Fall PWPA Meeting at Ursinus College, Sept. 23, 2011

The next PWPA Meeting will be held at Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA on Friday, September 23rd. The meeting will focus on writing-intensive pedagogy and administration.

Here is the current schedule for the meeting. In addition to the wonderful PWPA members who will be presenting, we will have Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein give the keynote address on teaching academic writing. A description of the presentation follows the schedule.

10:00: Opening statements (coffee, bagels, fruit)
10: 15: Lori Salem (Temple University): Creating and evaluating the “W” course
10:45: Michelle Filling and Seth Frechie (Cabrini College): Starting a WAC program
11:15: Stacy Day (Penn State-Abington): Teaching Research Strategies with Process, Infrastructure, and Collaboration

11:45: Lunch

12:15: Keynote: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein: “Demystifying Academic Writing”
1:30: Valerie Ross (University of Pennsylvania): Discourse Analysis as the Main Feature of a Writing Program
2:00: Eli Goldblatt (Temple University): Writing Beyond the Curriculum
2:30: Panel Discussion: Experiences and Insights about Teaching Writing
3:00: Closing Remarks
3:15: PWPA General Meeting/Board Meeting

Keynote Speech: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, “Demystifying Academic Writing”

In this talk Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein propose some ways writing instructors can dispel the mystery that often surrounds academic writing for students. Extending ideas developed in their widely used textbook, _”They Say/I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing_, Cathy and Gerald will argue that the most effective persuasive writers draw on a stock of overlooked conventions or “moves” that can be made more accessible to students by being reduced to templates. The most important of these conventions for student to learn, they argue, involves entering intellectual conversations and debates by summarizing what “they say” in order to motivate their own arguments–“I say.”

Directions to Ursinus College may be found here.
Please RSVP at your earliest convenience to [email protected].

Hope to see you there!

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