Disciplinary literacy in the mix
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Brief explanation of a First Year Writing assignment that involves looking at writing within a discipline
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Disciplinary literacy in the mix
- 1. Conceived and Wri tten by Rachel Minkin Presented by Sara Mi l ler DISCIPLINARY LITERACY IN THE MIX
- 4. CHECK OUT THE … Geological Society of America American Psychological Association National Bar tenders Association
- 6. How is this defined? What are the biases? Do you agree? Where are the author’s sources? Blame it on the Bars by Erin Murphy Who is Erin Murphy?
- 7. USE PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION BLOGS As an example of professional writing, specifically for a trade audience As a launching place for keyword and inquiry generation As a concrete introduction to professional associations and culture AND PRESS RELEASES…
Editor's Notes
- Introduce me, Rachel The context for this exercise is a one shot session for a mixed group of first year writing students – all with different majors. Students have (ideally) just received an assignment called “Discplinary Literacy.”
- What are your students’ majors? Are they studying (click) geology? psychology? or MIXology? (Remind group that many MSU students go on to study hospitality and tourism!)
- “Disciplinary Literacy” is the name of a major assignment in first year writing at MSU – in short, it means beginning to learn about (or becoming literate in) your discipline or major – the language, culture, communication, and other areas. This assignment requires students to look at what kinds of writing occur by professionals in their field. They need to look at different types of writing – information – scholarly, etc, and a “trade publication” is required – but need to have a way to search (a theme or question)- Otherwise they just tend to google “writing and business” etc.
- In our classes, we usually begin by having the class read and react to a piece of information This stimulates inquiry – generating questions, keywords, and ideas for searching. It helps if the piece of information is one that’s as relevant as possible to their assignment. For this disciplinary literacies assignment, Blogs or news releases by professional associations are a great place to start. Easy to find – google your field + “association” Since the students will be required to use a “trade publication” - which is sometimes a confusing concept - this example helps.
- Poke around to find blogs or articles The writing on the site can also tell you something.
- 30 seconds to read Inquiry Generation (click) What questions do you have from looking at this Keyword generation (click) Who do you think wrote this? Does she work in your field? Going on from here: A potential research question: How is the subject of “dram shop liability” treated in writing/communication in this field? Who writes about it? For what audiences? Gives them something more to search for than just “writing and hospitality.”
- To sum up: This exercise hits three key areas at once: As an example. Gets them to start looking critically at the information through reading and questions rather than viewing it as something to cut and paste or report. As a launching place. Gets them to identify concepts that help with questions and formulating searches. As a personal cultural window – Will I be writing these kinds of things one day when I’m working in this field?