WAC 101, fall 1999:

End-of-term Reflective Letter + Revision Plan

Rationale for the Reflective letter

Following this project prompt, you will find a draft "outcomes statement" that composition faculty from all over the United States have constructed. The purpose of this document is to specify the kinds of knowledge and skills that students should acquire by the end of the first-year composition sequence. Because only some of that knowledge and some of those skills will be evident in any given project that you complete for the course, you need to provide a sampling of all your work in this course to demonstrate what you've accomplished as a reader, writer, thinker, learner. In general, the reflective letter provides you an opportunity to illustrate how make informed choices as a writer.

Reflective letter overview:

The final Reflective letter + Revision Plan Project for this semester has two components:

• First, a cover letter that discusses your change (and, we hope, your growth) as a writer over the course of the semester. The "rhetorical considerations" section and others below provide more detail, but the idea here is to both explore and demonstrate in what specific ways you have further developed your reading, writing, and thinking skills as you "wrote your way" through this class.
• Second, a revision plan that explains specifically how you'd go about revising one of the Writing Projects you constructed during the semester. Keep in mind that you do not do the actual revision; rather, you discuss what you would do if you had the chance to revise the propjet. Please include the final version of the text with my comments and then, attached to these, a detailed discussion of how you are seeing this paper differently and how you would go about revising it now. Be sure to comment on audience, purpose, goals, and so on for the essay and provide specific examples of what changes you'd like to make.

Rhetorical Considerations

One purpose for the reflective letter is to demonstrate that you have acquired rhetorical knowledge. Second, you should also demonstrate that you have further developed your reading, writing, and thinking skills. Third, you should demonstrate that you know how to use composing processes. Finally, as the outcomes statement suggests, you should demonstrate that you have gained further control over conventions of written language, especially by showing in your compositions what you are doing . . . and why you're doing it (that is, what's your rhetorical purpose?).

The Project

To complete the two reflective letters for this course, you will need to save your written work throughout the semester--invention work, drafts of projects, "final" versions of projects, the post-composing reflections on each project, journal entries, written peer responses, and the like. However, you do not need to submit all of your written work in the reflective letter. Rather, you need only submit whatever you consider necessary to demonstrate that you have accomplished the goals specified in the attached outcomes statement.

Your reflective letter needs to be as detailed as possible, using examples from your writing projects to illustrate your growth as a writer, what you've learned from the invention, peer review, and other activities, and from the final "production" of each writing project. Your letter should also include a paragraph or two in which you look to the future, commenting on how you plan to use your rhetorical knowledge and your composing skills in your academic, professional, personal, and/or civic lives. Your revision plan should include examples and details of specific changes you'd make in the composition, if you were to revise it.

Using Your Journal for This Project

Your journal is a crucial tool for constructing your reflective letter. First, you will want to skim it cover-to-cover to find excerpts demonstrating particular kinds of knowledge and skills that you've acquired in the course. Second, you should carefully read each of the post-composing reflections that you wrote when you submitted each of the course projects during the semester. Third, as you have done all semester, you will want to use the journal to reflect informally on the reflective letter project as it emerges. You might want to set up a special section of the journal with a heading something like "Ideas for the Reflective letter."

Expectations

To construct an effective reflective letter, you need to make wise choices as you select written work to illustrate what you've learned and accomplished in this course. To do that, you need to listen carefully to your peers, who can help you decide which pieces of your written work best represent you as a writer, reader, thinker, and learner. While we expect you to have taken some steps toward the goals enumerated in the attached outcomes statement, some of those steps will be smaller than others. It's unreasonable to expect that all of your strides have been big this semester. Learning to write effectively is a life-long journey. This semester you have made a small portion of that journey. Help us see what that portion of the journey has been like by explaining in detail what you've learned through constructing your writing projects throughout the semester.

Due dates:

• Final Reflective letter, version 1 due Thursday, 12/2/99
• Edited final version due Tuesday, 12/7/99 (10%)

Activities and Approaches for Working Through the Reflective letter Project

Early Invention

You will be doing "early invention" work for the reflective letter throughout most of the semester. That work will consist of all your written work in the course. As you do the work for the course, be thinking about the goals included in the attached outcomes statement. As you write the post-composing reflection at the end of each writing project for the course, you might use the outcomes statement to guide that writing. Respond to the following kinds of questions:

• "What goals have I reached at this point in the semester?"
• "What goals can I strive for as I complete the next project?"
• "What have I accomplished in my journal?"
• "How have I used peers' responses to my work?"
• "What pieces of my journal and/or learning logs illustrate what I've achieved?"
• "What excerpts from my projects illustrate what I've achieved?"
• "How have I reflected on the choices I make as a writer?"

Another and perhaps more detailed approach is to use the outcomes statement as a heuristic (a way to help you get started) in answering more specific questions about your reflective letter:

In terms of rhetorical knowledge

• Where and in what ways can I show how I focused on a specific purpose?
• Where and in what ways do I show that I'm able to anticipate the needs of different kinds of readers?
• In what way(s) can I show that I've been able to recognize the differences among various kinds of writing situations?
• What examples can I give to show that I can use the conventions of format, organization, and language appropriate to specific writing situations?

• What examples can I provide to show that I'm able to use writing to record, explore, organize, and communicate?
• What illustrations can I use to indicate I'm able to find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize appropriate primary and secondary sources in order to meet the demands of different kinds of writing situations?
• In what ways I can demonstrate that I understand the general relationships among language, knowledge, and power?

• What materials do I need to include to demonstrate that I can use multiple drafts to improve my text strategies like brainstorming, outlining, and focused freewriting, during all stages of the writing process?
• In what ways can I show that I'm now able to use appropriate strategies to generate, organize, revise, and edit my compositions, and that those strategies that are appropriate to the specific writing situation?
• In what ways can I illustrate that I can call on effective collaborative strategies to investigate, write, revise, and edit a variety of media, including particularly standard computerized media, in ways that permit me to make my writing acceptable to a wide variety of readers?

• What illustrations can I provide that show I'm able to control general conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation that are expected in standard written English?
• What examples can I provide to show I'm able to document primary and secondary sources appropriately?
• In what ways can I demonstrate that I know how to check for conventions about which I was uncertain?
• In what ways can I illustrate that I understand that different conventions are appropriate for different kinds of writing situations?

Constructing a Draft

As you begin drafting your reflective letter, include those excerpts from your journal and projects that you and your peers think best represent you as a developing writer. Think also about how to group or arrange those excerpts. In the initial draft of the cover letter, you may use the major categories (first to last) in the attached outcomes statement to help shape that draft.

Once you have drafted the reflective letter, ask peers to use the following to guide them in responding to the draft:

• I identify with _____________ in what you've drafted.
• I like _____________ in what you've drafted.
• What is ___________ ?
• Where and how have you illustrated your progress toward each of the outcomes?
• What did you include as specific examples to show your progress?
• In what manner have you organized this draft?
• In what ways is that arrangement effective?
• In what ways could the arrangement be changed?
• In what ways have you reflected on and comment on your work in the course? What you learned?
• What you might do differently in the future in terms of your writing?
• In what other ways might you reflect on your work?
• How and where do you talk about future goals for writing in your academic, professional, personal, and civic lives?

Revising the Content of the Draft Reflective letter

Once peers have responded to the draft of your reflective letter, use those responses to revise the document. Their responses should have helped you realize what you've illustrated adequately and what you need to illustrate further. You should also have learned from them how effectively the current organizational pattern works.

As peers respond to your revised reflective letter, they could use the following to guide them:

• How have you used or not used previous peer responses in this revision? Why?
• If you did take advantage of the peer response you received, in what way(s) does that advice show up in your own composition? How could peer advice be more helpful in your next writing project?
• How would you describe the organization of this revised version?
• What have you done in this revision to illustrate more fully what you've accomplished in the course?

Note that there may be multiple cycles of revising the content of the reflective letter.

Editing Surface Features

After you have revised as many times as necessary to illustrate your growth in the course, bring to class a fully revised version of the reflective letter, one that is ready for editing. In class, two peers will read your revision and suggest ways to edit the reflective letter's surface features--punctuation, syntax, word choice, spelling, and the like.

Outcomes for First-Year Composition (Draft--July 1998)

The following document is the result of the collective effort of writing teachers from a variety of colleges and universities. These teachers worked together to agree on what students should know and be able to do at the end of first-year writing courses at the college level.

These writers of this document have functioned as an ad hoc committee of the national organization of Writing Program Administrators. The document is currently in a draft stage and is awaiting final responses and revisions before formal endorsement by the Writing Program Administrators Executive Committee. We will update the document here as it is revised and evolves.

The knowledge and skills are divided into four categories.

1. Rhetorical knowledge: this covers the kinds of things students need to know about the writing situation, such as who the readers are and what kind of information they may be expecting from the text.

2. General reading, writing, and thinking skills: this covers general reading, writing, and thinking skills students must have to meet the demands of different kinds of writing situations.

3. Processes: this covers the processes students need to follow to produce successful texts.

4. Conventions: this covers specific conventions, such as spelling and punctuation, that readers will expect the students to control.

The document provides only general descriptions of what students need to know and be able to do. It does not define standards or precise levels of ability. These have been left for specific institutions to define and assess.

Rhetorical Knowledge:

By the end of their first-year writing courses, students should q be able to focus on a specific purpose, be able to anticipate the needs of different kinds of readers, be able to recognize the differences among kinds of writing situations, be able to use the conventions of format, organization, and language appropriate to specific writing situations, and to understand what makes writing types (like a book review, a project proposal or a research report) different.

General Reading, Writing, and Thinking Skills:

By the end of their first-year writing courses, students should be able to use writing to record, explore, organize, and communicate, be able to find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize appropriate primary and secondary sources in order to meet the demands of different kinds of writing situations, and to understand the general relationships among language, knowledge, and power.

Processes:

By the end of their first-year writing courses, students should know how to use multiple drafts to improve their texts, strategies like brainstorming, outlining, and focused freewriting in all stages of the writing process, generating, organizing, revising, and editing strategies that are appropriate to the specific writing situation, and effective collaborative strategies to investigate, write, revise, and edit. Students should be able to use a variety of media, including particularly standard computerized media, in ways that permit them to make their writing acceptable to a wide variety of readers.

Conventions:

By the end of their first-year writing courses, students should control general conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation expected in standard written English, be able to document primary and secondary sources appropriately, know how to check for conventions about which they are uncertain, and understand that different conventions are appropriate for different kinds of writing situations.

This draft was revised by Irvin Peckham Last updated July 18, 1998.

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