University of Idaho Exploring the Impact of Environment on Writing Essay

You are a writer. What kind of writer are you? For your final project in this course, you will conduct a Self-Study of your own written work in order to discover who you are as a writer. Your final project will require you to make decisions as a writer using all of the concepts, thinking, skills, and knowledge you’ve gained throughout the entirety of this course.

This project will require you to conduct a Self-Study of your writing. It is reflective, analytical, and open genre (meaning, you can use any form you wish to communicate your findings, insights, etc.) As part of the process, you will submit drafts to your instructor and your peers.

Assignment: Writing on Location

You will conduct a series of THREE 20-minute journal entries in THREE different locations (of your choice) to make discoveries about the effect of the environment on your writing.

You will conduct an analysis of all three journal entries to reflect on:

• The rhetorical choices (strategies and appeals) you made based on each PLACE (rhetorical situation – purpose, audience, context.)
• How your unique personality shines through in your written artifacts (your “writing identity”) and how PLACE influences this.
• How your STRENGTHS present themselves in each written artifact.
• What these insights say about YOU as a WRITER.

Instructions

Use of Evidence

You’ll need to include AMPLE EVIDENCE from all of your textual artifacts you use in this study. (Your own written artifacts ARE your sources!)

This means you must integrate direct quotes (in addition to summary & reflection) from your textual artifacts into your project to help orient your reader as well as to make your message more impactful because it will help the reader to see the ideas and points that you reference

• Include all artifacts in an APPENDIX at the end of your project.

Remember that this project aims to PAINT a picture for the reader, so you will need to use ample descriptive words, details, imagery, etc. Bring your writing to life!

Structure and Organization

• Provide a title that reflects the insights you gained as part of this project (nothing like “Self-Study Project.”)
• Provide an introduction that provides background about you as a writer, context of the Self-Study, and provides a thesis statement that states the major finding(s) from your written artifacts. (Don’t forget the hook!)
• In the body of your project, demonstrate how the rhetorical situation (purpose, audience, context) influenced the choices, strategies, and “moves” you made as a writer.
  • Make sure you provide a bit of context about each artifact to offer clarity for the reader.
• Illustrate how your personality/writing identity (your style, voice, tone, etc.) shines through in the artifacts you selected.
• Detail the similarities, patterns, commonalities that you found across your artifacts. What do these things say about you as a writer?
• As part of this project, you should also reflect on the insights gained about yourself as a writer from completing the Self-Study Project.
• You will offer some kind of closing that provides a take-away message/insight to the reader.