Introduction to Writing

ENGL 1100 – Dale Tracy

Summary
Students move around the campus, noting different forms of communication, which then informs their writing in two genres.

What
This activity, which I designed for ENGL 1100—Introduction to University Writing, asks students to notice the forms of communication happening on our campus. After gathering this information, students practice organizing it in particular genres, following genre conventions.

Why
This activity is relevant to essay writing because it lets students practice gathering evidence (from the text of our campus instead of from a written source) and then think about and communicate it according to the conventions of a genre. This activity shows that following conventions is a creative activity involved in all kinds of social situations for all kinds of goals. At the same time, this activity asks students to notice human and nonhuman forms of communication present on the campus, which might help them to consciously experience their place in the more-than-human world. The activity further invites students to connect to the particular place of KPU’s campus, the site of their learning.

How
First, students experience the campus in groups, noticing and recording all forms of communication. I suggest that they pay attention to:

• signs and symbols
• people (talking, gesturing)
• cars (turning signals, horns)
• technologies you can see (like power lines)
• technologies inside buildings that you know about but can’t see (like Wi-Fi)
• built features (what does a courtyard, flower bed, or pond communicate?)
• animals you see or hear
• plants (what they are doing both above and under the ground)

Once we are back in class, I ask them to select and organize the information they collected into an abecedarian poem in small groups. I give students an example of an abecedarian and explain its conventions. In an abecedarian, the first word of each line begins with a letter of the alphabet, going in order from A to Z.

After students write, share, and discuss their abecedarians, I ask them again to select evidence from what they collected outside for an argumentative paragraph answering the following question: Does KPU provide adequate space and types of space for your communication needs?

Students write and share their paragraphs. Then, we discuss this experience of using what they found out about communication on campus for two different purposes (what selections they made, how they engaged with the selections, and how they organized their thinking).