For this assignment, you are asked to write a reflection letter to your professor. In this letter, you should articulate the relationship between grant proposals as a genre of writing and elements of persuasion as they may play out in grant proposals. You are also asked to reflect on your own development as a writer, given the experience you now have with grant writing, argumentation, and persuasive writing. There are two elements of persuasion you should consider: both what one says in a grant proposal and how one might use language or other symbols to create an impression. To provide contrast, you should also compare the genre of grant proposal to the genre of professional writing you analyzed in Topic 1 of English 245.
Background: An important aspect of any expert’s development is the ability to think conceptually about tasks and knowledge while applying and adapting the same to different contexts (Beaufort, 2007). This course has introduced you to conceptual thinking about writing that you may not have encountered before (and some that you may have). Discussions and assignments about genre, argument, and persuasion have provided you with a conceptual basis for thinking not only about grant writing, but other types of writing as well. And understanding your own thinking about these concepts and how you have deployed them in particular circumstances will help you use and adapt them elsewhere. In other words, it will increase your expertise as a writer.
After reviewing your previous work in this course, your task is to write a metacognitive reflection of 1,500 words that takes into account the following questions. Use examples from your own writing, as well as theories of writing covered in this course, to develop your reflection.
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May 23, 3:34 AM
After reviewing your previous work in this course, your task is to write a metacognitive reflection of 1,500 words that takes into account the following questions. Use examples from your own writing, as well as theories of writing covered in this course, to develop your reflection.
Given your experience with grant writing in this course, to what extent do you understand skills from this course better than you did before? How well do you think you can use skills like the stasis theory to write a grant proposal? Which strategies you have known from previous writing courses were helpful for writing your grant proposal? Which were not?
What affordances and constraints do you anticipate if you write a grant in the future? How will those affordances and constraints differ from those you encountered in the classroom? What are some different approaches you might use to complete a full grant project, and what skills might you still need to develop as you pursue those approaches?
How might some of your new skills be adapted to another type of writing you have done (or anticipate doing)?
Resources to use:
● Mikhail Bakhtin’s definition of genre
● Berkencotter & Huckin for more about genre
● The stasis theory (Fahnestock & Secor, 1983) for help with strategies of argumentation that can be applied to grant proposals
● Theories of language use: Kenneth Burke’s concept of “terministic screens” and Perelman’s concept of “presence”
● Examples of the types of writing you analyze
● Use additional resources as needed.
Total Length: 1,500 words
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