Excellence in First-Year Writing 2011/2012 - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

The solitary parts of the writing process can make us lose sight of the importance of conversation to any piece of academic writing. When we write to enter the scholarly conversation, to help address questions others have already asked and to raise—and often start to answer—new questions that can further the discussion, we often feel alone. But behind almost all academic writing is a conversation between the author and many other readers/writers, who are responding to drafts as the piece of writing takes shape. The English Department Writing Program and the Sweetland Center for Writing established a first-year writing prize two years ago in order to celebrate the accomplishments of student writers near the beginning of their careers at the University of Michigan. Last year we added the upper-level writing prize, to honor the excellent writing students continue to achieve as they pursue questions of particular interest to them in their majors. Writing classrooms at this university are remarkable for the conversations they foster, perhaps especially in writing workshop. In workshop, students take each other’s work as seriously as any piece of published prose, debating its argument and talking through its rhetorical choices. In helping a fellow writer hone an essay, each peer reviewer gets the chance to teach writing—an opportunity that gives them insights they can take back to their own work. We hope that all student writers will continue to seek out conversation about their writing even after they leave the structure of the writing classroom. The two of us have participated in a writing group with two other colleagues for eight years now, and we treasure this chance to share our work—sometimes very rough, still groping for its argument—with each other. In the space of our writing group, we leave our administrative selves at the door and dive into intellectual questions and rhetorical nuances as we work together to help the author further the scholarly conversation as persuasively and powerfully as possible.

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