Rethinking Your Writing: Rhetoric for Reflective Writers
By E. Shelley Reid
Designed by Mike Palmquist
With its emphasis on both rhetoric and reflection, Rethinking Your Writing foregrounds the inquiry and decision-making processes that help writers succeed in today's writing task—and transfer that learning to the next one. Students are invited to move beyond “just do it” writing to more deliberately predict, problem-solve, and reflect throughout their process.
Created from the start as an online book, Rethinking also helps support instructors as they engage students with many kinds of writing tasks, from typical first-year assignments like narratives and research-based arguments to writing that happens in response to more complex rhetorical situations, such as community-based writing, writing in multiple genres, and writing across disciplines:
- The modular, cross-linked design helps faculty assign and students locate information needed for any writing situation.
- In-depth, student-friendly sections guide students’ thinking on vital but less visible elements of writing, such as threshold concepts, rhetorical analysis, reflective practice, peer review, writers’ dispositions, critical reading, research processes, and questions of equity.
- A book-wide focus on how writers choose their approaches based on their goals, resources, and constraints supports learners who are exploring new genres and audiences, and lays the groundwork for discussion of how writers use tools like Generative AI.
- More than 70 innovative writing exercises help writers explore and practice relevant strategies.
In Rethinking Your Writing, E. Shelley Reid provides a versatile guide that can be tailored to the needs of almost any course or classroom. Whether you select a single module to supplement your current resources or use the text throughout your course, this book is designed to help you engage your students and deepen their understanding of how writers learn and succeed in school, their careers, and beyond.
Table of Contents
Open the entire book: In PDF Format 
Part One. Rethinking Your Writing: New Frameworks for Writers
Chapter 1. Reframing Your Story About Writing
Chapter 2. Adopting Productive Writers’ Habits
Chapter 3. Responding to Readers’ Needs
Part Two. Composing as a Reflective Writer
Chapter 4. Reflecting Throughout Your Writing Process
Chapter 5. Planning a Writing Project
Chapter 6. Reading as a Writer
Chapter 7. Generating and Organizing an Early Draft
Chapter 8. Designing Across Modalities
Chapter 9. Reviewing a Written Draft
Chapter 10. Revising From Feedback and Reflection
Chapter 11. Editing in Context
Chapter 12. Creating Your Writing Theory
Part Three. Exploring Common Writing Patterns
Chapter 13. Applying and Adapting Genres
Chapter 14. Selecting and Combining Composing Moves
Chapter 15. Developing Projects that Explain
Chapter 16. Developing Projects that Analyze
Chapter 17. Developing Projects that Argue
Chapter 18. Developing Projects that Propose Change
Part Four. Inquiring and Researching
Chapter 19. Early Inquiry: Exploring Research Questions
Chapter 20. Middle Inquiry: Finding, Evaluating, and Integrating Information
Chapter 21. Late Inquiry: Addressing Gaps and Complications
Chapter 22. Integrating and Acknowledging Sources
Part Five. Exercises
Chapter 23. Exercises for Analyzing Audience and Genre
Chapter 24. Exercises for Identifying Writers’ Goals
Chapter 25. Exercises for Starting and Deepening Inquiry
Chapter 26. Exercises for Critical Thinking and Assumption Checking
Chapter 27. Exercises for Generating and Organizing
Chapter 28. Exercises for Revising
Chapter 29. Exercises for Improving Writing Dispositions
Exercises in Alphabetical Order
About the Author
E. Shelley Reid is Associate Professor of English and Executive Director of the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning at George Mason University. Her work on teacher preparation, mentoring, and writing education appears in Composition Studies, College Composition and Communication, Pedagogy, To Improve the Academy, Writing Program Administration, and Writing Spaces.
Publication Information: Reid, E. Shelley. (2024). Rethinking Your Writing: Rhetoric for Reflective Writers. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2265
Digital Publication Date: June 4, 2024
Print Publication Date: TBD
ISBN: 978-1-64215-226-5 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-227-2 (ePub) | 978-1-64642-669-0 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2265
Contact Information:
Email: ereid1@gmu.edu
Website: https://esreid.com/rethink
Practices & Possibilities
Series Editors: Aimee McClure, Clarke University; , Kelly Ritter, Georgia Institute of Technology; Aleashia Walton, University of Cincinnati; and Jagadish Paudel, University of Texas at El Paso
This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). This book is also available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.
Copyright © 2024 E. Shelley Reid. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 688 pages, with illustrations. This book is available in print from University Press of Colorado as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in digital formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.