Week 1 Writing Studio: One Change, Two Readers

Part 1 — The Big Picture

Rhetoric is choosing what to say and how to say it for a particular reader, and this Studio is where you do it with your own sentences. You take one change at a community garden, write it for two readers who need different things, check both drafts against a reader checklist, and revise. Then you ask a chatbot for feedback the way a writing coach would give it, act on one point in your own words, and catch the chatbot when it praises without evidence, flattens your voice, or invents something.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: How does one piece of news change when it is written for a fellow volunteer and then for the board that has to approve it, and how can you tell whether each version gives its reader what that reader needs?

Before you begin — hypothesis: Before you draft, finish this sentence: If I write the same change for the board instead of for a fellow volunteer, then my version will need to add or drop ___, because the board ___.

Workshop data: The community garden watering change (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative writing situation written for this Writing Studio and printed in full in Part 4; it describes no real garden, association, or person.

• Rows: 5 facts about one change at a community garden, one per row of the first table
• Readers: 2: a fellow garden volunteer, who gets a text, and the neighborhood association's board, which gets a short note
• Columns: the fact, whether the fellow volunteer needs it, and whether the board needs it

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach

Ways of working

• draft-and-revise-a-paragraph-against-a-rubric
• peer-review-with-a-checklist
• source-integration-and-citation-check

Procedure

1. Read the starting situation in the first table in Part 4, then mark yes or no in each row to show whether the fellow volunteer and the board need that fact. Check: Every one of the 5 rows has a yes or no for each reader, and at least one fact is marked for only one reader.
2. In a word processor, write Version 1, a text to a fellow volunteer, and Version 2, a short note to the board. Use the word count tool to record each version's length in the second table. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: Two separate drafts are on the page, each with its word count recorded, and Version 2 contains the request for approval.
3. Complete the five-questions table for both versions: writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context, plus the exigence. Check: All twelve cells are filled, and the audience and purpose rows differ between the two versions.
4. Trade drafts with a classmate, or reread each draft as its actual reader would, and apply the reader checklist in the third table; mark one fix for each version. Check: Each checklist row has a yes or no for both versions, and one fix is marked for each.
5. Revise Version 2, making at least one revision change before any editing change, and log every change in the change-log table as revision or editing with the reason it serves the board. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: The change log holds at least two changes, at least one labelled revision, and the revised Version 2 differs from the first draft.
6. Paste revised Version 2 into one approved chatbot used as a writing coach and ask for targeted feedback on whether it fits the board, telling it not to rewrite the note; act on one point of its feedback in your own words. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: You have one piece of feedback quoted and one sentence of your own that responds to it.
7. Paste both versions and the prompt in Part 6 into the chatbot, then check its answer against the scripted checks and record what you find in the last table. Tool: A word processor; a citation tool or style guide used critically (the MLA Handbook, the Purdue OWL, or a citation generator whose output is checked against the MLA rules); and one approved chatbot used as a writing coach. Check: The critique table holds at least two quoted chatbot statements, the problem each shows, and your correction, or the marked-up flawed response from the equivalent route.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no word processor is available or a classmate is not available for the peer review.

Draft both versions by hand on paper and count the words by hand, marking every fifth word to keep your place. If no classmate is available, wait an hour after drafting and reread each draft aloud as its actual reader before applying the checklist. Complete every table, analysis question, and the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Start from the facts: decide which ones each reader needs before you write a word.

Student scaffold table 1

Fact about the change	Does the fellow volunteer need it? (yes or no)	Does the board need it? (yes or no)
Watering is moving from the morning shift to the evening shift.
The morning volunteer can no longer come.
The hose key now hangs in the shed's lockbox.
The lockbox code is shared only with volunteers.
The change needs the board's approval before it is posted on the garden gate.

Record each draft's length so you can see how much each reader needed.

Student scaffold table 2

Version	Reader	Word count	First sentence of the draft
Version 1	A fellow volunteer (text)
Version 2	The board (short note)

Answer the five questions for each version so you can name what made the two drafts different.

Student scaffold table 3

Question	Version 1: text to a fellow volunteer	Version 2: note to the board
Writer
Audience
Purpose
Genre
Context
Exigence

Read each draft as its reader would and check it against this list before you revise.

Student scaffold table 4

Reader checklist	Version 1 (yes or no)	Version 2 (yes or no)
The reader can tell from the first sentence what changed.
Every fact this reader needs is present.
No fact this reader does not need is present.
The tone fits this reader.
The next step or request is clear.
One fix I marked

Log every change you make to Version 2 so the difference between revision and editing stays visible.

Student scaffold table 5

Change I made	Revision or editing	Why it serves the board

Record what the chatbot said, what problem it shows, and your correction, so the critique rests on quoted evidence.

Student scaffold table 6

What the chatbot said (quoted)	Problem it shows	My correction

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Using your word counts, how many more words does Version 2 use than Version 1? Show the subtraction, and name the fact or request that accounts for most of the difference.
2. Which facts from the first table did you include for one reader and leave out for the other? List them and say which reader got each.
3. Using two of the five questions, explain why Version 2 needed something Version 1 could leave out, and point to the sentence in Version 2 that supplies it.
4. Look at your change log. Which changes were revision and which were editing, and why did you make the revision change first? Name one moment where drafting sent you back to an earlier stage of the writing process, or say why it did not.
5. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences. (a) What could the five questions and the reader checklist miss about a real reader, and how would you find out? (b) Where did your reviewer's reading, or your reread as the reader, differ from what you meant, and what does that show about writing for a reader you cannot see?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my two versions of a community garden message above. Version 1 is a text to a fellow garden volunteer, and Version 2 is a short note to the neighborhood association's board, which approves schedule changes before they are posted on the garden gate. Please do five things. First, tell me how well each version fits its reader. Second, improve both versions. Third, analyze the rhetorical situation of Version 2: its writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context. Fourth, check my grammar and fix any errors. Fifth, as a stretch request for later in the course, give me one quotation from a famous writer about writing for an audience, one source I could cite about audience, and a works-cited entry in MLA style for Lloyd Bitzer's essay on the rhetorical situation.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often open with praise such as 'Great job, both versions are clear and effective!' without pointing to a single sentence or saying which reader each choice serves.
• Asked to improve both versions, chatbots often turn the casual text to a fellow volunteer into a formal note ('Dear fellow volunteer, I am writing to inform you of a schedule change'), erasing the writer's voice and the text's fit with its reader.
• Asked to analyze the rhetorical situation of Version 2, chatbots often retell what the note says (watering moves to the evening, the key is in the lockbox) and call that an analysis.
• Chatbots sometimes 'fix' a correct sentence into an error, for example changing 'The key's in the lockbox' to 'The keys in the lockbox', which drops the verb and changes one key into several.
• Asked for a quotation, chatbots often supply a polished line about audience and credit it to a famous writer, with no work, page, or link where it can be found.
• Chatbots often name a study or a report about audience, sometimes with a plausible title and year, that cannot be found anywhere.
• Chatbots often present a confident works-cited entry for Bitzer's essay that drops the volume, issue, or page range, or changes the journal's name, and call it correct MLA.

In 3–5 sentences, quote two things the chatbot said, name the problem each one shows, and write your correction; then name one thing the chatbot got right and the sentence of yours it was about.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this Writing Studio. Instead of the chatbot steps, do two things. First, for the coach step, reread revised Version 2 aloud as the board would and write one question the board would still ask; then answer it with one change in your own words. Second, critique this flawed response, printed here in full: "Great job! Both versions are clear and effective. Here is an improved Version 1: Dear fellow volunteer, I am writing to inform you that the watering schedule has been changed. Analysis of Version 2: the note says watering is moving to the evening and the key is in the lockbox. Grammar fix: I changed 'The key's in the lockbox' to 'The keys in the lockbox.' As a famous novelist once said, 'Every reader is a stranger until the second draft.' A recent study by a writing institute found that formal notes get answered three times as often. MLA entry: Bitzer, Lloyd. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1968." Mark it up: quote each flawed sentence, name what is wrong (hollow praise, a voice-erasing formal rewrite, a summary passed off as analysis, a correction that adds an error, an unverified quotation, an unverified source, or a works-cited entry missing the essay's volume, number, and pages and changing the journal's name), cite the evidence from your drafts or Chapter 1, and write a corrected sentence beneath it; for the quotation, the source, and the entry, say which later week of the course checks them. This route assesses the same objective (Objective 1 — analyze the rhetorical situation — writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context — and approach writing as a recursive process of invention, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection, distinguishing revision (re-seeing ideas and structure) from editing (sentences and surface)) as the chatbot steps, takes comparable effort (about 30 minutes and 200–300 words), is scored by the same scoring criteria for the same credit, and its own submission artifact is the marked-up flawed response with your coach-step question and change, posted in place of the chatbot share link and report.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• Both drafts and the revised Version 2
• All six completed tables
• Written answers to the five analysis questions
• The coach feedback you acted on, quoted, with your response in your own words
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed response

Deliverable:

A short Writing Studio packet on one change at a community garden: two drafts for two readers and a revised Version 2, six completed tables (the facts each reader needs, the word counts, the five questions, the reader checklist, the change log, and the critique), written answers to five analysis questions, the coach feedback you acted on in your own words, and a critique of a chatbot's response, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed response. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose a written, recorded, or visual form for your answers; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Two versions for two readers	Both drafts give each reader the facts that reader needs and leave out what that reader does not, with tone and form matched to a fellow volunteer and to the board, and the hypothesis sentence is completed before drafting.	Both drafts exist, but one gives its reader a fact it does not need or leaves out one it does, or the tone does not fit the reader.	Only one draft, or two drafts that do not differ for their readers.
The five questions applied	The five-questions table is complete for both versions with a correct exigence, and analysis questions 1 to 3 tie specific answers to specific sentences in the drafts.	The table is mostly complete, but audience and purpose are blurred, the exigence is missing, or the answers are not tied to sentences.	The five-questions table is missing or does not describe these two readers.
Review applied and revision made	The checklist is applied to both versions with one fix marked for each, the change log labels every change correctly as revision or editing, a revision change comes first, and analysis question 4 explains why.	The checklist or change log is incomplete, a change is mislabelled, or only editing changes were made.	No checklist, no change log, or no difference between the first and revised Version 2.
Coach feedback acted on in your own words	One piece of coach feedback is quoted and answered with a change written in the student's own words that serves the board.	Feedback is quoted, but the response copies the chatbot's wording or does not change the draft.	No coach feedback appears, or the chatbot's rewrite is submitted as the revision.
Critique of the chatbot or of the printed flawed response	On either route, at least two problems are quoted and corrected with evidence from the drafts or Chapter 1, any quotation, source, or citation is marked unverified, and one correct point is acknowledged; both routes earn this band equally.	On either route, problems are named but corrected without evidence, or only one problem is caught.	No critique appears, or pasted output is submitted without any checking.
Reflection on writing for a reader	The chosen reflection option is answered in 3–4 sentences that name a specific limit of planning for an imagined reader and a way to check it.	The reflection is answered but stays general, with no specific limit or check.	No reflection appears.

Quality Gate

• Both drafts and every revision are your own words; no sentence is pasted from a chatbot.
• Every fact in the two versions comes from the first table; nothing about the garden, the board, or the schedule is invented.
• The change log labels each change revision or editing, and at least one revision change comes before any editing change.
• No quotation, source, study, or citation appears in your work unless you found and checked it yourself; the chatbot's are marked unverified.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed response and corrects at least two problems with evidence from your drafts or Chapter 1.