The Writing Inventory: Bringing It All Together...

To date, much of the work you've done on the writing inventories has been gathering information. Now, I'd like you to do something different with these responses, and in the process begin to evaluate your writing and the skills and knowledge you use to produce it.

As I've discussed before, one of the main features of how the college educated speak and write and one of the main reasons folks listen to them is that they have developed the habit of not just offering an opinion, but backing that opinion up with examples, illustrations, and good reasons which help their audience believe the opinion and to trust its writer/speaker.

Your writing inventory is a good place to practice these skills; so, here's what I'd like you to do:

Keep the notes you've taken for each bulleted item. Below these notes develop a different kind of response with this specific form:

1. Claim as to how *you* use/understand the knowledge/skills described by the learning outcome in your writing.
2. Clarification/definition of what you take the learning outcome to describe. Here you might define terms, talk about your writing in terms of the outcome, etc.
Support: Illustrate how you use the learning outcome in the writing you've done for this or other classes and the difference (or not) the work you've done for this class has made. Here's the most important part: Use two specific examples from your writing.

Here's an example of what I'm looking for:

Outcome: Control such surface level features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Example response:

I've lost track of the number of times teachers have docked my grade for grammar and spelling mistakes. In this class, I've learned there is a difference between these surface issues and the content of what I write. I've also learned that different audiences have different expectations as to what level of grammar and spelling I need to use. When I write a paper for teachers or my boss, my grammar and spelling matter a lot. When I write an email or text to my friends, grammar in spelling matter hardly at all. For instance, when I text my friends, they expect everything but correct spelling. In text messaging, my friends expect me to shorten and truncate words. However, when it matters, this class has taught me a couple of proofreading techniques which help me catch grammar and spelling errors. Prior to this class, I rarely let someone else proofread my writing. Now my girlfriend, who is majoring in English, reads anything that really matters. I also print my final draft out and read it aloud. Between these changes to how I proofread and using the grammar and spell checker in Word, I'm learning to catch most of the errors which got me in trouble before.

Why this is a good response: This response garnered its writer an "A" on the Knowledge of Conventions portion of his writing inventory. Look at everything I learned about his writing by reading the response. I learned he understood how audiences and genres form what he writes. I learned he'd learned to control his writing by varying how or even if he proofreads. I see him backing up opinion with supporting examples. Most important, I learned he knew how to talk about his writing in terms of process and rhetoric. Finally, I got a glimpse into the difference my class had made in his writing and into how his writing process had changed because or it.

Write with questions.

Steve