Unit 1 Statement of Goals and Choices

At least 1.5-2 pages

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Rhetorical situation: a communication event in which the author/speaker attempts to communicate some
message to an audience for a specific purpose and within a specific context.
Rhetorical choices/strategies: The rhetorical methods an author uses to construct a text, develop ideas,
and persuade an audience.
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It will be your responsibility to describe, evaluate and share with your reader the purposes and
potentials of your work. This document will explain how, why and under what conditions you made
your rhetorical choices (regarding diction, style, content, audience, purpose, context, etc.). You will
track the moves you make in your writing process, weighing whether this choice afforded or
constrained you as a writer/composer. The goal of this task is to make you a stronger rhetorician by
describing and sharing what you recognize to be problems in your work and (potential) remedies.
Think of this as writing about your writing.
A smart approach for drafting is to keep a writing log* that charts your plans for writing
sessions, your writing process,, moments of success or failure, how you work through revisions, or
even decisions regarding language and style.

For your final draft ( due Tues 2/21), you will want to address the following questions in detail (looking
back to your drafts/writing process to inform your thinking):

1.) A statement of what, specifically, the piece is trying to accomplish beyond, of course, simply telling
a good literacy narrative. What work are you doing here? How is your narrative unique to your
experience and the way you understand the world? What argument about your experience are you
attempting to make? To this end, you will list/describe the goals or purposes you imagined for this
piece.
2.) A list of the specific rhetorical choices you made as a writer in service of your goals. Attend also to
choices that needed to be made when you opted to work with certain genres (e.g. poetry, letter, or
diary). Note: this should be the longest section of your response as the piece should be comprised of all the
specific rhetorical choices made in support of your goals.
3.) An explanation of why you ended up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you have thought
of. Refer here to any/all ideas you came up with during conference, peer reviews, or drafting. Feel free
to share difficulties and successes as well.

*A few recommendations to consider:

Revisit earlier journals or free writes. What goals or purposes did you define? How are they being realized
(or are they shifting) as you draft?
What do you plan on doing in upcoming writing sessions consider making a To Do list.
Depict your writing process (First I did this, then this, then talked to this person a la Anne Lamott or
maybe utilize process sketches like Lynda Barry)
Take the time to reflect on particular moments as you draft (e.g. the decision to use this word over
that). Will you keep this moment or toss it as you edit why? What are these moments achieving for you as
a writer? What do you hope they achieve for your intended reader?
Keep track of what/when you are feeling particularly successful/struggling with.