Conscious Adaptations: An Ecological Approach to Teaching Writing that Matters

Abstract

This thesis draws from theories of rhetorical ecologies, situated rhetoric, and genre to argue for an ecological approach to teaching writing in the first-year, college writing classroom. Rhetorical ecology scholarship suggests that writing is ecological: writers both affect and are affected by the various and interconnected discursive, linguistic, social, political, material and cultural environments in which they are situated. A writer is constantly influenced by these interconnected systems, just as she/he contributes to their evolution and change. This thesis argues that the first-year writing course can prepare students to adapt more consciously and meaningfully to various rhetorical environments by helping them to recognize and draw from ecological systems as they invent. Genres and discourse communities represent two such systems within which writers compose. They are useful concepts to begin with in the ecological classroom; an understanding of how these systems affect academic writing provides students with strategies for adapting to multiple academic genres and disciplinary discourse communities throughout their college careers. Approaching academic writing as just one of the many ecologies in which students write allows them to embrace this writing with greater confidence and authority and to make connections between their academic compositions and their everyday lives.