MAPS Planner for Writing to a Public Audience

In their book, Research Writing Rewired: Lessons That Ground Students’ Digital Learning, Dawn Reed and Troy Hicks explain the MAPS heuristic, a tool for supporting students in considering the rhetorical situation for their piece of writing.

Drawing on the MAPS heuristic as described by Swenson and Mitchell (2006), and adding a fifth component to focus on digital and multimpodal texts, Reed and Hicks provide an overview of the MAP components:

• Mode: What the writer understands about the type, or genre, of writing, including the conventions of writing that make up the modality.
• Audience: What previous experiences and knowledge of the intended reader the writer can assume, as well as recognition of what the audience may want to hear.
• Purpose: The action that this writing will take, such as to inform or argue; the reasons the writer is composing this text.
• Situation: The personal context for the writer (e.g., experience in the genre, comfort with the topic, preferences for writing) and the writing task (e.g., deadline, length, formatting requirements).

AND

• Media: The publishing opportunities the writer has, such as blogs, podcasts, digital stories, and other forms of media; the tools writers use to compose, such as a collaborative word processor, a video editing program, or a wiki.

The MAPS Planner

The MAPS planner, inspired by the work of Reed and Hicks, was created as part of a collection of resources for NWP’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP). The planner is designed to support students in thinking about the specific rhetorical situation for going public with their writing. The planner below was designed for an assignment that focuses on writing a letter about an issue, but it can be adapted for any rhetorical situation. Click here to make a copy of the MAPS planner to adapt for any genre or writing assignment.