policies ENGL493 Seminar in Writing and Writing Studies: The History First Year Composition
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
SPRING 2014 Office Hours
Monday: 3:30 to 4:30 Tuesday: 11:00 to 12:00 Friday: 1:00 to 2:00 and by appointment. |
DESCRIPTION
First Year Writing is not the course you think it is. It might look like this pischy little course that you have to get through to get to other classes, but that's not even the half of it. It is a political monster. It is a historical record. It is a bell-weather for the health of a university and its population of students. It is commentary on educational values and philosophy in the United States (really, almost only in the United States). It is a course that nobody wants to teach but everyone has opinions about--what it should do for students, the role it should play in the university, who should teach it, and what should be covered in a semester of first year writing. Ultimately, the story of First Year Writing is the story of how the United States has developed, over more than 100 years, a particular idea of the relationship between Literacy and Democracy. Capital L. Capital D.
In short, First Year Writing is one of the most controversial courses in the history of the modern university. This seminar is interested in how First Year Writing came to be, the various opinions of what it's content should look like, and the legacy of that course in English Departments everywhere--the field of Rhetoric and Composition.
In this course, we will read primary sources that take us through the history of first year writing and the issues and ideas that are important to that course and the field that has as its beginning those issues and ideas (Rhet & Comp). We will work in small groups and pairs and as individuals. We will look at the history of Composition, the present of Composition, and develop ideas about the future of the course and the discipline. Additionally, as a seminar, I hope to be able to offer you some professional development opportunities that you can add to your resumes.
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this class you will:
TEXTS
Susan Miller (editor) The Norton Book of Composition Studies
Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, & Kurt Schick (editors) A Guide to Composition Pedagogies
And selected handouts available on reserve in Maxwell Library and online through email or our class website.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance & Participation. While I am loath to require attendance to a 400 level course—a course a student should be taking because they are far enough along in their academic career that they see the value of coming to class—experience tells me that I need to put in writing some manner of policy. Thus, attendance is expected for every class. If you miss more than four classes (or two weeks of class) your final grade will be lowered. If you miss six classes (three weeks of class, or a full quarter of the semesters), you will fail the course. Missing on days when you are responsible to your classmates--either because of a workshop or presentation--it counts as two absences. If life circumstances require you to miss enough class that it will affect your grade, see me.
Work is due the day it is due as listed on the syllabus. Absence is not an excuse for late work. If you know you will not be able to be in class on a certain day that work is due, turn the work in before, not after, the deadline.
There is an additional expectation that you will come to class prepared to do the thinking, writing, and discussion work that a 400 level class requires. If it becomes clear to me that you are not doing the required work, I will bring it to your attention. If your participation does not improve, it will seriously and adversely affect your final grade.
Finally, excessive late arrivals will accumulate to equal at least one absence.
Reading Journals. You have spent the better part of your student lifetime reading literature and, to a lesser extent, literary criticism. You have not, on the other hand, spent hardly any time reading about the field of Rhetoric and Composition. The readings are pivotal to any class I teach, but they are even more vital to this course. If you don’t do the reading we will have nothing to do in class. For every reading you have for homework, you are responsible for a two-page, double-spaced, typed response. As I said, reading in Rhet/Comp will be new to you and it will take you some time to figure out what is what. The reading journals are informal writing that asks you to first summarize what you've read and then to try to understand what that implies about things like writing process, student writers, progress in the university and beyond. (see the complete assignment page on this website for details).
Informal In-class Writing. We will write in class everyday. I will collect it and comment on it, but it is only your thoughtfulness that will matter for informal writing. Informal, impromptu writing embodies some of the most important ideas about what students should learn in a first year writing course. It employs important ideas about how the writing process works. We will model the wide range of in-class writing and the role it can play in our seminar this semester.
Presentations. You will have two fifteen minute presentations this semester that you will be responsible for to the class. One during the first half of the semester and one during the second. The second presentation is explained below as part of the Formal Writing Assignments. The first presentation, will be a fifteen minute presentation to the class on a particular kind of writing pedagogy. You will sign up for the presentation during the first week of classes. On the day you present, you will be responsible for presenting the readings for the day and engaging the class in writing and conversation about the form of pedagogy. Complete details for this assignment are available on this course website.
FORMAL ASSIGNMENTS
Writing Pedagogies in Real Classrooms: The Art and Science of Teaching Writing
During the first half of the semester, you will visit a first year writing classroom (either ENGL 101, ENGL 102, or an FYS class). I have a list of volunteers of faculty currently teaching this course who have agreed to have you in their classes. You'll visit their class. Write up your notes on what happens in the class, and then analyze what you see based on the various forms of writing pedagogies we will read about for class. You will include this piece as your primary piece of writing due in the midterm portfolio.
Annotated Bibliography & Presentation
For the final project of the semester, you will take one of the essays we read in class during the second half of the semester and do an annotated bibliography of the citations that author used to construct his or her article. You will write an introduction to the bibliography that discusses the research in the article to the larger discussions of first year writing we are having in class. The introduction will serve as a the basis of your presentation of that article. You will present in class on the day we read the article you have selected to do your bibliography on. Complete details are available on our course website.
NOTE: I am not asking you to do a final research paper because while you've been reading literature and literary criticism for a number of years, I suspect that much of what we read and the scholarly discussions surrounding these articles will be pretty new to you. It seems wrong and sort stupid to ask you to do this big, complicated research paper. I believe you'll have a deeper understanding of the field with a capstone assignment like this one.
Longitude and Latitude of a Discipline: WPA listserv Blog & Professional Interview, Undergraduate Research Poster
Our class is based, of course, on the history of our profession, but we are learning about the history of first year writing while first year writing and first year writing professionals are working away in the field on a daily basis. This semester long project has two parts. First, you will sign up for the Writing Program Administrator listserv. And you will sign up to read the posts that come up on the list on a given day about two or three times during the semester. You will post an overview of what you read about on the list in a blog space on our course website. Also, during the first part of the semester, you will interview a professional scholar in the field of rhetoric and composition. I've contacted folks who regularly post on the list, and they have agreed to be interviewed. I'll give you this list for you to choose from early on in the semester. You will do some rhetorical analysis of what the profession cares about based on the macro research you will do with the listserv and the micro research you will do with your interviewee. Finally, you will put together a poster (I will show you how) to be presented at the end of year Undergraduate Research Symposium. This year the Symposium is on 28 April 2014, a Monday. You'll be able to present during our class time. Complete details are available on our course website.
NOTE: in reaching out to professionals in the field in order to line up enough folks to be interviewed, one of the editors of the journal Young Scholars in Writing contacted me and suggested that she hopes to see the results of our research for consideration for publication in the journal. This is a highly competitive journal. One Bridgewater student has been published in the journal ever. Students interested in working on this project further in order to seek publication are welcome to talk to me.
EVALUATION
Portfolios. This class will use a portfolio system of evaluation. Portfolios are the way writers and artists collect work, and it is a very effective way of evaluating student writing. They are not a feature in all First Year Writing courses, but their inclusion makes up a large focus of scholarly study in the Rhet/Comp. You’ll turn in a portfolio at midterm and at the end of the semester that includes informal writing, formal writing, revision, and reflection.
You will not receive letter grades on individual drafts and assignments in this class. This will make some of you nuts. It allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let you do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At midterm and the end of the semester you will receive a final grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
Meeting all of the requirements described above;
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reading Journal 15%
Case Study 20%
Pedagogy Presentation 10%
Annotated Bibliography &
Presentation 20%
WPA Blog, Interview,
& UR Symposium Presentation 20%
Midterm Portfolio &
Final Portfolio 15%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking other peoples words and ideas and claiming them for your own without giving the people who did the writing and the thinking the credit they have earned. It is dishonest and unethical. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that project without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the drop/add period. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers, please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.
First Year Writing is not the course you think it is. It might look like this pischy little course that you have to get through to get to other classes, but that's not even the half of it. It is a political monster. It is a historical record. It is a bell-weather for the health of a university and its population of students. It is commentary on educational values and philosophy in the United States (really, almost only in the United States). It is a course that nobody wants to teach but everyone has opinions about--what it should do for students, the role it should play in the university, who should teach it, and what should be covered in a semester of first year writing. Ultimately, the story of First Year Writing is the story of how the United States has developed, over more than 100 years, a particular idea of the relationship between Literacy and Democracy. Capital L. Capital D.
In short, First Year Writing is one of the most controversial courses in the history of the modern university. This seminar is interested in how First Year Writing came to be, the various opinions of what it's content should look like, and the legacy of that course in English Departments everywhere--the field of Rhetoric and Composition.
In this course, we will read primary sources that take us through the history of first year writing and the issues and ideas that are important to that course and the field that has as its beginning those issues and ideas (Rhet & Comp). We will work in small groups and pairs and as individuals. We will look at the history of Composition, the present of Composition, and develop ideas about the future of the course and the discipline. Additionally, as a seminar, I hope to be able to offer you some professional development opportunities that you can add to your resumes.
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this class you will:
- Understand the cultural, historical, and political factors that led to the creation and development of the university course generally called "First Year Writing."
- Understand the role First Year Writing continues to play in the University and in the culture.
- Understand how that course has influenced the creation of the field Rhetoric & Composition.
- Understand how that field has morphed through the years to include a wide range of sub-fields and to have some understanding of what those sub-fields look like.
- Be able to do high-level bibliographic and qualitative research in the field of Rhetoric & Composition.
TEXTS
Susan Miller (editor) The Norton Book of Composition Studies
Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, & Kurt Schick (editors) A Guide to Composition Pedagogies
And selected handouts available on reserve in Maxwell Library and online through email or our class website.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance & Participation. While I am loath to require attendance to a 400 level course—a course a student should be taking because they are far enough along in their academic career that they see the value of coming to class—experience tells me that I need to put in writing some manner of policy. Thus, attendance is expected for every class. If you miss more than four classes (or two weeks of class) your final grade will be lowered. If you miss six classes (three weeks of class, or a full quarter of the semesters), you will fail the course. Missing on days when you are responsible to your classmates--either because of a workshop or presentation--it counts as two absences. If life circumstances require you to miss enough class that it will affect your grade, see me.
Work is due the day it is due as listed on the syllabus. Absence is not an excuse for late work. If you know you will not be able to be in class on a certain day that work is due, turn the work in before, not after, the deadline.
There is an additional expectation that you will come to class prepared to do the thinking, writing, and discussion work that a 400 level class requires. If it becomes clear to me that you are not doing the required work, I will bring it to your attention. If your participation does not improve, it will seriously and adversely affect your final grade.
Finally, excessive late arrivals will accumulate to equal at least one absence.
Reading Journals. You have spent the better part of your student lifetime reading literature and, to a lesser extent, literary criticism. You have not, on the other hand, spent hardly any time reading about the field of Rhetoric and Composition. The readings are pivotal to any class I teach, but they are even more vital to this course. If you don’t do the reading we will have nothing to do in class. For every reading you have for homework, you are responsible for a two-page, double-spaced, typed response. As I said, reading in Rhet/Comp will be new to you and it will take you some time to figure out what is what. The reading journals are informal writing that asks you to first summarize what you've read and then to try to understand what that implies about things like writing process, student writers, progress in the university and beyond. (see the complete assignment page on this website for details).
Informal In-class Writing. We will write in class everyday. I will collect it and comment on it, but it is only your thoughtfulness that will matter for informal writing. Informal, impromptu writing embodies some of the most important ideas about what students should learn in a first year writing course. It employs important ideas about how the writing process works. We will model the wide range of in-class writing and the role it can play in our seminar this semester.
Presentations. You will have two fifteen minute presentations this semester that you will be responsible for to the class. One during the first half of the semester and one during the second. The second presentation is explained below as part of the Formal Writing Assignments. The first presentation, will be a fifteen minute presentation to the class on a particular kind of writing pedagogy. You will sign up for the presentation during the first week of classes. On the day you present, you will be responsible for presenting the readings for the day and engaging the class in writing and conversation about the form of pedagogy. Complete details for this assignment are available on this course website.
FORMAL ASSIGNMENTS
Writing Pedagogies in Real Classrooms: The Art and Science of Teaching Writing
During the first half of the semester, you will visit a first year writing classroom (either ENGL 101, ENGL 102, or an FYS class). I have a list of volunteers of faculty currently teaching this course who have agreed to have you in their classes. You'll visit their class. Write up your notes on what happens in the class, and then analyze what you see based on the various forms of writing pedagogies we will read about for class. You will include this piece as your primary piece of writing due in the midterm portfolio.
Annotated Bibliography & Presentation
For the final project of the semester, you will take one of the essays we read in class during the second half of the semester and do an annotated bibliography of the citations that author used to construct his or her article. You will write an introduction to the bibliography that discusses the research in the article to the larger discussions of first year writing we are having in class. The introduction will serve as a the basis of your presentation of that article. You will present in class on the day we read the article you have selected to do your bibliography on. Complete details are available on our course website.
NOTE: I am not asking you to do a final research paper because while you've been reading literature and literary criticism for a number of years, I suspect that much of what we read and the scholarly discussions surrounding these articles will be pretty new to you. It seems wrong and sort stupid to ask you to do this big, complicated research paper. I believe you'll have a deeper understanding of the field with a capstone assignment like this one.
Longitude and Latitude of a Discipline: WPA listserv Blog & Professional Interview, Undergraduate Research Poster
Our class is based, of course, on the history of our profession, but we are learning about the history of first year writing while first year writing and first year writing professionals are working away in the field on a daily basis. This semester long project has two parts. First, you will sign up for the Writing Program Administrator listserv. And you will sign up to read the posts that come up on the list on a given day about two or three times during the semester. You will post an overview of what you read about on the list in a blog space on our course website. Also, during the first part of the semester, you will interview a professional scholar in the field of rhetoric and composition. I've contacted folks who regularly post on the list, and they have agreed to be interviewed. I'll give you this list for you to choose from early on in the semester. You will do some rhetorical analysis of what the profession cares about based on the macro research you will do with the listserv and the micro research you will do with your interviewee. Finally, you will put together a poster (I will show you how) to be presented at the end of year Undergraduate Research Symposium. This year the Symposium is on 28 April 2014, a Monday. You'll be able to present during our class time. Complete details are available on our course website.
NOTE: in reaching out to professionals in the field in order to line up enough folks to be interviewed, one of the editors of the journal Young Scholars in Writing contacted me and suggested that she hopes to see the results of our research for consideration for publication in the journal. This is a highly competitive journal. One Bridgewater student has been published in the journal ever. Students interested in working on this project further in order to seek publication are welcome to talk to me.
EVALUATION
Portfolios. This class will use a portfolio system of evaluation. Portfolios are the way writers and artists collect work, and it is a very effective way of evaluating student writing. They are not a feature in all First Year Writing courses, but their inclusion makes up a large focus of scholarly study in the Rhet/Comp. You’ll turn in a portfolio at midterm and at the end of the semester that includes informal writing, formal writing, revision, and reflection.
You will not receive letter grades on individual drafts and assignments in this class. This will make some of you nuts. It allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let you do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At midterm and the end of the semester you will receive a final grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
Meeting all of the requirements described above;
- The quality of your written work, including how successful your revision work is;
- The quality of your effort in the class, in workshops, in class discussion, in your groups, in conferences, and in general;
- Your demonstration of a willingness to try new things, think in new ways, and explore different perspectives as both a reader and a writer.
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reading Journal 15%
Case Study 20%
Pedagogy Presentation 10%
Annotated Bibliography &
Presentation 20%
WPA Blog, Interview,
& UR Symposium Presentation 20%
Midterm Portfolio &
Final Portfolio 15%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking other peoples words and ideas and claiming them for your own without giving the people who did the writing and the thinking the credit they have earned. It is dishonest and unethical. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that project without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the drop/add period. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers, please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.