It seems to me that first year composition at a research university is designed to allow students to enter into the academic conversation. This is not, of course, the only type of writing that students might ever do. But the more I think about it, the more I think that other forms of writing (business writing, for example, or creative writing or technical writing) might be better served in more specific courses. And it's not that an engineer will never need to know how to write a resume or that a marketing major might not ever have to compose a lab report, but I do feel that by trying to address all possible types of writing in an introductory class, we lose some of the class's utility.
With that in mind, I think of the first year writing program at Ohio State (which, by the way, is one semester long). In first year composition, we led students through one paper over the course of the entire semester. We started with examining primary sources, and there was a small paper at this point discussing the interesting aspects of our primary sources. We didn't have quite the focus on rhetorical analysis as we do here, but there is plenty of room at this point for this very useful skill. We concluded this portion of the semester with a research question, and because of the preliminary work, this question is borne of familiarity and curiosity.
Next, we focused on answering this question, and we spent time in research. This included trips to the library, visits by librarians, a thorough introduction to our electronic resources, and then we set to the work of integrating this research. We used MLA but we showed students where to find help with other styles, acknowledging that we were preparing them for a larger role in their own disciplines.
Finally, we finished the papers, spending at least a couple of weeks drafting complex thesis statements. We worked on intros and conclusions, and formatted our Works Cited page. After the paper was finished, we turned our attention to editing and revision. The students left first year writing with a clear sense of what to do in each stage of the writing process when writing a researched paper. Again, we're excluding many other types of writing here, although many classes had a blog where students practiced writing for a different audience.
It seems to me that there's a great deal of value in the slow and steady building of a paper over time, and that this process allows students to practice each stage of the process thoroughly. For my own assignments, I would keep much of this framework, as I think it debunks some of the impression that writing is a kind of magic, that you're either good at it or not. By emphasizing the conversation, you increase intrinsic motivation and you help students see writing as a skill that can be learned and practiced.
I also would adopt much of the rhetorical analysis work we're doing in 1301 now, as I think it is extremely valuable, especially in the refinement of critical thinking that we're looking for as teachers of writing. I would use this rhetorical analysis as the content for the paper, which is similar to what's happening now in 1301.
And finally, I would encourage students to look for the kind of writing that they will be asked to do in their fields, by attending undergraduate research conferences or poster sessions, or by seeking theses or dissertations in the library. In class, I love to use the image of college as an apprenticeship, that one of the goals is for students to learn how to communicate and act in their field.
In your first paragraph you brought up an idea that I myself had thought about so I wanted to go a little more in depth with it. Do you feel we would make the program a little more effective for the individual student if we had them take this class with a focus on their perspective major. So each class would be labelled 1301 but engineering students would be encouraged to take the class with the subtitle of Engineering while architecture students would take the class with the subtitle of Architecture and so on and so forth. While this may make the class a little more complicated, I think it could be much more useful to the students that are taking the class.
ReplyDeleteI do also like you bringing in your work with Ohio State. I like learning about the ways other programs teach these courses. I hope you are able to mix the two together well to make a class that you enjoy teaching.
Nancy, it is very interesting to see how other universities' FYP function, and I can understand why you would incorporate Ohio's curriculum into your curriculum. When I was writing my blog, I thought about the previous experience I had with FYPs and incorporated it into what my ideal syllabus would look like. I think this is what makes us so uniquely individual as teachers. We all have different experiences with writing and those experiences transfer to our teaching.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed reading how Ohio's program focused on the different aspects of the writing process. It is true that students need to learn about the process instead of focusing on the product. This emphasis on the building of an essay might have been painstaking to students, but I'm sure it helped them with their future essays in the long run because they understood the process behind an essay after finishing their course.
Lastly, after reading your blog, I realized I didn't pay much attention to including assignments in my syllabus which directly discuss the writing process. Now, I will definitely keep this in mind!
Enjoyed reading your post, Nancy. Exactly, it is not possible to divorce assignments from the ideological underpinnings of teaching philosophies. This is why we're thinking about assignments and about major ideas like what Berlin and Fulkerson have to say. I'd say that composition is about entering an academic conversation, yes, and also about entering other sorts of conversations that are equally if not more important. That's why I brought up buying a car, for instance, during class. Purchasing costly yet necessary objects in life takes research, takes persuasion, takes critical thinking; all of these things are what we teach when we teach composition. And, the first reader is always the writer; we have to convince ourselves, first, that what we're doing is the right choice. I wonder if looking at programs which build a paper over time is worth doing. Nice metaphor of college as an apprenticeship for life. It is a safer place than the world, where mistakes can and should be made, so that we can learn from them when the stakes are higher. Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteNancy, I also like your apprenticeship metaphor. I agree that the slow building up of an assignment can be helpful to students. I think a fair amount of freshmen just are not sure how to write an essay that's different from the timed writing that many of them had to focus on in high school. The first year writing program should be a place where they are able to gain the skills necessary to succeed in writing they will need to do in more advanced courses. As you said, the program is designed to allow students to enter into the academic conversation. It's interesting that the program is only a semester long at Ohio State. I wonder, what if any other English classes were students generally required to take?
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