A CHAT-based perspective on rhetorical activity helps us to revise our thinking about what it means to do experimental writing (which at its worst is considered to be the fun, silly stuff that weird writing teachers let their students do instead of being serious). If we define experimental more as "investigating the unknown" or "testing a principle," then we are better able to see how experimental writing is inherently rigorous. One of the most rigorous of potential writing activities is to test hypotheses about how texts work and what people do with them. This brings me to item five:

Item Five:
Students should be given the opportunity to test their writing in various ways in public situations, and to incorporate into their work for the course observations about the life of the text as it moves into the world.

  18