Your English teacher says that you need to write on anything within the broad topic of "complex processes." Remember and referen
ce the chart above to narrow down this huge topic to something that could be discussed in a four to six-page paper. Write a paragraph of at least 125 words stating your final choice for a topic. Be sure to mention why you think your topic is suitable given the audience, purpose, and occasion of the composition that you would write.
Advanced Composition' and Occasion-Sensitivity Further, people read for two reasons: entertainment or information. [ A writer who confuses, bores, or threatens the reader, "has lost that reader, usually for good." Earlier, Donald Murray's indispensable A Writer Teaches Writing (1968) focuses firmly on the target-audience. So writers, and now textbooks, embrace this pragmatism. Do the nation's writing classrooms, secondary and even collegiate, follow suit? Quite possibly not, which may suggest that advanced composition may often have a mandate to emphasize sensitivity to occasion as the keystone skill in real-world writing which it in fact is. My own foray into freelance writing in particular?77 articles in five years, but not without initial stumbles?taught me that real-world writing in general is varied, difficult, possible, necessary, satisfying. I now feel obligated to impart some of this perspective to my advanced writing students especially. ]
