Final Document
Purpose
All of you will have to be literate in your fields of study. But what does this mean? How does being literate separate you from those who have been labeled illiterate? Does being literate mean that you are literate in all contexts? Those of you majoring in the humanities (or arts and letters) will mostly be working with print based literacies–a modality that often gets associated with "literacy." But is this the only type of literacy?
After you read about others' perspectives on literacy, you will want to define what "literacy" means to you and develop an understanding of literate practices in a specific context, especially one that is relevant to your personal or professional life .
This assignment will be both the goal and the culmination of your research throughout the semester. With this assignment you will have the opportunity to understand what it means to produce informed documents for a specific context. You will also have the opportunity to develop a meta-awareness of literacy practices in a relevant context.
Instructions–Prewriting
To begin this project you will want to...
Choose a context/practice/problem Think about a context in which literacy occurs and focus on one that you are particularly interested in. Some of these contexts may include, but are not limited to...
- a K-12 context
- an institution of higher education (e.g., TCC, ODU)
- your job site
- your church
- your community
- a community center
- a local literacy center
- an organization
What type of problems related to literacy can you identify at this site? For example...
- Is there a need for people to teach a literacy practice?
- Is there a need for people to learn a literacy practice?
- Is there a need for ascertain literacy practice to be recognized as a literacy practice?
- Is there a particular literacy practice that most people ignore or struggle with in this particular context?
- How is literacy viewed, valued, defined, by a specific group of people?
Choose a specific context (one that you have access to) and a problem that you want to work on solving. It is important for you to choose a context and problem that will sustain your interest for the semester; you will not have the opportunity to change your inquiry after you submit your proposal.
Do preliminary work Throughout the course of the semester, you will be doing a lot of preliminary work–research and prewriting–for this project. All of the previous assignments, the Progressive Annotated Bibliography, the Project Proposal, the field research (the Research Plan and the Data Analysis), and the Genre and Audience Analysis have been designed to help you write an informed document.
Instructions–Writing
As you learn more about the literacy context and practices that you are studying, you will begin to understand what audience you want to write for and, likewise, the most appropriate type of document for addressing this audience. As a result, not all of you will be composing the same type of document. Although you are able to choose the document that you will write, the instructor reserves the right to set parameters for your project. These parameters, of course, will be decided by a process of negotiation.
When writing this document, you will want to use the knowledge that you now have to prompt your audience to a course of action or to reconsider how they understand literacy (especially in a specific context). Due to the nature of the documents that some of you will choose to write or the audiences that you are writing to, some of you will not be reporting your research within your documents. However, all of you will want to use your research to inform what and how you compose what you articulate in your document.
If you have questions about making these decisions, please consult the instructor.
Instructions– Portfolio
You will need to revise this document for the portfolio. As you revise, consider the suggestions that the instructor and peers (if applicable) have provided. You will also reflect upon what you actually did; in your Rhetorical Statement, you will explain both what you did differently and why you made these variations.
Criteria
The first draft of the Final Document is due April 14, 2005.
A revised copy of the Project Proposal is due with the Portfolio on April 26, 2005.
The first draft will be evaluated as part of your participation grade and will receive three grades for content (how informed is the document), rhetorical effectiveness (how well does the document appeal to a specific audience), and convention. The final submission will be part of the portfolio grade.
In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...
- a sense of audience–will your audience understand the proposed action? will your audience be able to clearly see the connections between proposed action and any other information that you offer? is the proposed action viable?
- addressing your chosen audience appropriately
- choosing the appropriate genre and effectively fulfilling the expectations of this genre
- an understanding of literacy, especially in this context
- an appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting (if applicable)
last.updated 01.11.05