The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Analyzing Rhetorical Situations in English 109M/109W
141
Annabelle A. Sacramento
Spring 2010
There is a wide variety of students who use the service at the Writing Center. I have never
realized the influx of students who come from different countries and are seeking help to improve their
writings not until I became one of the tutors. Most writers I have dealt with are either from the English
109M or 109W. The distinction between the English 109M and English 109W is minor; just bear in mind
that 109M is for students who are multilingual and 109W is for students whose native language is
English.
To help understand what these courses mean, according to the University catalog, English
109M/109W provide intensive practice in prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing academic writing for
multilingual and native-English speaker writers. Students research, analyze, reflect on and write about the
kind of writing produced in academic discipline.” This quote illustrates the type of writing the students
are expected to produce, and they have to produce a considerable amount of writing that involves
informal reading responses, rhetorical analyses, and an extended academic research project students need
to submit at the end of the semester. As a tutor, it is important for you to know the descriptions of both
courses (English 109M/109W) so that you can assist your writers when they come to you for help on
their essays. Thank goodness I had taken English 109M; if I had not taken this course, I probably would
have encountered problems in understanding my tutees. At least when they came to me, I knew exactly
what they would be talking about. Let me tell you more about this.
When students from English 109M/109W come to you for help, they will show you their assigned
homework pertaining to their discourse communities. So, what is a discourse community? In general
terms, it is a group of people who share the same interest and common goal. Few examples of discourse
communities are disciplines students are majoring in, say, biology, music, etc. Thus, those students who
take English 109M/109W will have to produce essays that analyze the rhetorical situations of their
fields. An example of the rhetorical situation is illustrated below:
THE RHETORICAL SITUATION
(Rhetoric = the art of using language effectively and persuasively)
CONTEXT
The situation in which the writer is working
including the discourse community
AUDIENCE PERSONA
The person to whom The way the writer
the writing is directed presents herself in the
text
PURPOSE TEXT
The reason the What the writer actually
writer is writing writes and how she/he
writes it