cac.ophony.org

Here’s more from the CUNY WAC/WID handbook. Useful stuff I hope. Please feel free to comment on any of these definitions. Parts II and III are forthcoming.

Common WAC/WID Terminology (Part I)

Audience
This term is used to define those for whom a piece of writing is intended. The identity of the audience shapes the writing, as writers adapt their tone and content to the situation. It is especially important to keep in mind the difference in audiences implied by discipline (the audience for a lab report, for example, is different than that for a performance review).

Essay
In the classical sense, an essay is a text in which the first-person singular comments upon—questioning, debating, arguing about—a subject. Although “essay” is often used interchangeably with “paper,” the term properly refers to a type of writing that blended the personal with the academic. As a verb, “essay” means an initial, and sometimes tentative, attempt—a “try.”

Expressive, Transactional, Poetic Uses of Language
Britton and his team developed a framework for classifying school writing, based on sociolinguistic theories of the functions of language (drawn primarily from the work of linguist Roman Jacobson). They were concerned that most school writing was written to the “teacher-as-examiner” and that students were not encouraged to try out the whole linguistic keyboard. The three categories of language function, according to Britton in Development of Writing Abilities, are:

1) expressive—writing that is “close to the self,” representing the “ebb and flow” of a writer’s thoughts and feelings.
2) transactional—“language to ‘get things done’ or participate in the world’s affairs . . . to inform, persuade, or instruct.”
3) poetic—“writing as a verbal construct, a patterned verbalization [poem, story, song, etc.] of the writer’s feelings and ideas.”

Error
Error is closely connected to the study of grammar, basic writing, and ESL. Error analysis is a technique for identifying possible underlying causes of mistakes in sentence structure, verb form, etc. The identification of recurring “patterns of error” in a writer’s text is a widely used pedagogical tool to reduce a seemingly large number of errors to a handful of teachable categories of error (subject-verb agreement, possessives, etc.).

Freewriting
Freewriting is an informal writing activity in which students write “freely” without concern for grammar, punctuation, and other constraints. Freewriting is often considered a staple in composition pedagogy: typically, students are directed to write in class without stopping for a set period of time (usually just a few minutes). An instructor may specify a topic or leave it entirely up to the students. What is done with the writing varies widely: the texts may be read out in class to prompt discussion, or used as a source of ideas for another writing assignment, or not used directly by the instructor at all.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
Grammar is the study of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences; the system of rules inherent in any language (from the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Ed). Grammar is structure, form, syntax; by the time children are four or five, they’ve “got” the structure of the language they hear all around them. Grammar needs to be distinguished from usage and mechanics. Usage refers to the way in which language is conventionally applied within the culture and reflects an awareness of one’s audience. Voice and word choice, for instance, will depend upon the formality/ informality of the writing situation and may derive from disciplinary standards as prescribed by particular style guides as MLA, APA, or the Chicago Manual of Style. Mechanics include the technical aspects of writing, such as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.