3 Guide for Students: Getting Started with this Text

Welcome to ENGL 1010: Expository Writing!

This is an Open Education Resource (OER) textbook. Because this book functions differently than a print text, we encourage you to take a moment to familiarize yourself with the functionality. Also, if you’d like a print version of this text, you can print it using our optimized PDF (please keep in mind the length of the text). In developing this text, we focused on keeping it low cost and accessible.

The way to navigate this textbook is by using the “Content” drop-down menus on the left side of the textbook screen. You can also use the “Read Next Chapter” option, which is a hyperlink at the bottom right of the text screen. The text is divided into sections that address ENGL 1010: Expository Writing, Literacy and Composing Processes, Primary Research and Ethical Research Processes, Genre and Methods of Analysis, and Reflection, Metacognition, and Transfer.

Within each sections are chapters that we think you’ll find both useful and engaging to read. Whenever an outside source is linked as a chapter, you’ll see an abstract, links to the texts (sometimes there are podcast versions too!), keywords, and short bios for each author.

The linked readings in this text come from different open-access, peer-reviewed collections:  Try This: Research Methods For Writers by Jennifer Clary-Lemon, Derek Mueller, and Kate Pantelides; Writing Spaces edited by Dana Driscoll, Mary K. Stewart, and Matthew Vetter; the Bad Ideas About Writing Podcast by Kyle Stedman; and Bad Ideas About Writing, edited by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe.

Please note that the titles for all of the Bad Ideas About Writing essays are actually misleading myths about writing that circulate. It may be confusing, at first, to see these titles. And it is important to keep in mind the content of each essay dispels these popular beliefs about writing that can be found in the titles, by using research from the field.

Writing in ENGL 1010: Expository Writing

You have no doubt been composing your whole life – in school, in your personal life, in professional spaces, and in creative ways that you might not even think of as writing in a traditional sense. ENGL 1010: Expository Writing builds on the understanding of composition that you bring to the course and invites you to write in new ways, ways that demonstrate an understanding of rhetoric.

No class can teach you to write in every situation. Instead, we invite you to think about the situations in which a need for writing arises, the particular exigencies that invite certain genres. You make come across the following genres in Expository Writing:

Literacy Narratives

Literacy narratives tell stories about experiences building literacy. Literacy can refer to any sort of knowledge that you have; for instance, you can have game literacy, music literacy, exercise literacy, etc. However, in Expository Writing, we often want you to reflect on your alphabetic literacy, that is, the way that you developed your ability to read and write. Literacy narratives usually connect someone’s reading and writing past with their reading and writing present, analyzing how previous literacy experiences impact individuals. We often begin the semester this way because it can be a useful reminder to a student about why they approach reading and writing the way that they do, and it can also be a useful introduction of students to faculty. By better understanding student learning experiences, faculty can better meet their needs across the semester.

Primary Research Reports

Whereas literacy narratives ask students to consider their own literacy development, many faculty ask students to step outside of their own experiences for the second project of the semester. Primary research methods, such as interview, survey, ethnography, and site observation, allow insight into community literacies.

Genre Analyses

After considering your personal literacy, and the literacy experiences of others, many faculty ask you to consider how academic literacy is structured in our lives every day and mediated through the genres by which we communicate and function at the university. To understand genre rhetorically, Carolyn Miller reminds us that genres function as “social actions,” not just as forms. If we look at genres this way, in that genres function as cultural artifacts and not just as categories, we can learn a lot about their social meaning and cultural use through analysis. Thus, by examining numerous instances of a genre, we can better understand its exigency, or the rhetorical situation that invites a particular genre; we can examine its conventions, or expected norms, and their implications, as well as the deviations writers choose to make when they write; and we can consider a genre’s affordances and constraints, the things that some kinds of genres allow given their structure and expectations.

Reflections

Throughout your writing classes, you will be asked to reflect. Although reflection is ubiquitous, in that it is repeatedly recommended, it may at first feel awkward to reflect in the context of a writing class. The reason you’re asked to reflect consistently is that this repeated rhetorical move – thinking about what and how you’ve composed a writing response, helps you build metacognitive awareness, that is – thinking about your thinking. The more you’re able to do this, the more you’re able to port what you learn from what writing situation to another. You may find that reflection becomes second nature, and you may find yourself analyzing the way something is written – not just what it says – in places outside of your writing courses.

Informal Invention Exercises

In addition to your formal writing projects, you’ll be asked to develop “invention work.” These are informal writing opportunities – you might think of them as prewriting or brainstorming – designed to help you more easily and organically complete writing projects. Ideally, the invention writing you compose will “add up” to the formal projects, such that when you are asked to compose a literacy narrative, a genre analysis, a primary research report, or a reflection essay, they will simply be the sum of the informal writing you’ve developed across the semester. They will offer the opportunity to polish and revise ideas you’ve experimented with across the semester.