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Explorations 1 and 2

Each exploration assignment should help you explore the ideas we discuss and work within class in a different way. They ask you to extend class concept into other areas. The readings we do and discussion we have may be drawn upon (and cited), but it is not required. However, doing so may add richness and depth to your exploration. Please do not feel that you have to adhere to some model you think I might have in my head about what an “academic essay” is. I would much rather have you use these assignments to contemplate on the page- mull over, think through, ponder, reflect. You can ask questions, consider several possibilities without deciding one is better than another, and think on paper. You don’t need to pretend to know something you don’t; you don’t need to assume a voice that is not your own so you don’t have to sound “scholarly”.

Exploration 1 Using several pieces of your own writing as artifacts, interrogate your personal style. Look as closely at it as we might look at a published writer’s work in class. How might you describe it? How does it vary based on audience, purpose, context? What features remain constant? How could you identify it as yours? What is a “you” sentence? Paragraph? Piece? Please include the pieces you use with your Exploration.

This Exploration should be about 5 pages, just to give you an approximate figure. In other words, it should be long enough to require some detailed exploration but not as long as a final project or other kids of report.

Exploration 2 For next class bring in a paper that you have written for a college course (or high school if this is a first college class). You can choose a paper you enjoyed writing, a paper that has ideas you are still interested in exploring, or a paper that you didn’t enjoy writing—it just needs to be an acceptable (and in some sense of the word, traditional) academic paper. In order to gain a clearer sense of what the rules/conventions of “good” writing and style are, and to understand how your writing is at once socially constructed and unique. You will work with this paper’s ideas and recast these ideas in a new genre. We will try several various kids of writing and then you can re-cast your original draft based on this work in class.

For the next class after you do this activity you will need to bring to class:

• The original paper/essay
• Your alternatively-styled “essay”
• A 1 page typed reflection on this process. In this reflection you will want to consider:

What techniques did you try and why? What effect were you attempting to have? What did you learn- about the original topic of your paper, about yourself as a writer- through doing the re-casting? How is each piece effective (or not) and what makes it so? What is the relationship between style, purpose, genre, and audience?