writer's workshops

english 100

Writing Workshops are feedback sessions in which you share a draft with another reader and they offer their responses to it as readers. We will engage in many peer review sessions, and you will be expected to engage deeply with each and every one of those as both a writer and a reader. You should also expect to contribute as enthusiastically, knowledgeably, diplomatically, and productively as possible to any and all class, pair, and writing group discussions. In order to do so, you must also be prepared for each and every meeting of both class and your official writing group. In short, all interactive activities assigned and carried out in class and in your writing group will be considered “participation.” Please do not be fooled into thinking that this is a “gimme” grade. It is possible for a student to be here every day and still do very poorly in this category. Keep up with your readings, your writing assignments, and everything else necessary to be a trusted and reliable member of each writing community of which you are a part this term (certainly those related to English 100).

The “togetherness” and “group” aspects of your English 100 Writing Group and the multiple Peer Review sessions you will have in your English 100 Class are very important to what we do because we believe that when done “right” and “well” reading and writing are intensely demanding physical, intellectual, and—above all—social activities. The act of reading and writing will demand the physical, intellectual, and social attention of any literate being, but in academic contexts it is the intensity of that attention—that conversation—that sets the strong readers and writers apart from less effective ones. Talking about what we write before we actually write it, while we are writing it, after we write it, and at every stage in-between stimulates the conversation that is a natural and integral part of any effective and flexible reading and writing process.

Your Writing Group will focus almost exclusively on this sort of productive dialogue about writing. Your English 100 Class will also have do much work of this sort (vi group discussions, group presentations, peer review sessions before turning in each writing assignment, etc).

Even when I sit alone in a room at midnight banging away at the keyboard, writing is still “conversation.” I am speaking to the readers who may eventually read what I am writing, and I am speaking back to the people I have read and otherwise conversed with before I sat down to start writing. Since I am not speaking to my readers directly and watching their reactions to my words and ideas, I must simply imagine how they may respond to me. I can’t really know. I just have to guess.

But when you get together with other writers and engage in productive dialogue with them about writing, you help each member help themselves (and help yourself in the process). That’s what your Writing Group and your peer review sessions (in class) are about.

Your tutor and your instructor will help foster and support these productive relationships among writers, and it is these relationships that will promote and sustain productive dialogue about writing. When writers actually speak with other writers about what they are writing and their reactions to what they are writing, these writers make this “written conversation” real to them in ways that better enable them to develop prose likely to be heard, understood, and taken seriously within a given context.

Anything you write is actually a conversation that occurs in a particular place among human beings who have had previous experiences that shape how they will engage with and in this “conversation.” Effective writers build productive relationships among participants in this “conversation” by reflecting on those previous experiences and engaging with, reflecting upon, predicting and, perhaps, imagining the previous experiences and values of the others who may be involved in these conversations.

In your Writing Group, your class, and, as much as possible, elsewhere else, we will talk about ideas not rules, concepts not grammar. Your tutors and your instructor will share our responses to a given text as a reader with certain expectations and experiences that are neither right nor wrong but are contextually-bound. That is, we know something about how writers write for many of the college-level courses in which you are enrolled, but we are simply a handful of many informed readers you can expect to learn from in your Writing Group and your Peer Review sessions. Thus, we will also expect the other writers in your group to help by offering their informed readings of the essays you create.

Neither your tutor nor your classmates is here to “judge” or “grade” the writing you are doing in your other courses. We are here to support that writing by responding to it as readers and sharing our experiences as writers. We won’t share our responses to a text as an evaluator with the “right” answers and the authority to judge the worth of a given text in order to make you write “correctly.” We are here to help you help yourself by treating you as a real writer with important ideas worthy of being heard, understood, and taken seriously.

Your tutor and your English 100 instructor will do everything we can to establish and maintain productive relationships among the members of this Writing Group and your English 100 course. All of us must work together, however, to leave room for original ideas, risk-taking behavior, and inquiry. For this reason among many others, we must be able to depend on you to do everything you can to contribute to an ongoing, productive dialogue about writing by consistently coming to each meeting on time, completely prepared, and ready to work hard for the other members of your group.

The success of this group depends on each of us.

Together, we will read and respond to each other through the work we produce, and we will do what we can to reflect upon these experiences as readers and writers in order to gain greater awareness and, therefore, flexibility as literate individuals in a variety of contexts.

The final project in your Writing Group will be a formal essay in which you describe who you are as a writer and how your work with this Writing Group has influenced the ways you approach and negotiate specific writing activities.

Since so much of your time in here will be devoted to facilitating a greater awareness of your writing self, it seems appropriate to begin with a discussion of how you currently see yourself as a writer.

How would you complete the following sentences?

Before today, my writing has been . . .
Writing makes me feel . . . .
As a writer, I am . . . .
I like to write . . . .
My greatest concern as a writer is . . . .
The best writing experience I ever had was when . . . .
The worst writing experience I ever had was when . . .
I hope English 100 will teach me . . . .