Week 1 — The Writing Process & the Rhetorical Situation

Why this matters

Texting a coworker to swap a shift, writing a care note a colleague must act on, and asking a landlord to fix a leak all turn on who is reading and why.

In plain language

Writing well starts with a question most people skip: who is going to read this, and what do I need them to do? This week you learn to answer that question on purpose, using the rhetorical situation (the five things every message answers to: writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context). You also learn that good writing is built in stages, the writing process (invention, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection), and that writers loop back through those stages rather than marching through them once. Last, you learn the difference between revision (re-seeing what a draft says and how it is built) and editing (fixing its sentences and surface). That one difference will matter in every piece of writing you do in this course.

• This week: what rhetoric is, the five questions of the rhetorical situation, the running draft's first stage, the writing process, revision versus editing, and the tools for getting started.
• How they connect: this chapter is the foundation, so there is no earlier week to lean on; every later week asks the five questions and works through the same five stages.
• Where we're going next: Week 2, Critical Reading: Summary & Response, turns the five questions on someone else's text, so you can say fairly what a writer claims before you say what you think.

Focus

Who is reading, and what do they need? Five questions and five looping stages help you answer.

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] rewrite one message for a different reader
• [ ] analyze a writing situation with the five questions
• [ ] sort a draft change as revision or editing

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 1 (about 35 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Do the tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Writing Studio (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: rewrite one short message for a second reader and say which two of the five questions changed it.

You've got this

Ask your instructor if a step snags.

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