http://stc.nepean.uws.edu.au/woe

Pre-Requisite: Reasoned Writing, Professional Writing 1

Attendance: 3 hours per week of lectures/workshops

Objectives:

• To encourage you to experiment with different writing styles and genres to expand your current writing experience and to explore the boundaries of these possibilities.
• To enable you, with the help of others, to become aware of your own individual development as a writer, including identifying your own strengths and weaknesses.
• To provide students with an immersive writing environment, allowing for writing, revising, researching markets, and submitting a substantial piece of writing for publication.
• To explore the effects of small group dynamics in the writing process and to examine the elements of successful group interaction over the lifespan of collaborative writing projects.
• To appreciate the research undertaken on writing groups and collaborative writing in professional and online settings.

Content:

The work of the unit will cover the following content areas:

A range of writing genres including autobiography, travel, humour, reviews, literary journalism, interactive writing, advertising copy, and hybrid styles.

Joining and interacting within online writing communities, Usenet groups, listservs, and Web sites.

Analysis of style: what constitutes a good style, active vs passive voice, types of paragraphing, types of sentences, word choice, ordering, concision, clarity, emphasis, elegance.

Publishing in real and electronic spaces; use of the World Wide Web to produce an online class publication.

Ethical considerations to writing, research, computing and organisational practices.

Workshops

Classes will take the form of writing workshops. From the beginning of the semester, you will complete a number of writing exercises designed to help you explore different writing sty les and to encourage you to open up your creative potential.

As the semester progresses, you will undertake your own individual and collaborative writing projects, culminating in the completion of an individual publication project. As part of this projects, you will research your target publication to gain a clear awareness of audience and genre, research and draft your piece, have it peer reviewed, and finally submit the work to the targeted publication.

As well as encouraging your own development as a flexible, creative, and professional writer, we will also be considering the development of the writing group itself. You will be reflecting on group dynamics and the role of the group in advancing the individual's progress through the phases of the writing process: pre-writing, writing, and revising.

You will be expected to read widely in the designated research areas, but we also encourage you to explore areas unfamiliar to you. You will also be expected to use conventional research methods as well as electronic sources.

Practical Work

Workshops will employ a variety of approaches, including highly structured workshop exercises found in weekly notes, an interactive electronic Bulletin Board, Web chat, Internet Relay Chat, online communities, and student performance of their work.

Assessment:

1. Portfolio of class works (compulsory)                   25%
2. Publication project  (compulsory)                       25%
3. Critiques, commentaries, peer-reviews, 		   
   ongoing workshop participation, exercises (compulsory)  25%                               

Choose ONE of the following:
4. Performance project, 15mins or equivalent               25%
5. Report - comparison of an online writing community 
   with class community                                    25%
6. Report - analysis of text/s "on the edge"               25%

Students have the choice of electing 25% of their assessment from items 4, 5, or 6.

Notes:

1. The portfolio is COMPULSORY and will consist of a selection of individual and collaborative writing exercises which you have worked on during the semester. Early drafts with group and tutor comments should be included together with your final pieces. The Portfolio should show cumulative engagement with the course over the entire semester.

2. The publication project (also COMPULSORY) will consist of a piece (or pieces) of original work (1,500 words min. or equivalent) written for a target publication. It will be accompanied by a 400-word summary of the characteristics of the target publication and a copy of your submission letter. As part of the publication project you will write a short project proposal which will be put to a peer-review panel.

4. The Performance project is aimed at those students who wish to present an original written work in the medium of a performance. Music, dance, costume, drama, lighting and computers can all be used to create extra dimensions to the piece.

5. & 6. The Research Report assignments give you the opportunity to produce a 1,500 word report.

Attendance:

Please note that the attendance of lectures and workshops is compulsory. Participation by all is essential to the smooth working of a group and to the creation of "synergy". While no separate assessment is given for participation, a high level of commitment and interaction is expected. Anyone failing to attend at least 80% of the class time will automatically be taken to have withdrawn from the course and therefore fail. The pass mark for the subject is not necessarily 50%.

All assignments must be submitted by students. Late work will not be accepted without penalty. One mark per day will be deducted from late assignments, to a maximum of 5 marks. After this, the assignment will not attract any marks but still need to be handed in. Late assignments will be marked but not be given comments. All assignments should include a stamped self-addressed envelope for return.

Extensions will not usually be granted except for documented medical reasons, and other circumstances. No extension shall be granted because of the pressure of other work.

Draft Program:

The exact weekly topics may change according to need.

References:

Bishop, W. (1990). Something Old, Something New: College Writing Teachers and Classroom Change. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Bolter, J. D. (1991) Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Brande, D. (1983) Becoming a Writer. London: Macmillan

Ede, L. & Lunsford, A. (1990) Singular texts and plural authors. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Elbow, P. (1973) Writing without Teachers. New York: Oxford University Press

Elbow, P. (1981) Writing with Power. New York: Oxford University Press

Faigley, L. (1992) Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Gere, A. (1987) Writing groups: History, theory, and implications. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Ghiselin, B. (1952) The creative Process. New York: Mentor

Goldberg, N. (1991) Wild mind: Leading the writer's life. London: Rider

Harkin, P. and Schlib, J. (1991) Eds. Contending with Words: Composition and rhetoric in a Postmodern Age. New York: Modern Language Association.

Klauser, H.A. (1987) Writing on both sides of the brain. San Francisco: Harper and Row

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Lay, M. and Karis, W. (1993) Collaborative writing in industry: Investigations in theory and practice. Amityville, NY: Baywood

LeFevre, K. B. (1987) Invention as a social act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press

Pope, R. (1995) Textual Intervention: Critical and creative strategies for literary studies. London: Routledge.

Schrage, M. (1990) Shared minds: The new technologies of collaboration. New York: Random House

Smith, F. (1982) Writing and the Writer. London: Heinemann.

Woolfe, S. and Grenville, K. (193) Making Stories: How ten Australian stories were written. Sydney: Allen and Unwin

Yancy, K. B. (1994) Ed. Voices on Voice: Perspectives, Definitions, Inquiry. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English

Zinsser, W. (1985) On Writing Well. New York: Harper and Row.

Zinsser, W. (1988) Writing to Learn. New York: Harper and Row.