Academic Writing

1. (Rhetorical Thinking) situate themselves within a particular discourse community, use the affordances of a particular genre, and frame their writing according to the practices of relevant audiences, contexts, and purposes;

2. (Organization and Structure) introduce and frame an academic conversation, develop an effective idea path, a line of reasoning that provides coherence to help the intended audience track the ideas, claims, evidence, and justifications throughout a text;

3. (Source Engagement) locate, evaluate, and contextualize primary and/or secondary research materials into their writing and analyze, synthesize, and engage fairly and accurately with source material and their own ideas;

4. (Knowledge of Conventions) use a range of linguistic structures (e.g., grammar, punctuation, word choice) and/or non-linguistic structures (e.g., multimodal composition) to meet the expectations, including documentation conventions and citation practices, of particular discourse communities; and

5. (Reflection) describe their writing process and articulate the extent to which the product of their writing is a result of the process they engaged in and/or identify their role as writers within a particular historical, socio-cultural context.

1. (Rhetorical Thinking) situate themselves within a particular discourse community, use the affordances of a particular genre, and frame their writing according to the practices of relevant audiences, contexts, and purposes;

The artifact that I have chosen to upload that fits the Rhetorical Thinking Criteria is called Alexie Rodriguez Research Narrative. This document was part of multiple different pieces that I wrote and organized into one document. The Rhetorical Thinking required fulfillment is presented in this piece regarding later start times. I was a student who was also deprived of sleep and felt that this was a community made up of students that are consequently not heard or justified by school administrators. The genre that I have used to persuade my viewpoint is a research narrative using primary and secondary research. In addition, because I feel sometimes it is easier to get a message across with humor, I wrote a poem entitled Alexie Rodriguez Poem which I feel was more effective in the socio-cultural context because while there are many different forms of writing, papers have the history of occasionally boring people because of their length.

2. (Organization and Structure) introduce and frame an academic conversation, develop an effective idea path, a line of reasoning that provides coherence to help the intended audience track the ideas, claims, evidence, and justifications throughout a text;

In the very early stage of this assignment, I was asked to think of a subject that we would like to research. I wound up coming up with this declarative statement deciding if students should have a later start time and if it was truly beneficial to them. Next, I started my preliminary research on the subject from primary and secondary sources, and then I progressed to videos and podcasts. As I went through the research, I only found more and more articles to back up my initial thought. While not only showing this evidence through data and other forms of publications, this then allowed me to structurally form my thoughts in a clear, concise and persuasive manner to educate and inform the intended audience—school administrators, board members, principals, educators, legislators as well as students.

3. (Source Engagement) locate, evaluate, and contextualize primary and/or secondary research materials into their writing and analyze, synthesize, and engage fairly and accurately with the source material and their own ideas;

In my artifact that I have uploaded titled Research Narrative, is my paper written about how beneficial it is for students to have a later start time in order to give them more sleep. In order to back up my persuasive statement, in which I side with the scientific data stating that kids should have a later start time in the morning in order to make them more productive, I have indicated at the bottom of my research paper, a works cited list. This list contains all the sources I used including a TED Talk, newspapers, authoritative magazines, and a radio news podcast in order to persuade people through legitimate sources and try to have them side with me.

4. (Knowledge of Conventions) use a range of linguistic structures (e.g., grammar, punctuation, word choice) and/or non-linguistic structures (e.g., multimodal composition) to meet the expectations, including documentation conventions and citation practices, of particular discourse communities; and

The artifact that I have chosen to upload that fits the Knowledge of Conventions Criteria is called Alexie Rodriguez Final Writing Portfolio, in this document, are multiple different pieces that I wrote and organized into one document. The Knowledge of Conventions’ required fulfillment is presented on pages 2-6. In my research narrative, I felt that knowledge of conventions was specifically mentioned in this portion of the document because the multimodal composition that I refer to is a very important and informative TED talk video on why it is beneficial for teenagers to have a later start time in school. The TED talk video is then alluded to and is the primary discussion of my initial research narrative. I not only felt that it was beneficial to address a later start time, but also provide a video to back up my stance and argument regarding a later start time. In the TED Talk video, a mother states how schools are ignoring scientific data when it comes to establishing amongst teachers and students the time in which school is going to start.

5. (Reflection) describe their writing process and articulate the extent to which the product of their writing is a result of the process they engaged in and/or identify their role as writers within a particular historical, socio-cultural context.

The artifact that covers the reflection criteria is labeled Cover Letter. My writing process was research, research, and more research. This cover letter demonstrates and talks about the ways in which my writing over the course of a year has significantly changed due to the amount of research I was able to use and that that research finally led me to how to frame my final report in a cohesive manner. I had chosen to elaborate on a topic that I felt was and is very underrated. I chose to keep a consistent theme in my topic of choice in order to show the importance that sleep has on a child’s academic performance.