English Department WID Workshop – March 27 2013
Helping Students to Think and Write Rhetorically -- Ian MacKenzie
A. In your view, what are the most important aspects of assignment design?
1.
2.
3
B. Are you satisfied with the thinking and writing that your assignments
currently elicit?
Yes, because…
No, because….
C. The importance of assignment design for student learning
NSSE/WPA Research Conclusions
“The use of writing to promote deep learning depends less on the amount of writing assigned in
a course than on the design of the writing assignments themselves.”
(Anderson et al 2009)
D. What features of assignment design increase the likelihood of higher
student engagement and deeper critical thinking and writing?



Interactive components: preliminary opportunities for low-stakes exploratory writing; class
activities that encourage students to consider, express and debate divergent views;
scaffolding of stages/ drafts for instructor and peer feedback.
Meaning-constructing task: focus on real disciplinary problems that give writers a defined
role in relation to a specific audience, versus generic canned “topics,” which invite “allabout” or “data dump” or plagiarized papers.
Publication of clear expectations for form and content of final product: explicit guidelines
for genre, evaluation rubric for formative and summative evaluation of ideas and structure.
(Anderson et al, 2009)
E. Components of rhetorically-situated assignments: RAFT

Task : An intriguing disciplinary problem, explicitly defined by the instructor, or, alternately,
very clearly inferred from an ambiguous data set, a paradoxical excerpt, or a quotation that
can alternately be attacked or supported. The task-problem stimulates the disciplinary
community to consider divergent views, and marshal evidence and arguments .

Role: The writer is given a clear sense of purpose in relation to the writing task: a specific
argumentative charge (change the mind of a skeptical audience, rally the converted to a
new challenge) or a specific persona and tenor (contrarian, self-deprecating, polemical,
naïve). The writer’s role is clarified in relation to a specific audience (see following).

Audience: Having a clear audience completes the writer’s grasp of purpose. Assignments
that define audience sidestep “school-room genre” obstacles to commitment on the part of
student writers (“Why write about something my all-knowing teacher already knows?”)
Assigned audiences can echo a realistic disciplinary situation (“You are contributing a brief
article on topic X to a young adult reader’s edition of novel Y” or “You are one of three
disputatious and disagreeable fiction editors for magazine Y”). Others may be creativeimaginative opportunities for open-form exploratory writing (“Explain to famous actor X
why actually reading the novel Y, on which the film and his role are based, might actually
improve his performance” or “Persuade school trustee X why he ought to reconsider his
views on banning novel Y”).

Format/Genre: Students gain “genre sophistication” by experimenting with different
genres, and thereby learn about contrasting roles/purposes/audiences. The purposes and
argumentative power of traditional closed-form writing (thesis-driven literary essays, for
eg.) can come into clearer relief if students are also asked to write in a wider variety of
open-form genres: reflective or personal narratives, exploratory thesis-seeking essays,
postcard fictions, open letters, prose poems, creative non-fiction, etc.
(Bean 2010, Giltrow 2012)
Resources:

Anderson, et al. Results from the Consortium for the Study of Writing in College. NSSE 2009.

Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: A Professor’s Guide to Intergrating Writing, Critical Thinking and Active
Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.

Giltrow, Janet. “Landscaping with indigenous species: How to replace quizzes, exams, term papers
(non-native species) with species native to the research culture.” Conference presentation. McGill
University, October 2012.

Thaiss, C. and Zawaki, T. Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life.
Portsmouth: Boynton-Cook, 2006.
F. Models: For each, identify the RAFT elements…
1. Traditional assignment (Nursing): Write a 1000 word research paper that critically investigates
“therapeutic touch” therapy. Follow APA guidelines for documentation.
2. Revised as a RAFT rhetorically-situated assignment:
You are a staff nurse at a large urban teaching hospital. Several nurses and physicians have raised the
topic of whether “therapeutic touch” merits consideration within the nursing curriculum. The hospital
committee on education and curriculum, which is known for its traditional mindset on medical education,
has called for the submission of a brief on the topic . Two members of this committee have already stated
publically that touch therapy amounts to new age “quackery.” You have been assigned the task of
reviewing several articles in the literature on TT, and of advising the sub-committee on whether TT should
be addressed in the nursing curriculum.
3. 101-ICE:WE
After reading of section XX of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” (“Walt Whitman, a Kosmos, of
Manhattan born”) write your own bio-poem that closely imitates Whitman’s syntax, but inserts your own
biographical details and feelings. Then, write a thesis-seeking reflection paper that examines the
relationship between poetic expression and personal identity. Your essay will be published on the class
blog, so your audience is composed of your peers, who have the same knowledge of Whitman and his
experiments with free verse, and perhaps the some of the same thoughts, feelings, doubts as you do
about poetry, identity, and personal expression. The guiding question for your reflections: How did
writing poetry about yourself help you examine your identity in a new, interesting, unexpected light?
4. 102-103
You are a research assistant for a teacher who specializies in world literature. She is interested currently
in novels that represent conflict in the modern Middle East. Her current focus is Halim Barakat’s Days of
Dust (1969), a novel that represents an Arab view of the Six Day War of 1967 and its aftermath. She has
asked you to reread carefully several passages that mention graphically the use of napalm by Israel. She
has asked for a 750-word discussion of these passages that addresses the following questions: Is
Barakat’s writing grounded in historical fact? Does the charge – made by some critics – that Barakat is in
fact indulging in propaganda merit serious consideration?
5. BXE
Review the open letters exchanged between Joe Oliver, Conservative MP and Minister of Natural
Resources and Elizabeth May, MP and Green Party leader on the topic of the “radical” opposition to the
Northern Gateway oil pipeline. Review and comment on several examples of the open letter (see
Response 4, class blog), noting both the problem-solution structure and the leveraging of all four
rhetorical aspects (pathos, ethos, logos, kairos). Then write your own open letter drawing on one of the
topic options or some variation thereon: A member of a native community downstream from the
bitumen upgraders on the Athabasca River writing to Minister Oliver; A Nebraska rancher whose lands are
being expropriated under “eminent domain” for the Keystone pipeline writing to President Obama; a Fort
McMurray pipefitter writing to Thomas Mulcair; a Divest McGill student leader writing to the McGill board
of Governors…