours — certainly more than one single session — in class, observing the way appropriate literacy practices are conveyed and established. (In class, in this context, can mean during a course lecture, a discussion section or lab, or any other regularly occurring mandatory class meeting. Ideally, you will pick meetings of different types — lecture, section, lab, or whatever else regularly happens in the course — but this may not be possible in some courses that only, for instance, consist of a lecture.)
Conduct at least one interview with an individual who has some expertise about the nature of writing and learning in the subject's discipline. This person should be a TA, a professor, or a lecturer. (Ideally, this person would be someone who is working in a teaching role in the specific class you are observing. This may not be practical for various reasons, so you may want to pick someone else who qualifies as having expertise in the particular field you have chosen, instead. However, the person you interview should certainly be someone in the same academic discipline that you are writing about.) In this interview, you want to discuss the literacy practices of good writing in the class.
If you and someone else in the class plan to interview the same professor, TA, or instructor, you are encouraged to conduct your interview in pairs or groups of three, provided that everyone in the group contributes to all aspects of the interviewing process, and provided that everyone writes their own paper.
Analyze texts associated with the course. Such texts might include assignments, textbooks, papers, the course syllabus, PowerPoint presentations, or class notes. Here you are trying to identify the concepts, knowledge, and theoretical frameworks that someone needs to be familiar with in order to communicate effectively in the discipline.

For the written portion of this project — the WP itself — you will identify and analyze what actually constitutes knowledge in the field you are analyzing and what makes for good writing in the academic class you have been observing and researching. Be sure to discuss how and why the course's literacy practices are suited to that specific academic context. You must include your observation, interview, and textual research in your explanation and analysis of the appropriate literacy practices. In its totality, your Writing Project must respond to this question: What makes someone competent to speak knowledgeably about the subject matter of this class, and how will you respond to those as a student in the context of this class?

WP Format

A complete and thorough WP2 will include an abundance of evidence and examples from your sources (observations, interview, and texts). Even though your chosen class may be from a discipline that uses a citation system other than MLA, you must use MLA citations for WP2 itself (and PBC and PBD, if citations are needed there). Submission drafts will be 5-6 typed, double-spaced pages with one-inch margins all the way around, will not use extra spacing between paragraphs and other layout elements, will use 12-point Times New Roman for all texts (including headings), will be printed entirely in black, and will adhere to all other writing conventions we discuss in class.

Formatting and Citations

Although I have been rather lenient about these matters on PBA, PBB, and WP1, from this point in the quarter forward, you are expected to adhere closely to the Modern Language Association (MLA) format for papers. We will spend some time in class over the next few weeks talking in detail about what this means. I will treat PBC and PBD as opportunities to provide feedback on how you are doing in these matters, so it is in your best interest to try hard to meet the requirements we discuss for citations and paper formatting on these assignments, because part of your grade on WP2 (and all subsequent assignments in this class) will be your ability to comply with these guidelines.

What this means, really, is that you should pay close attention to formatting instructions discussed in class and in the Pocket Style Guide, because you will be expected for the rest of the quarter (and in many other college classes you take) to have a strong understanding of how to follow a citation system and style guide. It is in your best interest to practice conforming to these expectations throughout the entire period leading up to WP2, because I will still be moderately lenient on PBC and PBD — take advantage of the opportunity to get feedback on things that you've missed! Waiting until WP2 is due to try to learn these things will likely result in frustration for you at the last minute, so don't put off paying attention to these matters until the night before the paper is due.

We are using the MLA standard for citations and paper formatting in this class. As you continue your college education, many of you will find that your professors expect you to use citation and formatting systems other than the MLA system. There are several reasons why we are using MLA as the basis for our course's citation and formatting expectations:

Compared to other citation systems, it is relatively easy to learn.
Many of you became at least somewhat familiar with it in high school.
It provides a basis for understanding how other citation systems work.

An implication of these points is that you should not memorize long lists of citation rules instead of learning to understand the internal logic of the citation system. The details of the rules themselves will change from time to time and from one academic discipline to another; but the general ideas behind all of these systems are similar, and the goal of having you learn the MLA system is not to have you memorize the more arcane details of it; rather, the intent is to teach you how to see a citation system as a tool for acknowledging intellectual debts and following formatting guidelines.

A few words on technology use

All of this also means that you need to be in charge of your software. One implication of this statement is that you should start learning how to control how your word processor formats documents. No major word processor commonly in use complies entirely with the formatting requirements of the MLA standard (or any other) by default, so if you just create a new document and start typing, you will probably not be fully compliant with the MLA standard. It is your job to learn to configure the format of your word processing documents and to ensure that what you print out looks the way that it is supposed to look. In this day and age, being able to tell a computer what a document should look like is an essential skill that will be expected of you throughout the rest of your college career and (almost certainly) your professional life. If you do not know how to configure your word processor, you may be able to find help in one of the following ways:

By consulting your word processor's built-in help function.
By searching the Internet. (A Google search for how to change page margins Microsoft Word 2007, for instance, will likely get you instructions on how to accomplish that task in that piece of software.)
By asking for help in one of the campus computer labs.
By bringing your laptop into my office. However, you should be aware that, though I will do my best to be helpful, I am not familiar with every piece of word processing software that people use, and that I may or may not know how to do this in your particular program. You should only ask me for help on this matter if you have already exhausted your other options.

Similarly, if you use software to create citations or bibliographic entries on a Works Cited page, you should be aware that none of this software does a perfect job in all cases. You are ultimately responsible for your writing's adherence to standards; if the software gets it wrong, you are expected to correct it. This means that software of this type can be a convenience and can save you some work, but you still need to be familiar enough with the standard (and with handbooks describing the standard) to know when your software is getting it wrong.

Project Builders for this assignment

Remember that Project Builders should be no longer than two typed, double-spaced pages. The idea here is to use Project Builders to help you build material for the longer writing project. Don’t spend hours and hours agonizing over Project Builders – treat them as a low-stakes pre-WP assignment that allows you get ideas down, give them at least one thoughtful edit before turning them in, and don't stress about making them perfect.

Project Builder C (Due Wednesday, April 22): For your third Project Builder, write a proposal of the strategy that you will take for completing Writing Project 2. Identify the course you will be observing, researching, and analyzing. Then explain possible methods of observation, research, and analysis. The following will help you get started: what's the intellectual area you're thinking about researching? Why is this area a good one to choose (e.g., because you're in the class? interested in the major? fascinated by the topic?)? Which instructor will you interview? Now, think about what you already know about ways to think, write, speak, and analyze in this context. What are those things? And what — specifically — have you already noticed that leads you to say that these are appropriate practices?

Project Builder D (Due Wednesday, April 29): For your fourth Project Builder, summarize your analysis of the discursive expectations and literacy practices in your course and the evidence that you have to support that analysis. If you wish, you can use a two-column table to complete this Project Builder so that you're making it really clear for yourself what your analysis is, and what evidence you have to support it. (If you use a table, you should not double-space the text inside of it.)

How PBs factor in: As before, you may use elements from one or both PBs as a foundation for your WP essay. In other words, you are free to use your two PBs and revise them for the larger WP, though you should not simply staple them together (either literally or metaphorically): your goal is to create a single longer, unified, sustained piece of writing that has greater depth and does more analysis than either of your PBs does on its own.

Questions to ponder for your WP 2 Cover Letter: What does literacy mean in the discipline you've chosen to examine? What did you learn about how knowledge is understood in that discipline? After completing this WP, how has your understanding of that area of intellectual endeavor changed? What about that intellectual field does (or, perhaps, doesn't, now that you've thought about these things) appeal to you?

Evaluation and Assessment

I will evaluate this writing project based upon your ability to thoughtfully and thoroughly answer, in the form of an analytical essay, the questions I have provided in the assignment description, and will use our group-developed grading rubric as a guide in assigning grades. If these elements are sufficiently met, you will receive a B for this assignment. If these elements are met and exceeded in the manner and to the extent specified by the rubric, you will receive an A. If some but not all of these elements are met, you will receive a C. If you turn in something that does not even meet minimum standards for engaging with the assignment, you will receive no credit. If you do not turn in an assignment in a timely fashion, you will not be able to pass the course at the end of the term.

Writing Project 2: Conventions of Academic Writing