The Theory of Writing: Defining “Good Writing” for Ourselves
Katherine Burns
Project/Module/Unit Metadata
Course: English 101
Course Theme: Introduction to Composition
Teacher-Designer: Katherine Burns (Whatcom Community College)
Timeline: Quarter
Introduction to Course
English 101 is an introductory composition course that is required of all college and university students in Washington State. In this course, students use rhetorical knowledge to analyze contexts and audiences to compose texts, think critically about texts, use multiple composing processes to conceptualize, develop and finalize writing projects, analyze the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres, identify information needs and locate and critically evaluate information sources and analyze and explain how their experience with and understanding of composing has
developed and will continue to develop (based on Whatcom Community College’s Learning Outcomes).
In Katherine’s English 101 course, students explore rhetorical elements, situations and choices as they examine how to develop ideas for writing that stem from their own lived experiences as well how language, identity and power intersect within white supremacist standards and ideals. Students write a scholarly personal narrative, a persuasive letter, speech or essay and a theory of writing over the course of a twelve week term. The focus of this composition course is on gaining agency as writers.
Final Project: A Theory of Writing
Much of antiracist pedagogy is rooted in decentering teachers and centering students. This Theory of Writing Project encourages students to create their own concept of what good writing is. Students spend the first two thirds of our course collecting ideas about writing, thinking, reading, and study. We wrestle with the rhetorical elements as we interrogate the power of language through an antiracist lens and students work toward a new view of what all of this means as a college student, an author, a reader. We use this last project – A Theory of Writing – to do some thinking about our experiences and our current views of writing and writing for college and to prepare for our future rhetorical situations. The Theory of Writing is a theoretical college essay with a corresponding multimodal component. It is also a space for students to expand our collective embrace of what’s possible with writing, languaging and learning and a space to challenge Standard American English (SAE) as the supreme norm and ideal. Students see that writing is a series of choices and we have linguistic agency within those choices.
The objective of this essay is for students to develop their own theory of writing wherein they explore and explain what they think true and good writing is and what it requires. Students explore their past experiences with and impressions of writing, their current revelations about writing in English 101 and their future plans for writing as a scholar and professional. As students develop a theory, they will develop a clear understanding of what good writing is to them , what it means within the world of academia and how they will use it in their future.
This project, in large part, is inspired by the work of Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson and Kara Taczak in Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing.
Theory of Writing Sections
There are eight sections of the theory, and students work on developing each one separately, step by step. I offer prompts for each section. Students respond to the given prompts but also add to each section as they see fit.
- Section 1: Describe your prior knowledge and experience of writing. What did you learn as a kid in school or at home about writing? What were your feelings or thoughts about writing as you grew as a student?
- Section 2: Reflect on your personal writing process – how you approach the various stages of writing – and reflect upon why you do what you do. Be specific. Explain your writing process – Do you stall? Do you dive in with gusto? Do you create a visual map of your ideas? How do you revise? Once you explain your process, explore why doing what you do helps you write. Or, alternatively, if you find that your process isn’t working, explore why and how you might change this process in the future.
- Section 3: Reflect on your personal reading process, i.e. how you approach reading various texts. Again, be specific. Explain your reading process – Do you pre-read? Do you annotate? Do you make time to sit and think after reading? Do you summarize? Do you space out and have to reread? Once you explain your process, explore why your reading process and strategies help you understand a text and ultimately write.
- Section 4: Develop the principles – key points and steps – you think are most important in the writing process. In short, what are you learning about writing and what writing means this term? What makes for good writing?
- Section 5: Look ahead: speculate about your future writing experiences. What do you think you’ll have to write in the future of your academic and professional career? How will you approach writing in the future? Why? How? How and why does knowing about the rhetorical situation empower you as a communicator, a thinker and a writer? What do you hope to gain from writing?
- Section 6: Pull ideas from our sources to support or connect to your theory. Use two to three texts from our course to support pieces of your theory. If your writing process connects to Dr. VAY’s experience, write about how that is. If Birkerts makes a statement that resonates with you as a scholarly reader and writer, explore that. Please note: You may present Section 6 as an independent section – sort of like its own chapter – in your theory of writing. Or, you can integrate Section 6 throughout your theory, referring to and leaning on source support as you develop the rest of your sections. This is entirely up to you and is a significant choice as a writer.
- Section 7: So what is your theory of writing? In this section, make a final statement about what good writing is. What does it look like? Who does it reach? What does it do (for the writer and for the reader?) Why do we write? This final section allows you to tie together all the pieces of your theory. It’s not just a tidy conclusion; rather, it gives you a chance to reflect thoughtfully about your theory.
- Section 8: Now we get to be multimodal, using different forms of communication to convey our theory. Create a visual, audio or 3D depiction of your theory which represents your writing process before, during and after English 101. The goal here is to create an alternative representation of the ideas from your essay. This section will complement the written portion of your theory. You will also write a three to five sentence paragraph about how this multimodal representation captures your theory.
We spend about three to four week son this final project, and students engage in multiple writing workshops with their fellow writers to explore their ideas and offer feedback. If students vote yes, we hold a Theory of Writing Showcase on our last day of class wherein students share a multimodal representation of their theory.
In this section we encourage:
- an audio/video narrative of your course design/approach that runs no more than 5 – 8 mins and/or a written narrative of your course design/approach that runs no more than 1,000 words.
- Using Hypohes.is (via Pressbooks) for layering on addition meta-commentary about elements of the course.
Links to Project Materials
Theory of Writing Assignment and Videos
Theory of Writing Assignment
Project Overview Video (I suggest you skip from 4:50-8:50)
Gearing up for the Theory of Writing Activities
Steps One, Two, Three, Four and Five for Developing a Theory of Writing (In a face to face class, we do these exercises in class and free-write and discuss in real time. In an asynchronous online course, students do this as an assignment.)
Approach to Assessment
In this section describe your approach to assessment in this course. Feel free to use either print or audio-visual forms, or any combination of these elements.
Samples of Student Work or Other Models of Deliverables
In this section provide links to sample student (or other) artifacts generated by this project design.
Student Reflection
Include a student reflection on artifact (if available). Reflections may be written or in audio-visual form.
Instructor Reflection
In this section provide a written and/or audio/visual reflection on how your project design/approach fits into antiracist curricular and pedagogical praxis.
