Introduction:

The goal of this course is for students to master the conventions of academic writing in the humanities and to recognize other conventions of writing-and to recognize that other forms exist within each discipline. However, since the students are freshmen, this course is also an introduction to academic literacy. There are many goals to achieve: teaching students writing skills, pacing and study skills, seminar skills, close-reading skills, preliminary library orientation, and introduction to collaborative work. 

The Dean's Office has encouraged us to initiate a campus-wide effort to improve the retention rate of first year students. With this goal, many 101s have been paired with freshmen seminars-to give first years an introduction to college and a basis from which to understand their learning process. Writing is central to this process. Your role could not be more important to these students.

Objectives:

Students in this course write 32 pages of expository prose, 16 of which must undergo substantial revision. Students should produce two polished 5-page analytical papers with a complex (rather than simple) argument (see The Brief Penguin Handbook), introduction and thesis, macrolevel and microlevel analysis of reading material, linear and logical argument, unified and cohesive paragraphs, and mastery of complex syntax and elements of style. Students produce one polished compare/contrast paper and complete short exercises in a variety of argument-modes. You should also employ informal writing exercises in class, journals, or in response papers, which serve as seeds for discussion and trigger ideas for longer papers. Pieces of papers must be continually submitted to peers and instructor for review, discussion, and revision. Students also write and revise several letters during the course of the semester, and they complete one research assignment in which they use MLA or Gale indexes and attend a library orientation for that purpose.
             

In addition to academic writing, students master elements of design in writing (see Penguin Handbook) in which they prepare presentational components of their papers for peers, such as: hand-outs, maps of materials as if the information were organized for a website, and "poster sessions" of their papers. This course gives students a solid framework for practicing argument skills (based on reading, articulation, writing, and design skills) that they will need for their research papers and exercises in 102, and for various writing practices across the disciplines.

Classroom Practice:

As the guidelines in New Brunswick read, "every instructor has to find a rhythm of classroom activity that works well with his or her own students." Since all students have individual writing problems, you have to be jack of all trades, showing students how to bring all the elements of writing together. It is a good idea to obtain a 2-3 page response paper in the first week of the course, to assess current levels of functioning and goals for each student, which will also help you appropriately group student peers. Students should be given three main goals to improve his/her preliminary writing. During the course, you may include creative assignments and preliminary research excursions, since you are required to schedule a library orientation session with Theo Haynes. 

Please review all the sections of this website under writing instruction for information about the program's philosophy of writing, as well as tips on crafting effective writing assignments, utilizing peer activities, and responding to student writing.

Final Assessment Portfolio:

Regardless of level, each student in the writing program produces a portfolio to showcase his/her substantial course papers and/or presentations (3-page papers for 99 students, 5-page for 101, 8-10 page for 102). These portfolios serve as final exams for the course and must be evaluated by two readers: the student's instructor and another instructor (please pair up to exchange portfolios). In the case of wide disagreement, you should consult a third instructor.

Students should submit clean copies of their work in the portfolio and write an introductory cover sheet that provides an overview to their work, focusing on either the themes of their papers or their writing process. Drafts are not to be included in the portfolios; only final papers without instructor comments should be included. Students may present the portfolio in the way that they wish (color binders, visual images, labels/tabs or files, etc.). You should use the final exam time allotted to writing program students to assist students with final decisions on what to include in the portfolio, ways to assemble and present the work, and checks for completeness (cover sheet, all course papers, table of contents, name and date, etc.).

The portfolio should be at least 20% of the student's grade. Both instructors should provide a sheet stating the grade with a brief justification. Each student's instructor should then average the two grades (if different) and assign the result as the portfolio grade. Portfolios must be returned to students during office hours. They cannot be left in a public place for student pick-up.

Grading:

The easiest distribution of grades is 20% for each: the final, paper one, paper two, paper three, and participation/informal writing. You should factor the draft into the grade for each paper-for example, averaging their drafting and revision skills with their final paper, or refusing full credit for final papers that are not substantially revised.

Peer Groups/Collaborative Writing:

Students have to learn to draft and revise according to collaborative feedback from peers and instructor (see "responding to student writing" on our website); they must also learn to give this feedback. This process of giving and responding to feedback should be a substantial portion of any paper grade and of participation in general. This type of writing models writing in any profession.

In many classes and jobs, students will be engaged in collaborate writing. It is important to encourage and orchestrate collaborative assignments; training peers to respond to student writing increases their learning and alleviates the burden on you! It also:

- debunks the myth of writing as an isolated activity of the mind
- allows students to simultaneously inhabit writing and reading process by:

• negotiating collaborative writing assignments
  
• employing peer writing review and response
  
• publishing through collaborative venues (they have to produce, in chart form, a "pretend" web site that would teach the class about a central concept, for example).

Collaborative writing depends upon group decision making processes, and students should be encouraged to reflect upon these processes in a written form (how did the group reach a decision? How did it express major conflicts? How did the editing process operate? What contestations over language occurred? How were they resolved?)

Pacing:

Through a logical sequence of assignments, students will work toward the 5-page essays, learning to draft/revise and pace writing, to allow time for developing ideas, to incorporate feedback from peers and instructor, and to act as readers of their own work. Students should be sometimes required to discard sections of drafts and further develop the best ideas (attachment to first drafts is a major problem your class needs to help them overcome). Rather than just set a deadline for a 5-page draft, you should assign in-class freewriting or response papers from which students draw ideas for a 1-page argument, which then becomes a 2-page argument (workshopped and reviewed), then a 3 ½ page, etc. This discourages plagiarism and allows you to check both their writing process and their ability to incorporate feedback. Grading something you've already read in draft form takes less time; responding most fully to initial plans and drafts is time better spent than commenting on final papers. You must always ensure that the student's formal papers are outgrowths of their pre-writing stages; if you suspect a student's integrity, you may demand that he/she supply all pre-writing stages for a final essay. It is never a bad idea to require that all drafted versions be handed in with any final essay.

Example of logical sequence of assignments:

1. journal responses to literature
2. student asked to choose an interesting interpretive idea from his/her response as topic for formal inquiry
3. student asked to perfect a paragraph on that idea, using the passage that struck him/her as evidence for assertions
4. student asked to find a connected piece of evidence and develop his/her paragraph into a 1-page essay
5. student asked to revise 1-page essay with a stronger thesis, based on peer and instructor feedback
6. student asked to find the best idea in the 1-page essay and turn it into a 3-page paper, while class spends time workshopping and discussing introductions/conclusions, etc.
7. student asked to revise 3-page essay according to peer and instructor feedback
8. student asked to further develop idea into 5-page paper, integrating the idea of one published critic on either the piece of literature or the topic

In order to develop significant practice with and understanding of revision and development processes, students should spend a month or longer with their topic of inquiry. Students should be asked to present their theses in a variety of settings: present to collaborative group, verbally articulate idea in conference, create abstract of paper in different lengths, provide hand-outs or charts that encapsulate ideas, and rewrite papers for various audiences, which you assign

Reading:

The required texts include The Brief Penguin Handbook, Webster Dictionary, and for fall semester only, Laura Esquivol's Like Water for Chocolate, read by all freshmen during the summer and/or first weeks of fall semester. Students can also view the film in the library (several copies are on reserve) or in freshmen dorms (both discussion groups and film viewings will be organized for orientation week). The Writing Director, Holly Blackford, has several copies of a teaching guide with writing activities, which you can peruse and photocopy. Choices of short stories, essays, poems, and visual texts are your purview. (students should read about 50-70 pages of prose per week, while also writing). Here are guidelines:

- Choose a thematic topic of inquiry for the course, so students can pursue writing with the depth that they will be expected to demonstrate in other college courses. The course readings need to have intellectual coherence for the students to consistently revise and develop their own thoughts.

- The focus of the course is writing, but reading skills are the best predictor of writing skills, because the two processes are intensely interconnected. Thus you should spend a significant period of time with one substantial (complex) piece of literature, teaching reading and writing together and providing the student with the opportunity to spend a substantial period of the course with one work. Toward this purpose, instructors have successfully used Frankenstein (especially in the fall), The Invisible Man, The World According to Garp, Beloved, and The Joy Luck Club. These types of works take 3-4 weeks for the writing class to cover. They are best accompanied by a variety of essays on the works, to prepare students for their research exercise in MLA or Gale database (in 102, they will have to broaden their usage of databases to other disciplines). Choosing a Norton critical edition provides the students with opportunities to read accessible essays on and critical reviews of a piece of literature. In the writing course, a poem and accompanying essay on the immigrant experience could take two weeks. A play can give you the opportunity for classroom activities involving writing adaptation.
             

- Essays on contemporary concerns (which can be found in The New Humanities Reader) give students the opportunity to read and write about topics relevant to their worlds, while themes like coming-of-age, race, gender, or class give them contexts for understanding themselves. For example, one instructor had her 101 students research not literature but their own immigrant histories and the historical context for their family decisions. This was the most popular research assignment among librarians, who assisted the students with this effort.
             

-Students should also be exposed to a variety of materials in the classroom, such as newspaper articles, films, images, websites, illustrations, and ads, to which they can critically respond. Most students are familiar with a multimedia approach in the English classroom (expanded book sites on the web, MOOS based upon fiction, etc.) and should be ready to incorporate the "critical reading and viewing" section of the Penguin Handbook into discussion and writing skills. Students should be taught the dynamic role of words and graphics in today's culture; words and images distill major concepts. In their jobs and college courses they will encounter and be asked to produce a variety of conceptual maps. Accordingly, you will:

• capitalize upon visual literacy skills by having them attend to densely packed words, denotative and connotative meanings in poetry, ads, websites
• expose them to web forms that organize and combine ideas for readers
• expose them to expanded book sites/ hyper-texts
• expose them to poetry and the ability of words to control response
• expose them to stylistic analysis and ask students to imitate various styles of writing
• assign them letters to write to high school students, for which we have a diversity grant
• assign them the task of giving the high school students feedback on the effectiveness of their letters and prose
• expose them to analysis of argument, such that students gain practice extrapolating the thesis and structure of essays to their own work
• assign word research exercises in which they look up the history of key words, teaching them the evolution of meaning by convention and usage

Choose readings that are both accessible and a bit challenging for them; that lend themselves to a variety of writing topics and interpretations (you don't want to read 20 essays on one topic); that are ambiguous enough for students to take positions; that are controversial enough to inspire debate; that are well written, to engage students in powerful uses of language. You may choose your own works, use one of the multicultural readers in my office, or build your own collection from various websites. Many instructors like to find out schedules for exhibits in the area or performances at Rutgers to coordinate field trips with their readings. Your class is the students' first introduction to individualized instruction at Rutgers; you need to both impart enthusiasm for college-level work and spend your time challenging them to achieve higher standards of writing. Do not choose readings that you do not know; you need your time and energies for teaching writing.

Collaborative Instruction:

New TAs are paired with veteran teachers ("buddies") to periodically exchange essays (to agree on grades) and teaching ideas. Of course, the entire TA and adjunct community does this as well, and new TAs are thoroughly trained in a week-long teaching orientation in August. In addition, the Writing Director will be in touch with new TAs to speak about interests and select readings. New TAs are encouraged to look through the syllabi of current instructors (in my office) and teach the same syllabus as their "buddy" for the first semester. The new TA and buddy can also combine efforts on the final exam and exchange a sample of exams to ensure validity. Many of the composition classes are taught at the same time, also providing opportunities for collaborative activities between classes-for example, viewing and writing response to films, doing debates, playing thesis games (see website), or doing a short research activity (scavenger hunts).

The First-Year Student:

To understand the goals of 101/102, you have to understand the first-year student. Below, I summarize the baggage these students bring from high school (in regard to literacy and writing skills), and how your class has to combat this baggage. As a writing instructor, you need to know as much about "what to undo" as "what to do" for students.

Studies have shown that high school students have the following tendencies, beliefs, and myths in their practices of and attitudes toward writing:

- tendency toward quantification (how many pages? How many quotations? How many sources?)

- tendency to fall into commonplace observations, rather than sustain a controversial opinion and argument

- tendency to separate fact and opinion instead of understanding analysis/argument from evidence

- tendency to view writing as a discrete act or product, separate from reading, research, and reflection or discovery of ideas

- tendency to believe revision is a matter of style and mechanics (they only change a few words where you've written something in the margin!)

- tendency to believe writing is a recipe comprised of rules of Standard English

- tendency to know abstract grammatical rules and be unable to use them

- tendency to think that the rules of Standard English are arbitrary grammar school rules rather than a writer's control over the flow of ideas

- tendency to want models or forms (recipes) rather than learn principles of excellence, because they have spent a lifetime regurgitating knowledge rather than thinking in prose

- tendency to believe written text does not include them (it is self-contained and boring) yet is written in stone (sacrosanct)-even when they've written it!

- tendency to over-rely on sources, believing a paper with many quotations to be the best paper

- tendency to plagiarize, taught to change words of the encyclopedia

- tendency to develop a thesis of cosmic significance, rather than understand what can and cannot be proven by the reading to which they are responding

- tendency to wait to the last minute, without the ability to pace themselves

- tendency to write the introduction and thesis before the paper, finding a real thesis at the end, not understanding the benefits of computer composition and writing as discovery

- tendency to have highly developed visual literacy skills that disappear when they face tasks of reading and writing prose.

Your course must combat all these myths by teaching the following principles:

- An overemphasis on quantity precludes attention to the development of ideas. (Be sure that your syllabus sets clear policy but also describes your course; don't overemphasize quantity at the expense of articulating what the students will learn. Model fine writing in your syllabus.)

- The commonplace is not a thesis; teach the meaning of a thesis and all its components. The student can express a point of view by:

• understanding that between fact and opinion lies assertion based upon well-reasoned evidence
  
• supporting their interpretations of literature with textual evidence, in a variety of exercises 
• Try to redefine or underemphasize the words "fact" and "opinion," since students arrive with these preconceptions.

- Writing is integrated with processes of learning, discovering, reading, and research.

- Writing and revision are inseparable actions.

- Revision is the process of re-seeing text (link), in terms of ideas, logical flow, paper and paragraph shape, and rhetorical emphasis on each sentence's control of information flow.

- Syntax is more than correctness; it is control of:

• rhetorical emphasis of and within sentences
  
• the flow of information in the sentence
  
• the rationale behind the rule (open up discussion: why does ending with a noun sound better than ending with preposition? Where does your inflection fall?)

- Knowledge of rules may not generalize to all student writing (there are rule-based learners and those who develop writing skill by reading and writing or aural proficiency-like yourself, probably.)

- Persistent errors persist because they have a logic. Use never-again notebooks, LCR tutors and software, and peer training for persistent errors. Students repeat errors because they have learned a certain habit. In fact, researchers of student errors find that their errors actually have a logic. Determine the logic of the student error, change the logic, and refuse to accept papers that repeat errors or ignore them in revision.

- Writing in college is beyond writing in high school. Many students assume that they already learned to write. Determine what they know about writing. For example, high schoolers believe that an introduction is supposed to take a funnel shape, in which "you begin with a broad claim" and then narrow to the topic. When you find out this student logic, you can then replace the logic with your own and emphasize that students are developing into college writers.

Course Description To Download For The Student (or say it in your own way!):

Welcome to first-term composition in the English department. This course is designed to give you proficiency with developing and revising your written ideas. You will have ample opportunity to practice expository writing and respond to the writings of classmates. This class will introduce you to the dynamic role of language in culture and ask you to develop a command over the use of words to express thought. You will learn to read and analyze the process by which language shapes ideas and write about this process by making assertions and supporting your assertions with textual evidence. You will learn to analyze the use of language in a variety of publication venues and learn to use writing to both discover and express your own interpretations of the course material.

We will grant the most attention in this course to the process of revision, which means re-seeing the presentation, structure, and control of your ideas. Through practice in writing and feedback from peers and iclass nstructosr, you will develop a respect for and sense of how your writing shapes and responds to an audience of readers. To develop excellence in writing, you must experience your own writing as both a writer and a reader, allowing time for reflection upon previously written work, such that you can objectively evaluate its quality. You will be led through a logical sequence of writing assignments with the ultimate goal of producing three polished 5-page analytical essays that thoroughly explore and support a significant critical inquiry. Informal writings and collaborative peer groups will stimulate development of your 5-page papers.

This course will teach you to pace your writing, discover the best ideas as you write, evaluate your work, and experience your writing as a reader, training you to regard the writing of others and yourself with a critical eye. In addition to course readings, you should purchase a notebook for exercises in any persistent mechanical or grammatical errors. We will call this the "never again" notebook! Students with persistent grammatical errors will be assigned a minimum of three sessions with a writing assistant at the Rutgers Learning Center, where you will benefit from specialized instruction. You will be schooled on using effective rhetoric and revising prose for rhetorical effect. All students must complete all assignments and obtain a C or better on the final exam to prove readiness for 102. This course is a repeatable course, which means you can repeat the course if you have not successfully mastered academic writing.

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