Hi, everyone. 

I thought I would spend this first blog post discussing some of the very elements of First-Year Composition (FYC) courses that made me fall in love with the subject: writing as a rhetorical and social act that connects loved ones and strangers, alike. 

First, I think it is a good idea to discuss my own history with FYC as a student. Now, my journey is a bit different than many first-year students, as I started college in the fall of 2020, when the world was in the midst of a global pandemic and scientists were still in the developmental stage of creating a vaccination. As you can imagine, connecting to classmates and faculty during a global pandemic was nearly impossible,and this experience is part of why I want to teach first-year courses, as I believe first-year courses can greatly influence the academic path a student takes. It is also why I believe teaching writing as a social and rhetorical act is so important, especially in FYC courses. Although an event like the Covid-19 pandemic is believed to only ever happen "once in a lifetime" (fingers crossed), many students are facing non-disclosed struggles, like financial hardship, poor mental health, and illness. Although the act of writing will never be able to completely dissolve these struggles, writing can open doors to connection, not just connecting the writer with people in their immediate community, but the world as a whole. 

Theory

First, it is important to think of writing and well... everything, as being a rhetorical act. That in every action and every written word, whether it is an email or an essay, there is an author, a purpose, and an audience. In their book, Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Linda Alder-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle discuss this idea that writing is a rhetorical and a social act through a series of essays by various theorists, and introduces it as their first threshold concept. The first essay, "Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Activity" by Kevin Roozen, highlights the ways in which writers connect with their audiences, as well as the world around them. 

First, Roozen discusses how writing is “always an attempt to address the needs of an audience,” (Roozen 17). I really like this quote because it reminds us that writing is never in a vacuum and that there is always an intended audience on the other side of the notepad, whether that be a professor when writing an analysis paper, like I was during my freshman year of college, or one’s present or future self when writing a daily entry. When writing, one is always thinking of how they might address their audience, how formal their words should be, and what context is important to include for their audience to better understand the point the writer is trying to make. When writing a diary entry, one typically does not write with slang like one would when texting a friend, or with formalities when writing an email to their boss. Although audiences can often be imaginary, just the practice of imaging the thought processes of another person and determining their needs enforces this idea of connection between oneself and the world around them. 

This idea that writing never occurs in a vacuum is also important when considering the ways in which the act of writing has evolved and how one gains knowledge. Roozen states, “No matter how isolated a writer may seem as she sits at her computer, types on her touchpad of her smartphone, or makes notes on a legal pad, she is always drawing upon the ideas and experiences of countless others,” (Roozen 17). Even if a student is assigned to write an essay detailing their own thoughts regarding an event occurring in the world, how much of the student’s opinions are formed by outside experiences? Probably all of them. Even if the student experienced the event first-hand, the student's opinions would likely still be affected by others’ first-hand experience, as well as outside opinions. 

Practice

While preparing for my own FYC course, I want to ensure that I give students the ability to connect, not just with their own thoughts, but their community as a whole. In order to do this, I would first showcase the ways in which stories connect people throughout the world and through time, as well as highlight the ways they themselves are impacted by stories told. In order to do this, I will likely need to teach students that nothing exists in a vacuum and that the ways in which we ourselves live our lives is likely due to a story we or our community holds. 

In the ENGL 1102 course I am currently shadowing, my mentor has done a great job in showing how writing connects authors and auidences, by not only having students connect with research that impacts their daily lives, but having students create a reesarch project together to show the innerconnectiveness of various fields. I am looking forward to seeing how knowledge and experiences shared between these students will affect their projects, and how their perspectives surrounding knowledge and writing as a social act will change. 

Finally, when teaching my own FYC courses, I would like to implement group discussion as much as possible, to hopefully implement a sense of community within my classroom, as well as to broaden my students’ perspectives, and again show how knowledge and writing are social acts. In a study conducted by Mary K. Stewart, where Stewart analyzed the way in which facilitated debates, held in-person and online via a Google Docs, affected students' perspectives and arguments in larger assignments, Stewart found that the in-person debate "required students to think about the topic from a different vantage point and created a high level of rapport that prompted students to listen to and reflect upon others’ viewpoints." I believe implementing a similar assignment, where I encourage friendly debate and then assign an argumentative paper afterwards, could help students better understand writing as a social act and the ways in which they influence and are influenced by their peers and community.

Works Cited

Roozen, Kevin. "Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Activity." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Alder-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, Utah State University Press, 2015, pp. 17-20. 

Stewart, Mary K. "Cognitive Presence in FYC: Collaborative Learning that Supports Individual Authoring." Composition Forum, vol 38, Spring 2018, https://www.compositionforum.com/issue/38/cognitive.php. 

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