In this move, students learn to identify, describe, and interact with (engage) an intellectual conversation. This conversation need not feature “academic” (scholarly) voices necessarily, but it should feature a complex issue of critical importance. In this move, students synthesize what more than one author or speaker has articulated and make a conversation about the issue visible to their audience. They may begin situating themselves in that conversation, but they are not necessarily intervening into it. They may respond to a text or texts (of varying media), but they aren’t creating “original” arguments or answers.
Information Literacy Threshold Concepts
- Authority is constructed and contextual
- Scholarship as conversation
Habits of Mind
- Openness
- Persistence
- Responsibility
- Metacognition
- Engagement
Examples
| Assignment | Writing Goals | Engage Conversation |
| Literature review | Make a conversation visible - understand authority as constructed | Show relationship between several authors |
| Annotated bibliography | Make a conversation visible - understand authority as constructed | Describe each source and its relationship to each other |
| Podcast | Consider affordances of podcasts for a conversation | “Moderating” a panel of authors/sources |
| Research map | Trace a common thread - determine a text’s rhetorical situation | Track an academic conversation nonlinearly |
| Response Essay | Understand authority as constructed - engage with texts responsibly - determine a text’s rhetorical situation | Situate oneself in conversation with a particular text |
Resources
Scholarly Bibliography
Bizup, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 27, no. 1, 2008, pp. 7286.
Howard, Rebecca Moore, et al. “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences.” Writing and Pedagogy, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 177–192.
Salvatori, Mariolina. “Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition.” College English, vol. 58, no. 4, 1996, pp. 440–54.
Sommers, Nancy, and Saltz, Laura. “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 1, 2004, pp. 124–149.