In this chapter . . .
Composition I is the foundational college-level writing class at JCCC. It is required for almost all certificates with 30 or more credit hours in many career programs, and it is the first half of the two-semester, college-transfer composition sequence that most of our transfer students complete on their way to an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.”
Prior to their arrival in Composition I, most of our students’ last experience with writing instruction happened in high school or home school, whether that be in the recent or more distant past. Placement into Composition I starts with an ACT score or ACCUPLACER test that allows them to enroll immediately in Composition I. While these tests do a solid job with placement, they measure a student’s readiness through questions related to reading comprehension and sentence recognition that either meet or violate standard conventions rather than assess the student’s authentic writing. Fortunately, Johnson County values education, and most students placed in Composition I through test scores have a solid foundation in writing and research. Other students enter Composition I through ENGL 106 Introduction to Writing or through English for Academic Purposes, both of which guide students through the writing and editing process in a series of assignments that move from simple to complex writing tasks.
After successfully completing Composition I, a high percentage of students enroll in Composition II. However, others will need to be prepared to enroll in writing classes such as Technical Writing, Creative Writing, and/or Writing for Interactive Media, all of which require that students be able to read a writing assignment and apply what they have learned about the writing process, editing, and understanding the appropriate rhetorical stance necessary to craft technical reports, web pages, or creative works. As of Fall 2020, Composition I is also the prerequisite for all JCCC literature classes.
Composition I gives students practice in developing a broad understanding of the writing process and the use of rhetorical stances applicable to range of academic, professional, and personal types of writing. Through varied and regular writing tasks, students increase their fluency and develop confidence in their writing ability as they consider audience, purpose, media, diction, style, voice, tone, organization, usage, and mechanics—among other things. Throughout the semester, students focus on the recursive process of generating ideas, researching, planning, drafting, revising, and editing; they also gain practice using conventions of Standard Edited English.
The range of Composition I writing tasks might encompass journaling, free writing, reflective pieces, new media assignments, short papers assigned for various purposes, and several longer essays. Instructors often assign readings that model effective writing as well as student texts that model assignments or the stages of the writing process. Students share their work with their peers, offering and receiving insights on the impression that a text-in-progress is making and what changes improve that impression. Students likewise practice the ethical integration of researched materials into assignments, including at least one essay in the form of a research paper that challenges them to supplement their own knowledge with ideas and evidence from academically-sound sources.
Along those same lines, Composition I also teaches students how to find credible sources through library databases, books housed in the stacks, and via online search engines. They learn to assess the value, relevance, and (particularly) the credibility of those sources. In anticipation of Composition II, instructors model how to incorporate sources into an essay or research paper by introducing synthesis and the writer’s own experiences with the topic under consideration. Instructors also teach students to cite and document sources according to a prescribed academic citation system.
Course Outline available at http://catalog.jccc.edu/coursedescriptions/engl/#ENGL_121
Syllabus Template available at https://canvas.jccc.edu/courses/28369/files/14857236?module_item_id=4169960
In every section of Composition I, instructors will find a striking range of diversity —in skill level, home languages, schooling experience, and instructional expectations, not to mention students’ attitudes not only towards the course but to both the act of writing and how we define what is “good writing.”
Although placement into Composition I is through a consistent test score, the differences in each student’s individual writing skills will be apparent from the initial (and highly-recommended) diagnostic writing instructors assign in the first week of class. One of the challenges of teaching Composition I comes from the variety of strengths and weaknesses students bring: the student who writes an in-class freewriting nearly incoherent sometimes has developed a fantastic revision and editing process that generates an unrecognizable second draft. Another student may have earned deserved praise for an elegant style or vivid descriptions but will punctuate in unorthodox ways. Along with their own pedagogical tools to keep students focused on writing process and their choice of textbook to reinforce the common vocabulary of rhetoric and composition, instructors can also adopt Inquisitive for Writers, an interactive software package providing individualized adaptive instruction on mechanics, grammar, and style as well as other writing topics.
Every composition instructor should be prepared to work in a plurilingual classroom with students who are learning not only how to compose in an academic setting but learning to write academic prose in a language that might not be their home language. The University of Washington prepared a statement on supporting plurilingual learners, which NCTE has cited as exemplary. The U of W writing program directors recommend that such writers focus on “becoming their own self-editors by developing important writing and reading strategies and skills.” Composition instructors, Writing Center tutors, and peers can assist students to do this by offering strategic feedback; plurilingual learners should also have access to effective resources (handbooks, textbooks, and online editing tools). The document continues with these suggestions for instructors to provide more useful feedback to support the development of self-editing skills:
Studies have shown that students are able to self-edit their work when instructors circle or mark a check next to “grammar” errors, which has proven to be as effective as when instructors correct.
Cueing students to the presence of an error (without fixing the error or marking what type of error it is) and ensuring that they are aware of the available resources sufficient for self-editing.
If errors prove overwhelming to reading comprehension, an instructor should invite the student to have a conversation with him or her or a Multilingual Learner consultant in addition to a range of other resources. (University of Washington)
Composition I students come to our classrooms from a variety of settings: small and large high schools, Johnson County’s extensive home-schooling network, and from the workplace. Some arrive in our classes with highly prescribed views of academic writing (formulas like the 5-paragraph theme continue to be popular); others come into the classroom firmly believing that college is the place where they will be allowed to express themselves however they chose (assignment be damned). Because of these pre-existing expectations, students will, at times, misunderstand what the instructor is looking for in an assignment. Expectations or objectives for each project must be clearly listed on the assignment sheet (including due dates, length, source requirements, grading criteria); going over these in class when the assignment is made and throughout the writing process can push students past their assumptions and allow “self-correction” to take place earlier in the process.
Finally, in many ways, one of the largest challenges in teaching Composition I can be working with the variety of attitudes students may have coming into the course. The attitudes will run across a large spectrum—from students who love to write to those who hate it to those who fear it to those who resent it to those who assume the class will be an exact (or even inferior) repeat of what they learned in high school English classes. During the most stressful part of the semester, the same student’s attitude can run that whole spectrum in the course of one assignment! Regardless, the mood of the class generally depends more on the attitude of the instructor. Everything will generally work out if we are transparent in our requirements and assignment rationales; if we are consistent in our grading, and if we are patient with our own and our students’ stumbles.
To help English 121 students meet the goals and expectations, instructors are encouraged to draw on numerous college resources, including the Writing Center, Academic Achievement Center, and courses in the College Success division that involve study skills, note-taking, and career-life planning.
Work Cited
University of Washington. “EWP Statement on Supporting Multilingual Language Learners.” Linked to from National Council of Teachers of English, NCTE, www.dropbox.com/s/utxg5pt99hb85oz/UW_%20EWP_%20MLL%20Support%20Statement%202015.pdf?dl=0.