978-0393617467 Lecture Note Part 6

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When students feel conﬁ dent that they can express themselves well, their

curiosity is unleashed and encouraged to grow and develop. Part VI, Style, and Part

VII, Design and Delivery, encourage students to communicate with conﬁ dence.

Fi nally, the diverse readings in the anthology and on the related Tumblr site

remind students that there is a world of ideas and issues to explore, and that writ–

ing is a particularly power ful means of doing so.

The ﬁ rst chapter of Every one’s an Author, THINKING RHETORICALLY, grounds this

book in a rhetorical approach that encourages students to develop “habits of mind

that begin with listening and searching for understanding before you decide what

you yourself think” (p. 6). In so doing, it encourages openness. The chapters in Part

III pres ent rhetorically grounded discussions of genre that encourage students to

see genre as social action, rather than as a sterile form. This approach continues in

the discussion of argument in Part IV (which includes a new discussion of Roge–

rian and invitational argument) and of research in Part V, both of which provide

systematic ways for students to engage, explore, and create arguments that chal-

lenge previous understandings and open them to new ideas and experiences.

Engagement— a sense of investment and involvement in learning. Students

who are engaged in their own learning understand that there are intrinsic per–

sonal and professional rewards when they extend themselves intellectually and

emotionally. They also understand the high stakes that are involved in communi-

cation in general and persuasion in par tic u lar. As a consequence, they recognize

4 % The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

[ LEARNING OUTCOMES ]

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demic writing. The genre chapters encourage transfer by demonstrating how

genres function across academic disciplines, across media, and across cultures and

communities. In addition, there are numerous opportunities for metacognition

and reﬂ ection in exercises throughout the text.

great insights. While you want to think analytically and carefully, don’t be afraid

to take chances. A little imagination can lead you to new ideas about a topic you’re

studying and about how to approach the topic in a way that will interest others”

(p. 13).

Part II encourages creativity in the writing pro cess by recognizing that there

are many ways to compose and prompting students to explore a pro cess that

works best for them and their purpose. These chapters offer options and advice

rather than hard– and– fast rules.

The lively visual and textual examples that appear throughout Every one’s an

Author also encourage students to explore their creative potential and to draw con–

nections between what they already know and new conversations and discourses.

in Part II. Moreover, the text provides speciﬁ c and concrete guidance in the form

of Roadmaps for each genre that guide students through the writing pro cess.

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Students are able to persist in working on proj ects when they are engaged with

their topic and see its relevance in their lives. Students are consistently reminded

to select topics that appeal to their interests, especially as the basis for starting

their research.

emphasis on responsibility is continued in Every one’s an Author’s treatment of argu-

ment and of research. In both cases, there is a strong emphasis on the writer’s ethi-

cal responsibilities, on the importance of supporting claims using good reasons and

evidence, and on using sources fairly and responsibly.

Writing is a social pro cess that engages writers and readers in both face– to-

face and virtual collaborations. Every one’s an Author’s extensive discussion of

collaboration— which appears both in Ch. 8 and throughout the text at appropriate

moments (as in vari ous discussions of peer review)— reminds students of the need

to take responsibility for their participation in collaborative proj ects.

Part III similarly reinforces the importance of ﬂ exibility and shows students how

they can make effective and appropriate decisions about using, choosing, and

mixing genres in their writing. In this section, genres are presented not as static

forms to be ﬁ lled in but rather as ﬂ exible, changeable, and powerfully adaptive to

ﬁ t vari ous purposes for writing. The discussion of genres across academic disci–

plines, across media, and across cultures and communities also encourages writ–

ers to recognize that successful writers are ﬂ exible writers. This is also true of the

discussion of Design and Delivery in Part VII, which highlights the importance of

4 % The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing

[ LEARNING OUTCOMES ]

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rhe toric and rhetorical situations in choices students will make about media

and design.

Thanks to its emphasis on analy sis, choice, and reﬂ ection, a rhetorical

approach to writing encourages metacognition. Other features of the book also

encourage students to reﬂ ect on and apply their knowledge and skills. Each of the

genre chapters, for instance, begins by asking students to reﬂ ect on the given genre

across academic disciplines, across media, across cultures and communities, and to

consider where a rhetorical situation may beneﬁ t from a multigenre approach. The

Reﬂ ect exercises throughout the book also encourage metacognition.

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WE RECOMMEND BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING, with the

INTRODUCTION. Students could be assigned to read the introduction on

the ﬁ rst day of class as the foundation for class discussion and in– class writing.

You might begin discussion by asking questions like these:

1. Do you think every one’s an author?

2. How do you deﬁ ne author?

3. Is an author dif fer ent from a writer? How? And in what speciﬁ c ways?

Then ask them to compose a short essay responding to the main questions: Is

every one today an author? Are you a writer or an author— and why?

five

Introduction: Is Every one an Author?

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TO BE SUCCESSFUL, student authors (like all authors) need to understand

that every act of communication is inherently rhetorical. Every time they

speak, write, act, or post something online, they are part of a rhetorical situation

that involves audience, purpose, genre, stance, media and design, and some larger

context. Thus, we begin the book with six chapters focusing on the need for rhe toric

and writing— chapters that can provide an impor tant theoretical and pedagogical

foundation for your class. Most students are not actively aware of the rhetorical

While the ﬁ rst four chapters can be used together as an introduction to aca–

demic writing and the princi ples of rhe toric that inform this book’s approach to all

writing, Ch. 5, WRITING AND RHE TORIC AS A FIELD OF STUDY, and Ch. 6, WRITING AND RHE TORIC

IN THE WORKPLACE, provide an initial understanding of how the princi ples and prac-

tices that students will be learning in ﬁ rst– year writing apply to ﬁ elds across the

Chapter 1: Thinking Rhetorically

Chapter 1 introduces students to the princi ples of thinking, writing, and acting

rhetorically— which begins with carefully, attentively listening to and under–

standing what others are saying before deciding what we think and developing

arguments of our own.

six

Part I: The Need for

Rhe toric and Writing

6 % Part I: The Need for Rhe toric and Writing [ 91 ]

students have ever actually considered the idea of rhe toric in a positive light; most

are much more familiar with negative terms such as “empty rhe toric.” Beginning

with Booth offers an opportunity to deﬁ ne rhe toric positively as the art, theory, and

what others are saying if you don’t really and truly hear them. And that calls for

rhetorical listening. Asked to notice their own listening habits, many students

will admit that they don’t listen well and that they are usually thinking more

about what they will say than about what the other person is saying.

Krista Ratcliffe offers an example from her own teaching that helped her

deﬁ ne rhetorical listening. In a discussion about Cornel West’s book Race Matters,

one student compared his own experience of race to the way West describes the

experience to be for some African Americans by saying, “I don’t look at myself in

the mirror and think, ‘I’m a white guy.’ I just don’t. I don’t even think about it.”

So it’s worth taking time in class to stop and observe, and to ask students to

observe themselves, and those around them, listening: what are the signals of good

rhetorical listening? How do we know when someone is really listening to us? How

can we be better listeners? You might ask students to make some notes on their

own practices, then have a class discussion about a contentious issue and follow it

with a debrieﬁ ng about how well each person listened and what they understood

from the discussion.

For an exercise to help your students Think beyond Words, have them watch the

ad shown on p. 12, and ask them to think about what kind of rhetorical thinking

the ad writers did— who was their target audience, and how did they go about

appealing to them? If they were to write an ad for a car (or something else), what

words would they use, and why? You might also ask students to look very care-

On pp. 15–16, you’ll ﬁ nd another reference to Wayne Booth: his brief analy sis

of how scientists James Watson and Francis Crick were thinking rhetorically when

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they announced their ﬁ ndings on DNA. Booth shows how careful their choice of

words was and points to the rhetorical strategies (such as understatement) they

used in reporting what amounted to a groundbreaking discovery. You are almost

certain to have budding scientists in your classroom: consider asking them to

One goal in this chapter is to show students that they prob ably do some good

strong rhetorical thinking without even being aware of it, and to make them con-

scious of how much such thinking can improve their understanding of others, as

well as their own ability to be understood. You might ask students to think about

Chapter 2: Rhetorical Situations

Unless they took a course that included instruction in rhe toric in high school, your

students prob ably won’t be familiar with the term “rhetorical situation,” so it’s a

good idea to take some time as your course starts to deﬁ ne and discuss it. We

deﬁ ne the rhetorical situation simply as all the circumstances affecting any act of

ones covered in Chs. 11–16. Each of these chapters describes the features charac-

teristic of the genre and gives several good examples, along with a Roadmap for

writing an essay in that genre— which includes prompts to help students think hard

about their full rhetorical situation. If you don’t assign a genre, Ch. 10 helps students

make rhetorically appropriate choices in situations where the choice is theirs.

Audience is a concept that students are increasingly familiar with from their use

of social media, where their audiences are immediate and often quite vocal. You may

want to talk with them about academic audiences and about the expectations that

academic audiences (including teachers) will have for their writing. In addition, you

6 % Part I: The Need for Rhe toric and Writing [ 93 ]

acknowledge that purposes for writing when participating in social media can be

very dif fer ent from academic purposes for writing. When it comes to academic

writing, some may say that their purpose is to complete an assignment or to get a

good grade. Those purposes are very real ones, but students also need to think

about what they want their communication to accomplish: to express certain

ideas? to inform an audience about some topic or issue? to argue a position? What–

ever their purpose, they need to know that it could inﬂ uence their choice of genre,

medium, and the rest of their rhetorical situation.

Stance refers most simply to where the author is coming from. It’s the attitude a

writer has about his or her topic— objective, skeptical, angry, and so on— that is

reﬂ ected in the tone he or she takes: reasonable, critical, ironic, and so on. Students

can get quite creative in deﬁ ning their own stances: one of our students claimed to

sidering what else has been said about the topic. Here would be a moment to

explain that academic writing (and most writing!) is a way of entering a conver–

sation about a topic, one that has been going for some time and that students

need to be aware of. You might want to introduce Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor

meta phor:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have

long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too

This would also be a place to point out that in U.S. academic contexts, writers

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Medium used to be a moot point for students. Their medium was print, and that

was that. Today, however, they may have the opportunity to pres ent their work

orally or digitally, and to do so using sound, video, color, and more. We sometimes

Design— how students lay out their proj ects, what fonts they use, whether they

include images, and how they manipulate other ele ments—is crucial to the suc-

cess of a proj ect. You might introduce the importance of design by looking at an

award- winning website, focusing on the choices that had to be made in coming up

If the concept of “rhetorical situation” seems somewhat esoteric or foreign to your

students, choose a couple of provocative examples of “rhetorical situations” that

they may know, such as President Obama’s eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinck–

ney and the other victims of the shooting at an African American church in

Charleston, or the statements that quarterback Tom Brady gave to the press after

Chapter 3: Reading Rhetorically

You’ve prob ably heard people complaining that young folks don’t read any more,

that this is a generation of nonreaders. Not true. Students today are reading more—

and more widely— than ever before. We believe, then, that our students are read-

ers, and that they’re readers of varied and sophisticated texts brought to them not

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6 % Part I: The Need for Rhe toric and Writing [ 95 ]

It’s also worth taking time to talk with students about reading rhetorically:

that is, reading not only with careful attention but also with careful intention.

Reading rhetorically can also mean reading as a writer, with a careful eye for how

and why a writer has made par tic u lar rhetorical choices. You might link such a

kinds of texts do students usually read? What devices do they read on? When do

they read, and for what purpose? Which kinds of texts attract their attention most

strongly, and which do they tend to pay the least attention to? You can use this

little inventory for a class discussion on how they are now focusing their

attention— and on how they can intentionally direct that focus, especially when it

comes to high- stakes reading for classes. What tips can your students come up

with from their own reading experiences for reading effectively?

Reading to understand and engage. After covering some general tips for reading,

you might guide students through a reading of a speciﬁ c text. Ask students to

bring something they are reading for your class (or another) and work through the

section on Reading to Understand and Engage, answering the questions as best

they can about that speciﬁ c piece. Alternatively, you might assign class readings

Strong annotations can be the basis also for asking students to respond to

a text. Encourage students, as the chapter suggests, to say yes, no, or maybe— but

to say yes ﬁ rst. That is, to remain open to what a text is saying and do their best to

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fully understand the author’s argument before raising objections. Summarizing

the text— and doing so accurately—is one way of ensuring that students have

reached this sort of understanding. Good summaries are surprisingly difﬁ cult to

write, so take a close look at the summary of Spriggs’ essay and then ask stu-

dents to compose their own summaries of a text they’ve annotated. If they are

Reading across media. As you talk about reading visual texts, ask students to look

at the discussion of the Shinola ad— and then bring in ads of their own to analyze.

You can do the same thing for a video or a spoken text: YouTube, podcasts, and

speeches of all sorts offer a multitude of possibilities. Ask students to work through

Reading across genres. Consider genre as you select readings and as you discuss

with students those readings you assign. Having a ﬁ rm understanding of a text’s

genre(s) and that genre’s conventions can help students understand— and

anticipate— how a text is working. For the characteristic features of vari ous genres,

see Chs. 11–16.

Chapter 4: Meeting the Demands of Academic Writing /

“It’s Like Learning a New Language”

This is a chapter you may want to teach early in the term (and you might pair it

with Ch. 30, TWEETS TO REPORTS). Many students, and especially ﬁ rst– generation col–

lege students, have had few opportunities to reﬂ ect on the expectations of their

teachers or to think in speciﬁ c ways about how becoming a ﬂ uent academic writer

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6 % Part I: The Need for Rhe toric and Writing [ 97 ]

Taking initiative in class, learning to ask really good questions, contributing

substantively to a discussion, reading beyond what is assigned, working to master

challenging material— all are things that enable students to join the academic

community in meaningful ways. It’s certainly worth taking time, then, to work

through the characteristics of academic writing presented in this chapter. One

Chapter 5: Writing and Rhe toric as a Field of Study

We wrote this chapter to make students aware that writing and rhe toric is a ﬁ eld

they could study, like economics or biology— and to explain just why they might

want to consider taking more courses in writing or even making it their major. Not

all schools offer a writing major, but almost every college and university offers

writing courses beyond those required in the ﬁ rst year.

For class discussion, you might write one of the three quotations we’ve set off in

the margins on the board and invite response. We especially like the one on p. 55:

Chapter 6: Writing and Rhe toric in the Workplace

This chapter was inspired by a young man who applied recently to work at W. W.

Norton. He wrote an excellent inquiry letter, the best of any applicant. His ﬁ rst

interview went relatively well, and he would have made it to the next round. But

he did not, for two reasons: ﬁ rst, he waited six days before sending a thank– you

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know about the importance of rhe toric and writing when they are applying for a

job, and so we wrote a chapter to offer some of the advice and instruction they

need.

Whether or not you make time for this chapter in class, we hope you’ll let

students know that it’s in their book. If they’re at all like our students, they’re

applying for jobs or internships—or at least thinking about the need to do so in the

near future. And if you wish to make some time for it in class, pairing it with Ch. 5,

WRITING AND RHE TORIC AS A FIELD OF STUDY, could provide a springboard for discussing

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seven

Part II: Writing Pro cesses

MANY STUDENTS ENTER COLLEGE having learned in high school about

the value of collaborating, seeking response, revising, and other parts of

the writing pro cess. But that doesn’t mean that they have found productive ways

to integrate these pro cesses and practices into their writing lives. The chapters in

them to enact as writers, and then we ask them to tell us as honestly as pos si ble

which they did and didn’t employ unless required to. We talk honestly about pro-

crastination, generating (often humorous) lists of ways to procrastinate— and ways

to avoid procrastination. And throughout these discussions we discuss our own

writing practices: what does and doesn’t work for us.

In these and other ways, we attempt to demystify writing and to acknowl-

edge that there is more than one way to go about it. Some writers need to external-

ize the writing pro cess, so it is easy for both them and their teachers to see that

As teachers, we recognize the importance of encouraging students to take

responsibility for their preferences and practices as writers. Several of us require

students to turn in a written pro cess analy sis with major writing assignments. In

it, we ask them to honestly describe the pro cess they followed, answering ques-

tions such as:

• How did you get your original idea? Did this idea change as you wrote the

paper? Did interactions with others (or with any sources you read) play a sig–

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• How long did you work? Where did you work?

• How difﬁ cult was the proj ect? What was the hardest part? the easiest?

In asking students to respond to these questions, we are encouraging them to take

responsibility for their writing, while also acknowledging that writing is always a

work in pro gress. There is another impor tant beneﬁ t to the writing pro cess analy-

sis, which is that it provides information that makes responding to student writ–

The chapters in this section are meant both to guide students through the

writing pro cess and to help them appreciate it as an iterative, collaborative, and

ongoing pro cess.

Chapter 7: Managing the Writing Pro cess

This chapter provides guidance through all the stages of the pro cess, from under–

standing an assignment and coming up with a topic to editing and proofreading,

while emphasizing that students should approach writing tasks in a pragmatic,

indiv idua l way. We thi nk it’s i mpor tant to remember— and to assure our st udents—

that each writer’s pro cess is dif fer ent. The paths from reading an assignment to

completing it will share some general steps (some work generating ideas, some

will compose an outline, others may do a sketch. The point is that each writer

has to ﬁ nd his or her own most productive approach. In our writing classes, we

encourage students to experiment with dif fer ent approaches, and this chapter

can help.

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7 % Part II: Writing Pro cesses [ 101 ]

Understanding the assignment. Just as we tell students to read assignments with

an eye for key words that specify what they’re supposed to do—to argue, report,

and so on—so too do we as teachers need to compose assignments that indicate

Time management pres ents difﬁ culties for a lot of student writers. One way we

can help them manage their time for writing is by creating assignments that include

interim deadlines. Spelling out a progression of steps necessary for completing the

assignment can also help.

Coming up with a topic is a challenge for many students. Each of the genre chap-

ters in our book includes guidance that should help, and the strategies for generat–

ing ideas will help as well. We ﬁ nd that it often helps to devote some class time for

students to try out brainstorming, clustering, and the other strategies presented

Coming up with a tentative thesis. Moving from a general topic to a thesis proves

difﬁ cult for many student writers. You’ll ﬁ nd questions that will prompt them to

think about what point they want to make about their topic on p. 85, and you might

want to devote some class time to modeling the pro cess for them. Make sure they

know that at this point any thesis they come up with is tentative. Once they start

writing, it could change— and that’s ﬁ ne.

Or ga niz ing and writing out a draft. Many students tell us that the hardest thing

for them is getting started with the actual writing. It can help to remind them that

drafting is simply a way of working out their ideas; they don’t have to have every-

thing ﬁ gured out before beginning to write. And they don’t have to start at the

Getting response. Each of the genre chapters includes questions to help students

look critically at a draft, get response— and revise. You might devote one class

period to having students read and respond to one another’s writing. Sometimes

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we ﬁ nd that it helps to model peer response, providing a less- than- perfect draft for

students to respond to. You’ll want to guide students to get beyond “Wow, I really

like this” to asking substantive questions, and making constructive suggestions.

Editing. Once students have revised their texts, they need to pay attention to sur–

face issues. This can be a good time to go over sentence style, a topic covered in

Ch. 31, HOW TO WRITE GOOD SENTENCES. Devoting part of several class periods to com–

posing good sentences is time well spent, especially if you work as a group to build

Chapter 8: The Need for Collaboration

Two of the authors of Every one’s an Author (Andrea and Lisa) have been arguing

for the necessity of collaboration for nearly thirty years now, and this book is

itself a product of collaboration. As writers who believe that two heads are

almost always better than one, we want students to experience the positive

effects of productive collaboration and to recognize the ways in which they are

already collaborating constantly in their online lives. Universities still privilege

This chapter offers a variety of con temporary examples of collaboration,

including academic and work experiences as well as extracurricular ones like

MMORPGs and ﬂ ash mobs. Because social media is both omnipresent and inherently

collaborative, many students don’t immediately make the connection between, say,

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7 % Part II: Writing Pro cesses [ 103 ]

Writing classes are by deﬁ nition collaborative, with their use of peer review

and many other group activities. It’s worth taking a little time, then, to talk about

the ubiquity of collaboration today and about its importance to students’ success

both in and out of the classroom. Because some students may have had less- than-

successful experiences with collaboration in high school, give them some time

and space to recount those experiences and help them to identify what went

So part of your job is to help students recognize the necessity of collaboration

and to help them talk through any misgivings they may have (we always have at

least one or two students who want to do every thing on their own). In addition,

you need to craft assignments or proj ects that truly call for collaboration. Such

assignments:

• operate on a fairly tight timeline that calls for cooperation and working

together.

• call for drafting and revising that will engage each member of the group.

You can help your students collaborate well by ﬁ rst setting small groups (an odd

number, usually three to ﬁ ve, and balanced to bring diversity in terms of gender,

levels of ability, and other factors you think impor tant) and then asking the class as

a whole to come up with some guidelines for working effectively together— a kind of

Students may like to assign roles for members of the group: someone to act as

a leader or task man ag er, someone to serve as a recorder, someone to do the ﬁ rst

round of editing, and so on. Being as speciﬁ c as pos si ble about what you want the

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• What work has the group accomplished (in the last three days, week, etc.)?

• What did each member of the group contribute to the work?

• What prob lems did you encounter?

We have found that these pro gress reports brings any troublesome issues to light

pretty quickly. At the beginning of a proj ect, for example, every student in the group

will report that he or she is doing all the work, which is clearly impossible. A brief

You can also get your students working collaboratively on our Tumblr site (every

onesanauthor . tumblr . com), where they can read and then respond to lots of in ter–

est ing articles, websites, and more— and to one another.

Chapter 9: Taking Advantage of the Writing Center

This chapter lays out the reasons to visit a writing center, explains what goes on in

a tutoring session and how to prepare for one, and even suggests how students

might become writing tutors. Most of the authors have been involved in writing

tutoring. Other students may be unaware of how writing centers work or be unreal-

istic in their expectations. This is certainly true of students who bring their essays

to the writing center two hours before they are due. There are several ways you

can help your students become better informed.

Many writing centers are happy to send staff to speak to your class about the

ser vices they provide. In addition to having writing center staff come to your class,

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