Student Voices

To learn how to speak well in public, you need practice. Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book "Outliers," introduces the idea of the "10,000-hour rule," suggesting that achieving true expertise in any field requires approximately 10,000 hours of dedicated practice (Gladwell, 2008)

Student Voices is a public forum for undergraduates to share their best works.

Related Concepts: Persona; Pitch; Point of View; Rhetorical Situation; Rhetorical Stance; Rhetorical Moves in Academic Writing; Tone; Voice

“Dear Professor” Letters

8/27/23

Dear Students,

Our first two publications for Student Voices are “Dear Professor” letters:

1. Navigating Teacher Feedback – A Student’s Perspective
2. Neurodivergence, A Call for Openness to the Needs of Neurodivergent Students

This genre of discourse is commonplace in academic writing: In undergraduate courses, students write letters to their teachers for all sorts of purposes.

For the “Dear Professor” genre, students compose a letter to their teacher that gives feedback about your experiences in your undergraduate writing courses. Topics are open: students may advocate for change in a teaching method or policy. For instance, they may suggest revisions to academic integrity and dishonesty polices given the emergence of AI. They may share insights they’ve gleaned about mindset, research, style, or writing processes. They may talk about their growth and labor as writers.

“Dear Professor” letters make an argument based on fact and evidence. Claims are based on evidence as opposed to opinion or conjecture.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions.

Invitation to Contribute

Submission Guidelines

We invite you to submit a “Dear Professor” letters by 12/1/23.

1. Prior to submitting your work, please
   • review Academic Writing Style Guide
   • question whether your work is sensitive to Information literacy perspectives & practices of the academic writing community (AKA, academe)
   • ensure you attribute using sources using APA (see Publication Manual of the APA: 7th Edition)
   • as you introduce sources.
2. To be considered for publication, at the top of your page list your name and email, and the title of the course you took, course number, name of teacher, and email of teacher.