Another Writing Course?

In our experience, most students in first-year writing courses understand that they’ll be asked to write a lot in college, recognize certain aspects of their writing they want to develop, and are glad for the opportunity to work on their writing with a supportive mentor willing to make suggestions, answer questions, and offer help.

And of course, this kind of work is exactly what we expect to happen in these classes.

Still, you may be thinking Do I really need another writing course?...haven’t I already done this in high school?  Or on the other hand, you may worry about whether you’re prepared to succeed – like Can I really do this?

Another Writing Course?

If you’re one of the people who feel this way, we understand.  Starting college means you’re at the beginning of a great intellectual adventure, and the last thing anybody wants you to do is dampen the excitement with work you feel like you may have done before.  

But ENG 102 shouldn’t feel like a hoop to jump through, and neither should any of the other writing you do in college.  It should be a chance to work on your writing skills as you articulate ideas that matter to you – something you’ll continue to do at least as long as you’re a student, and hopefully long beyond.

Indeed, articulating your thoughts in writing is a lifelong habit for any thinking person, not a simple technical skill that you learn once, master, and then apply.  It’s an evolving set of skills that you keep building on, deepening, and refining. 

Learning as a Spiral

The educational psychologist Jerome Bruner developed a way to talk about this.  He said that all real learning works as a kind of “spiral.”  You learn the same things over again repeatedly – like how to make a claim or organize a paper, for example – but you do it in a more complex way each time, having deepened certain key concepts and practices.  You practice cooking skills when you make mud pies as a toddler, when you graduate to grilled cheese sandwiches in middle school, and when you try your first fancy sauce or spicy soup.  But you learn new things each time.

We think this especially true with writing.  You spiral back to things, but always on a new level.

Here’s an example:  ENG 102 will probably call you to think about organization in writing in a more complex way than courses you’ve taken in the past may have – as something you create yourself on the basis of what you want to say rather than as a set of “blanks” you fill in, as our students sometimes put it.  Writing should be "organic" -- it should grow out of your idea and not some universal formula or template.  Similarly, it should encourage you to think about writing as a way not just to communicate ideas but also to develop and refine them – as a form of active intellectual work and not just the document of having done it.  It might also call you to think about all kinds of presumed “rules” in writing as relative and negotiable, less something you need to follow blindly or absolutely than something you need to decide about yourself in each piece you write. (See our discussion of Grammar and Error Patterns for a fuller sense of what we mean here.)

What’s more, both ENG 102 and the writing-intensive courses you take in your major will not just complicate and deepen your existing skills, as Bruner would have it.  They should also introduce you to new ones.  ENG 102 should stretch your understanding of writing beyond words on a page, for example, to include other media – images, sound, video, and links to other text – as technologies of writing indeed now invite us to do routinely.  In this sense, the writing skills you develop in college should also help with the broader kinds of cultural and civic engagement you practice outside school and, ultimately, your professional life – when you write a letter to your local school board, blog about movies you love, or tweet about political or social issues.

Writing, Not Literature

One other thing we should be clear about in connection with ENG 101 and 102:  they're writing courses, not literature courses.  You may be used to having these focuses mixed together as part of your ELA curriculum in high school, but that won't be the case here.  Literature courses are really wonderful, and it enriches any student's experience of college to take lots of them.  But while it's not unlikely you'll read some poems, fiction, or creative nonfiction among a range of texts in ENG 101 and 102, the point in these courses will be to practice your writing and to deepen your understanding of how people use writing to develop ideas and make public arguments.  Writing will always be the real focus.

Writing in Your Field

There are other writing-intensive courses you'll take in your time on campus, too.  Courses in your major that feature writing assignments as part of the college’s Writing Across the Curriculum requirement will call you to consider how writing in your field is different from writing in other contexts.  They will also ask you to practice that kind of writing intensively.  So if you’re an aspiring psychologist, for example, you may find yourself learning to write an abstract for your paper; if you’re an anthropologist, you may need to think about what goes into field notes; if you plan to be a teacher, you’ll certainly soon learn what lesson plans look like.

So as we see it, though you may have done lots of work on your writing skills before now, there’s still lots more you’ll learn as a writer in college – and beyond.

So, Am I Ready For All This?

In a word, yes.  Absolutely.

Your admission to the college suggests that this process of deepening and expanding your skills as a writer and thinker is one you’re ready for.  This doesn’t mean that your skills are exactly the same as those of all your peers, or that certain assignments or courses might not present greater challenges for some students than for others.  

But if you couldn't do the work required in ENG 102, you wouldn't have been admitted!  As long as you’re willing to work hard, engage the challenges laid out by your instructors in a spirit of intellectual good will, and be open to their guidance and support, you’ll be fine.  So yes, you can do this.

As one of us puts it in the opening sentence of his ENG 102 syllabus each semester:  Congratulations, you are a scholar.

We’re very excited to see the work you do in that role and what you add to the thoughts of the scholars who’ve come before you.