VOLUME 1
Volume 1 of Writing Spaces marks what Robert E. Cummings calls a shift “toward a collaborative and responsive textbook publishing model” (p. xiv). Composed of seventeen essays—covering topics from defining the rhetorical situation(s) of academic writing and strategies of invention to writing processes and argumentation—this volume begins with Cummings’ introductory essay inviting students to join teachers in re-imagining composition textbooks as guides to developing a keen and nuanced awareness of joining the conversations (or parlors) of college-level writing. While each of the chapters offers advice about individual elements of academic writing, three particularly interesting chapters help contextualize first-year composition courses, and academic writing (assignments) in general, for students.
The second essay in this collection, “What Is Academic Writing?” by L. Lennie Irvin, outlines general expectations of academic writing across the disciplines while simultaneously debunking some of the common myths of composition held by novice writers, including the view of writing as a product-oriented practice, the idea of perfect first drafts, and the misleading correlation between “good grammar” and “good writing.” After formulating academic essays as a mix between argument—defined as a conversation geared at gaining a better understanding of a topic rather than dismissing other possible perspectives concerning a topic—and analysis, Irvin describes and explains three common types academic writing assignments (closed, semi-open, open) before moving on to conventional characteristics of academic essays. As an introduction to academic writing, this essay familiarizes students with the expectations of academic writing.
Corrine E. Hinton’s essay, “So You’ve Got a Writing Assignment. Now What?,” describes and defines the kind of writing assignments that students are likely to encounter during their college careers in a way that can set them at ease. It first offers a set of guidelines that students can use to interpret the expectations of writing assignments across disciplines, even identifying keywords that can help students clearly understand the instructors’ directive verbs. For example, Hinton offers two sample assignments from philosophy and business that start students’ path to rhetorically analyzing writing assignments before beginning to write. Each of the guidelines help students to consider assignments as individual and recursive rhetorical situations, and can even help facilitate discussions of rhetorical concepts and methods (rhetorical situation; analysis) as they are applied to academic writing conventions.
Presenting students with a way of understanding argument/ation, Rebecca Jones’ “Finding the Good Argument OR Why Bother With Logic?” defines key components of academic argument conventions that move beyond George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s war metaphor and Toulmin’s model. Jones rethinks argument as “a [collaborative] dance” (p. 157) to open a space for civil democratic dialogue/deliberation. While addressing key concepts of rhetorical knowledge (reasoning, appeals, parts of argument), Jones also presents students with a third approach to argument (beyond pro and con) that exceeds adherence to a single perspective; rather, Jones effectively positions argument as an exercise in the civic discourses of a democratic citizenry, and one that students can begin engaging with via the activities she interweaves throughout each of the sections detailing the academic argumentation models above. In addition to these activities, and especially for teachers who prefer to offer students specific guidelines, Jones lists ten “rules” for conventional academic arguments that can help students conceptualize the goal of academic argument as a practice in honestly and fairly addressing topics rather than the more common reactionary forms of argument that often pervade the public/civic sphere.
All in all, Volume 1 offers open source essays aware of their audiences and the contexts in which students are learning and writing. This first volume does indeed present what Cummings calls a shift in textbook publishing, and it is a shift that takes into account the contexts of writing. And this shift is one that addresses students directly, responding to specific changes in expectations of writing in professional contexts.