Unit 1: Discussion
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Welcome to the discussion area for Unit 1! This area will fill up quickly with lively interchanges among you, your colleagues, and your instructor. Check back often!
Important! Most units, you are required to post your own responses before you can see your classmates’ responses. The reason for this is that your instructor and classmates are interested in your thoughts on the subject! Remember, most of the topics in discussion have to do with your analysis and interpretation, not an objective right/wrong answer. Your unit discussion responses are graded not only for accuracy but also for creativity and insight. See the Grading and Assessment content item under Course Information for more details.
Due Dates: Your initial (first) post to all discussion topic threads is due no later than Thursday Noon Central Standard Time (CST), with the expectation that you will return between Thursday and Sunday to converse with your peers.
Assessment: See the Grading and Assessment content item under Course Information.
For all references, use an appropriate form of documentation (MLA, APA, or another standard academic style discussed in Easy Writer.)
Discussion Prompts
In this unit’s reading, you explored the responsibilities and the habits of mind of effective academic writers:
In academic writing tasks, you are responsible for:
Defining a situation that calls for some response in writing;
Demonstrating the timeliness of your argument
Establishing a personal investment;
Appealing to readers whose minds you want to change by understanding what they think, believe, and value;
Supporting your arguments with good reasons;
Anticipate and address readers reasons for disagreeing with you, while encouraging them to adopt your position.
To be an effective academic writer, you must take on the right habits of mind. According to Greene and Lidinsky, academic writers:
Make inquiries–observe, ask questions, examine alternatives;
Seek and value complexity–resist binary thinking, consider all topics open for discussion;
See writing as a conversation–and demonstrate sensitivity to those involved in the conversation;
Understand that writing is a process–a continual process of discovering ideas, drafting, and revising; and
Reflect on their own learning and writing.
In your initial post, use these 5 categories to analyze one of the “Becoming Academic” narratives from Ch. 1: either Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” Rodriguez’s “Scholarship Boy,” or Graff’s “Disliking Books.” Then, compare your experience as a learner to the experience of the author whose work you have analyzed. Make sure that your post does all of the following:
Examine and explain how the author displays at least three of the five habits of mind; use specific examples from the text to illustrate your analysis
Compare your experience as a learner to the experience of the author
Quotes the article you are analyzing at least once, using MLA or APA guidelines for in-text citations of the quoted material
Your discussion post should be around 250-350 words and should directly quote the article you are analyzing at least once. Use MLA or APA guidelines to create an in-text citations.
In your follow-up posts (commenting on your classmate’s posts), offer an alternative perspective, ask a question, or point out an aspect of the work that you found meaningful. Also, be sure to answer any questions asked by your classmates or your instructor.
Textbooks for this class are:
Lunsford, andrea. easy writer: A pocket reference. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s 2016. ISBN:
9781319050764
Greene, Stuart and April Lidinsky. From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 4th Ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018. ISBN: 9781319071233
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