This document summarizes a presentation by Zia Miric on student writers as both learners and experts. It makes three main points: 1) All writers have authority and expertise to share knowledge from their experiences and research. 2) Giving students control over their topic choice engages them more in the writing process as a learning experience. 3) For students to write effectively beyond personal narratives, they need a clear sense of their audience and should see their classroom as a writing community. The document discusses the importance of both cognitive and social apprenticeships in writing and provides discussion questions and activities for students to explore topics and audiences.

1. Student Writers as
Learners and Experts:
Writerly Communities,
Audience and Topic Choice
Zia Miric, English Department, UIUC
UIWP Summer Institute 2013

2. Contentions
Every writer is an expert and commands authority to
make impact and share knowledge emerging from
their experience, pursuit of hobbies, or research in a
subject area.
Writers embrace the process of writing as a learning
instrument and creative arena when they have control
over the choice and design of the topic.
When they engage writing beyond personal
narratives, writers rely on a clear sense of authentic
audience AND writers’ community to identify a
problematic and articulate their own intervention.

3. Reading
“… students learn to write well when they experience two kinds of apprenticeships: (1) a cognitive
apprenticeship, which is typically classroom-based, structured, and formal; and (2) a social
apprenticeship, which is laboratory or studio-like, collaborative, and informal.” (Kathleen
Blake Yancey)
“Although writing may require some degree of quiet and solitude, the “they say/I say” models
shows students that they can best develop their arguments not just by looking inward but
by doing what they often do in a good conversation with friends and family – by listening
carefully to what others are saying and engaging with other views.” (Gerald Graff and
Cathy Birkenstein)
“A writer in any rhetorical situation needs to understand the content of her idea, conceptualize her
audience, and work through a writing process in order to write effectively. At the same time,
writing is not merely an individual method for displaying content knowledge but a
communicative opportunity to advance ideas and receive feedback. Interacting with
members of an authentic audience can underscore this social nature of writing, infusing the
writing with meaning and motivating its production in ways that typical school assignments
often cannot.” (Alecia Marie Magnifico)

4. Standards
1. Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to
build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the
cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new
information; to respond to the needs and demands of
society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment.
Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and
contemporary works.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by
generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems.
They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety
of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people)
to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their
purpose and audience.
11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative,
and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.

5. Discussion
Writing as learning is a bridge connecting what
the writer already knows and what they aim to
discover. Thus each writer enfolds the related
roles and positions of teacher and student. All
writing is personal in the sense that it taps the
writer’s experiences, knowledge
funds, predilections and skills. At the same
time, writing is social, communal, political and
professional, as process and purpose.

6. Discussion
Writing assignments and contexts with open
and/or flexible topics is the most effective method
to encourage and facilitate the subtle transitions
and switching between learner/teacher,
self/other, expressive engagement/inquiring
detachment. There is no tight connection
between genre and topic, and teaching writing
can and should accommodate a variety of
angles, disciplinary approaches, and research
problematics.

7. Discussion
The teacher is never the ideal or final audience
for writers as engaged experts. When they
reconstitute the classroom into a permanent peer
workshop, writing instructors let grow and
coordinate an autonomous writerly community.
Awareness of other writers as fellow researchers
and experts in their own right fosters commitment
to the writing process, self-motivated grappling
with the topic, respect for and accountability to
real and imagined audiences, and a recalibrated
perspective on writing as conversation and social
action and not merely expression/creative
outlet/therapy/GPA hurdle.

8. Questions
Audience formation and assignment design: what
are the process and product implications of the
instructor’s strategic choice between an ideal but
imaginary audience, and a less exciting but
palpable real readership?
What are the most productive relations between
writing genre/mode, topic generation technique,
and mock/real audience setup?

9. Activity: Topic Discovery
Skim read Lucy Grealy’s “Mirrors,” looking for a
paragraph which grips your attention, triggers your
memories, recalls learned information, or prompts
you to explore a puzzling question which you feel you
can and must address. It could be anything from
Grealy’s text: a word or phrase, topic, feeling,
descriptive detail, problem addressed or approach
the author mentions or overlooks. It doesn’t have
anything to do explicitly with Grealy’s topic, concerns,
or perspective. Take a few minutes to freewrite about
what exactly interests you, how you feel prepared to
tackle the issue and what you in particular might
contribute, and what form your writing could take to fit
best your focus and level of familiarity with the topic.

10. Activity: Building Mock
Audience Communities
Get together as a group and discuss what kind of
writers and knowledge sharers you represent,
and what is the best avenue for you to exchange
your discoveries and processes with fellow
writers and communicate it to the wider public.
Could it be a conference, roundtable, TV host
show, radio broadcast, town council committee,
or parliamentary special commission? Imagine
your identities, audience and spatial setup based
on your experiences and interests.

11. Activity: Topic-Audience-
Peer Review Loop
Then prepare to report and ask feedback on the following points:
Why have I chosen this particular topic or angle? How could I modify
or reframe it?
What were the most exciting or frustrating problems or challenges I
encountered while researching and writing? How can I tackle them in
the future?
What are the remaining or open questions I wish to explore in further
writing? Why? How could I shape and conduct that next stage in
research and writing, while building on the achievements and
limitations of what I have already done?
When providing feedback for each writer, do establish connections with
your own writing experience and refer to relevant points shared by
other writers.

12. References
Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. “They Say/I Say”: The
Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. 2nd Ed. W.W.
Norton & Co: 2010.
Magnifico, Alecia Marie. “Writing for Whom? Cognition,
Motivation, and a Writer’s Audience.” Educational
Psychologist 45:3. 2010. 167-184.
Standards for the English Language Arts. International Reading
Association and National Council of Teachers of English:
1996.18-32.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Afterword.” In Undergraduate
Research in English Studies. Ed. Laurie Grobman and
Joyce Kinkead. NCTE: 2010. 245-255.