Week 1 — Readings & Resources

Your primary reading is Chapter 1 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 83–95 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (20–21 min total)

• The Writing Process (Rhetoric & Composition) — Study Hall
• The difference between Revising vs Editing — Smekens Education
• Sending Email to Faculty and Administrators — Writing Center Quick Guides

① Same news, different readers

Chapter 1, Section “One message, three readers: choose words for the person reading” · Session 1, Segment 1, “One message, three readers” · Remember: the reader decides what a message has to contain, so the same news needs different words for different readers.

• Sending Email to Faculty and Administrators — Writing Center Quick Guides — a short guide to the conventions readers expect in a professional email, from the subject line to the closing; compare its advice with the email to the club leader in the food-drive message set while you work through the Week-1 module overview. (reading, 3–4 min)
• Get to Know Your Audience (Rhetoric & Composition) — Study Hall — why the tone and style of a message shift with the reader, whether that reader is a friend, a boss, or a professor; listen for the moments that match the audience question of the five. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)

② Five questions, and the push to write

Chapter 1, Section “The rhetorical situation: ask five questions before you write” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The five questions and the exigence” · Remember: writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context are the five questions, and the exigence is the need that starts the writing.

• Rhetoric — Writing Center Quick Guides — read the opening and the section on the rhetorical situation, which treats audience, purpose, and writer as its main factors; stop when it turns to analyzing someone else's text, because Week 2 takes up reading other writers critically. (reading, 4–6 min)
• Lloyd Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation Explained (Exigence, Audience, Constraints) — Reclaiming Rhetoric — a longer walk through the essay that gave the exigence its name and its three parts, exigence, audience, and constraints; notice how those three line up with the course's five questions. (video, 11 min) (captions: automatic)

③ From blank page to draft: the stages and the starting tools

Chapter 1, Section “The writing process: loop through five stages” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The writing process, with loops” · Remember: the writing process has five stages, and writers loop back to an earlier stage whenever the work needs it.

• The Writing Process (Rhetoric & Composition) — Study Hall — a clear tour of the steps a writer moves through; it names planning as its own step and leaves out reflection, so map its steps onto the course's five stages as you watch. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
• The Writing Process: A Step by Step Guide to Academic Writing — Tech meets Rhet: English Composition Resources — a short, practical run through the process for an academic essay, aimed at anyone who has ever started the night before; a quick second view of the same stages. (video, 5 min) (captions: creator)
• Brainstorming — Writing Center Tips & Tools — a long handout of ways to get ideas moving, including freewriting, listing, and the journalists' questions the course calls the reporter's questions; skim for the two tools you will try first. (reading, 15–20 min)

④ Revision versus editing

Chapter 1, Section “Revision versus editing: re-see first, then polish” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Revision versus editing” · Remember: revision re-sees ideas, focus, and structure, while editing polishes sentences and surface, and the big pass comes first.

• Revising Drafts — Writing Center Tips & Tools — why revision means seeing a draft again and how to do it; this handout files editing under revision, while this course keeps them as two separate passes with revision first. (reading, 10–13 min)
• The difference between Revising vs Editing — Smekens Education — a short explanation of why revising and editing are separate steps with separate jobs, made for teachers but clear for any writer. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
• Revising and Editing — Mometrix Academy — a quick contrast of the two processes with tips for each; check its definitions against the chapter's wording for revision and editing. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

• Elements of Rhetorical Situations — Online Writing Lab (OWL) — a one-page reference list of the elements of a rhetorical situation; it names text, author, audience, purposes, and setting, which overlap the course's five questions, so read the list and skip the menus around it. (reading, 2–3 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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