Unit 2

Goals

With this unit you will do the following:

Generate Topics

  • Become familiar with and practice strategies for generating ideas or exploring specific topics, issues, ideas, or beliefs.
  • Use writing to clarify thinking; demonstrate knowledge; explore, explain, and analyze ideas and experiences; and influence beliefs and action.

Use Rhetoric to...

  • Develop critical and formal strategies for identifying and addressing a variety of rhetorical situations.
  • Demonstrate an awareness of the intended audiences, purposes, and forums for writing.
  • Take the stylistic risks necessary to develop appropriate sentence structures.

Respond to Texts

  • Develop strategies to analyze various written and visual texts, both their own and other people's.
  • Use writing to become aware of and think critically about writing processes, especially their own and their classmates'.
  • Use writing to become aware of and think critically about written products, especially their own and their classmates'.
  • Consult with other writers about successive drafts.
  • Respond to other writers about their drafts.
  • Demonstrate the ability to respond to and edit other writers' texts in an effort to help the writer meet the needs and expectations of different audiences, purposes, and forums.

Revise Texts

  • Evaluate the usefulness of other writers' suggestions.
  • Incorporate appropriate suggestions into a text.

Assignment Description

Writing for a particular audience might seem simple enough. After all, whenever we write anything other than a private journal, we are writing for one or more readers. With this unit and the remaining units you write in this class, though, you will make a conscious decision to write for a very specific audience, tailoring your language, style, organization, tone, topic, purpose, and approach to that specific audience.

Begin by finding at topic you wish to write about or an issue that you feel passionately about. Remember that if you know something about or have some experience already with this topic or issue, your job as a writer will be easier and more meaningful. Once you have found a topic, ask yourself what you want to do with that topic, who needs to know about it, and what you should do with that topic (persuade, inform, entertain).

Once you have chosen your audience, do a very careful analysis of that audience using the questions below. Write your answers to these questions in an audience analysis document that should be no less than 2 pages in length. The final paragraph of that document should discuss how you will use the information about your audience to address that audience and really write for them and them alone.

Questions for Audience Analysis Document

  • What do your readers value?
  • What do they love and what do they hate?
  • What constitutes a BAD day for these readers and
  • What constitutes a GOOD day for them?
  • Who are their heroes?
  • Where do they live (both geographically and domestically…apartment, home, condo, dorm, tent)?
  • How do they describe success, wealth, happiness?
  • Who are the most important people to them?
  • What do they like to own? And what do they need to own?
  • How much education do they have?
  • How much money do they make?
  • What kinds of jobs do they do?
  • What are their hobbies?
  • How do they spend a Saturday night?
  • How do they spend a Sunday morning?
  • Where do they vacation?
  • What kind of language do they find acceptable?
  • Who do they respect?

Save this document to a new folder labeled Unit 2. Once you have thoroughly analyzed your audience, email Lori with your analysis and your topic and begin freewriting about your topic.

Unit Requirements

You must participate in each peer review and in every activity associated with this unit, and you must provide all associated drafts, peer reviews, and activities with the "final" paper you turn in to me.

You will also include an analytical essay examining the process you went through to write this paper, the decisions you made throughout the process, and the assistance you received from your classmates and from me throughout the process. This analytical paper should be 2-3 pages (double-spaced, Times New Roman font)

This paper will be 5-7 pages (double-spaced, Times New Roman font). Please visit the class schedule regularly so that you are aware of and can meet the deadlines for each draft of this paper.

Grading

Please consult the grading standards at the back of the Course Guide to see how your work will be assessed. Note that you will be given an advisory grade with your "final-for-now" unit draft, but this grade may/will change after you have globally revised this work for the final portfolio.

Terms

For an explanation of any of the terms used in this assignment sheet, please consult the glossary of terms.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.


Creative Commons License
These course materials
are licensed by Lori Ostergaard under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.