Program Course Description:
Writing 50 is required of all first-year students. Each Writing 50 section emphasizes writing as process; hence the class requires pre-draft work as well as drafts of all papers. Each student writes and revises short essays as well as a research paper that demonstrate the formulation of a persuasive and logical argument, skillful analysis of evidence to support ideas, and understanding of audience. Writing 50 sections are small - a maximum of 15 students in each - and thus creates an environment fostering discussion and preparing students for serious oral and written discourse.
My Sections:
Using the definition of human as a theme, my sections focused on rhetorical decisions, primarily through the lens of audience awareness. As a class we discussed the traditional appeals along with to dynaton, to prepon, and kairos from the perspective of the audience rhetor relationship. We then discussed writing in systems and the ways that writing is used as a tool to accomplish the goals of the author. From there, we applied what we observed in the writing of others to the students' writing processes with the mantra, "use your rhetorical powers for good."
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
The Writing 50 courses share similar papers. It is suggested that courses assign three to four papers -- one being a textual analysis and one being a comparative analysis. Students in my sections were asked to write four papers. The first paper, one defining human, was written in the first week. Students also wrote a rhetorical analysis, comparative analysis using activity theory, and an argumentative essay. At the end of the semester, students selected one paper for a major revision project. To help monitor their own growth, and to aid in discussions of revision, I never provided feedback on the definition paper. Rather, the students re-read the paper at the end of the semester, provided comments on their own work, and wrote a letter providing advise to their earlier self providing writing and revision advice for their definition papers. Students also created a portfolio in which they discussed their progress on the course objectives.
For this independent study, the student and I used the following co-created objectives:
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
To achieve these outcomes, the student I also devised a series of assignments to be created over the semester. She interviewed both a grant reader and a grant writer from the community and reported on their experiences. She read and provided a summary/critique of the The Only Grant Writing Book you Will Ever Need, by Ellen Karsh and Sue Fox. She then researched grant needs and opportunities with local agencies and worked with a local agency to write a grant proposal.
Program Course Description:
Advanced Public Speaking provides students with the opportunity to investigate and practice various rhetorical strategies, research their own topics, organize and support their ideas/arguments, and present their ideas/arguments in speeches.
My Sections:
The primary focus of the sections I taught were on the affect of audience on rhetorical choice as well as on delivery techniques. Students completed many activities regarding breath control, inflection, conversant style and gestures, and anxiety control. Along with in class activities, students completed six speeches with accompanying reflections and an activity theory-based analysis of a rhetorical situation connected to their desired profession. Early speeches provided opportunities to experiment with cadence, style, and non-traditional visual aids. Students then used these experiences to construct and deliver a speech for a general audience. Also, after interviewing someone from their desired field, the constructed and delivered a speech in a style from that field. The course culminated in an end-of-semester celebration in which students provided names of respected community members that were invited to class. The students then paid tribute to their invited guests, with snacks and beverages, of course. All speeches were recorded and students provided reflections for each speech in a portfolio.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
The speeches for this course were very developmental in nature. As part of the communication and composition course, students researched a topic, created annotated bibliographies, and delivered two speeches. Some time was devoted to delivery and visual aids, but it was at a rudimentary level. This course picked up from that point with each speech building on the previous. The first speech, "Preach It, My Friend," asked students to choose a rap, sermon, or slam poem, and to mimic the presentation style of the original speaker. This was meant to help students experiment with delivery and to break out of their comfort zone. Next, in the "Speak Me a Song" speech, students were asked to take a song they loved and to present it as a non-lyrical speech. The goal was to begin to think about how to control words, tempo, and flow, even when it felt completely unnatural. In "Visualize It," the third speech, students experimented with visual aids. Students designed a speech and used a visual aid but ti could not be a powerpoint, prezi, or other slide-based visual aid. Students then took the skills they practiced in these speeches and in class, and delivered a traditional speech. As they were working on this speech, students researched the types of speaking connected with their desired job. After interviewing people in the field, students addressed many misconceptions about public speaking, such as the idea that some professions don't require it. Students then delivered a speech in a disciplinary style of speaking, such as leading a class or even play-by-play announcing. In their portfolios, students compared the types of speaking. The final speech was delivered for an audience of classmates and invited guests. The students paid tribute to someone from the campus community for which they have great respect. This speech provided both an authentic speaking situation and external audience.
Program Course Description:
In an online setting, Advanced Public Speaking provides students with the opportunity to investigate and practice various rhetorical strategies, research their own topics, organize and support their ideas/arguments, and present their ideas/arguments in speeches.
My Section:
The online section followed the same structure as the brick-and-mortar sections. Students completed the same assignments and recorded themselves performing the same activities. The obvious difference is that of the online environment. While I originally had a synchronous speech included, an enrollment of 10 students made provided multiple times unfeasible. To help compensate, however, students posted all their speeches to an open class forum and watched each other speak asynchronously. Students provided unprompted comments on each others' speeches and reflections which did provided a sense of an authentic audience. Whereas other online speech courses try to get participants to record each speech in a single take, I acknowledged that students would probably record certain speeches multiple times. I encouraged students to work toward a single take but to reflect upon what issues they had with delivery when they didn't.
Program Course Description:
Program Course Description:
This course explores the interpretation of several genres of literature and related media such as film from the primary perspective of the reader’s experience. It focuses on texts that raise ethical and personal values issues about individuals and society. Students will develop reading, writing, and critical thinking skills as well as cultivating a passion for life-long learning and reflection.
My Section:
As this course fulfills the ethical reasoning and application and served as a targeted course, there were several specific requirements associated with it. It needed to work with the following objectives:
Writing:
Reading:
College Success Skills:
Ethics:
Literature:
For my section I focused on the relationship between medium and message. To this end, the students created several types of artifacts as we read and discussed dystopian literature starting with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein through recent dystopian fiction. We also focused on the way that the time and values affected the ethics of the texts.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
While not an overt objective, understand the role of ethics in literature, as well as critical reading, is predicated on an understanding that writing doesn't happen in a vacuum. Rather, the text is a product of its rhetorical situation and the values embedded both in the system and coming from the author. The first assignment was designed to remind students that authors are people. Students were asked to write and email or to tweet their favorite living author. The response was exciting. The following projects were designed to play with authorial values and the effect of medium. Project two asked students to create and maintain a social media presence for one of the author's of the texts we were reading. They were to respond to current events from the perspective of the author, meaning they needed to research the values and positioning of the author. Later int he semester, students took one of the texts we read for the course and converted it into a different format, such as a graphic novel or series of poems. The goal was to better understand the texts as they chose aspects of the texts on which to focus and to see how the changing the medium affected the original message. Students were also asked to create a book trailer for one of the texts and a final analytical paper regarding the ethical stance underlying one of the texts for the course. As a class, we consistently used our discussion of other's texts to enhance the students' writing processes. The products and the accompanying reflections were pulled together in an assessment portfolio.
Click Here for Sample Syllabus
Program Course Description:
Composition & Communication students will continue to develop skills from their FYS class. They will approach sophisticated readings thoughtfully and analytically, considering research methods, tactics, and sources. They will explore a variety of source materials and how that material is informed, argued with, biased, and utilized. Working with sources, you will judge their credibility, usefulness, and perspectives. Students will expand on their knowledge of research methodology by becoming more familiar with the library, internet sources, databases, print materials, interview processes, fieldwork, observation, investigation, etc. This class will emphasize reading and responding to the larger culture (that beyond the classroom and the college) and applying those skills to reading, interpretations of readings, events, cultural artifacts, photographs, and more. Written projects and public speeches should reveal the students' abilities to formulate opinions, conduct research, and compile an academic presentation of their work.
My Sections:
Click Here for Sample Syllabus
Program Course Description:
The First Year Seminar introduces students to basic academic skills such as careful reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful writing – all essential to a successful college experience. It familiarizes students with useful tips on college survival, technological skills, and information literacy skills as they learn the general expectations of college-level course work.
My Sections:
Click Here for Sample Syllabus
Program Course Description:
Basic Writing tries to prepare students for college-level writing by strengthening skills in sentence construction, paragraph development, and essay composition.
My Sections:
Click Here for Sample Syllabus
Program Course Description:
Academic Reading tries to prepare students for college-level reading by strengthening reading rate, focus, comprehension, retention, and critical reading skills. Emphasis on active reading.
My Sections:
Program Course Description:
Eng 112, a three-hour academic course that is required of all students at Bowling Green State University, is designed to prepare students for the types of academic writing they will be expected to do in college. Therefore, the emphasis in Eng 112 is on the development of critical and analytical skills that are used in both writing and reading. In order to help students develop these valuable skills, the course assists students through the process of writing critiques of academic articles, argument essays which synthesize multiple sources, and academic research papers. As students work on their various 112-level assignments, they acquire practice with the following, at a more sophisticated level than is expected of students taking Eng 110 or Eng 111:
My Sections:
English 112 used a program wide syllabus. Once again, I did my best to create an interactive environment. The course was designed to teach students write sustained, argumentative researched essays; therefore, the course worked with finding and evaluating sources with the emphasis on synthesis of sources to support an original argument. As part of this process, critical reading played an important role in the course. I also sought to encourage original research by incorporating optional oral historical and survey techniques as part of the final researched essay. The course started with students evaluating a written text via a formal critique. Students then wrote two essays using multiple sources based on chapters from the program designated text. The first multiple-source essay encouraged the synthesis of sources found in the chapter dealing with issues of obedience. The second multiple-source essay focused on research skills as students located and used their own sources to support an argument connected to the theme of identity and online communication. The final researched essay was written on a topic chosen by the students but connected to their major or hobby.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
As the course was designed around a process paradigm, students wrote several drafts of each of the four papers to encourage development and revision. This course also used the program rubric for the evaluation final drafts and a programmatic end-of-term portfolio exchange. To be eligible for the portfolio exchange, students had to pass the researched essay. If the outside reader, also a GSW program instructor, agreed that the student’s writing ability met program standards, the student passed the course and received the grade of A, B, or C as designated by me.
Program Course Description:
Eng 111, a three-hour course, introduces students to various conventions which are important in academic writing. In Eng 111 students are introduced to the important skills entailed in prewriting, drafting, and revising, as they write papers that argue a position, papers that persuade, and papers that evaluate a written text. As students work on their various 111-level assignments, they are introduced to the following:
My Sections:
Though English 111 used a program syllabus, I generally stayed slightly ahead but using the same structure as the GAs I mentored in 07 and 08. I did my best to create a highly creative and interactive environment that addressed the various topics in a number of different ways, such as using card tricks to demonstrate the power of strong introductions and logical constructed arguments. I also sought to make use of a number of technological tools, such as bubbl.us for prewriting and avatar generators to illustrate audience awareness.
The structure of the class designed around teaching the features of a traditional academic paper with a focus on audience awareness, argument, and metadiscourse. Students wrote several drafts five papers over the course of the term – arguing with sources, speculating about causes, proposing solutions, evaluating a text and either observation, analyzing a visual argument, or explaining opposing positions. The amount of time devoted to each paper ranged from four weeks to a single week. Reflection, peer evaluation, and revision were reinforced as part of a process-based course structure.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
The assessment practices for these courses were consistent among every instructor in the program. The same program rubric was used to evaluate final drafts of papers two through five. The first paper received only feedback but no formal evaluation. Papers evaluated with the rubric received a designation of not passing, almost passing, or passing, and the final evaluation was based off an end of term programmatic portfolio exchange. Generally, students had to pass two papers in order to be eligible for the end-of-term portfolio exchange. If the outside reader, who was another GSW instructor, agreed that the portfolio was passing, the students passed the course receiving a final grade of satisfactory.
Department Course Description:
Offered by the Writing Center, this course is an individually structured sequence of assignments designed to improve students' writing. The assignments may be focused on particular skills, e.g. writing from sources or writing essay tests. Students may register through the ninth week of the semester.
My Sections:
As English 110 was designed around the particular, individual writing needs of the enrolled students, it varied greatly depending on the student. Each week, students would meet with me for a one-hour, individual appointment. As this was a voluntary course, students would bring their specific desires that were mixed with my suggestions based off a portfolio of written work from other classes and situations. During the first meeting a syllabus would be created followed with assignments that were designed with and for each student to correlate with the syllabus.
Examples:
A Japanese student enrolled with the desire to improve her grammar and mechanics. The course work we designed dealt with a mix of work with somewhat traditional grammar and mechanics along with a reading log and writing journal. We also made use of piece she wrote to address grammar in the context of her writing. In this way we addressed the more cut and dry grammatical issues that concerned her while also addressing the trends and patterns found in the types of reading and writing she needed for her major. The writing journal was to help her identify her patterns of error in the writing she did for other courses. As she was also dealing with cultural issues, particular in creating an American writing persona for an American audience, the writing journal also helped her to work with the trends in the audience she noted and her perceptions of the audience. It was through this journal that we also inadvertently dealt with her homesickness as she adjusted to life in the United States.
A Jamaican student enrolled with the desire to “write better.” After discussing the papers he was writing for his English 101 class and his Construction Management major we were able to develop a syllabus that focused on rhetorical strategies for negotiating different academic situations. We also worked with his distinct and amazing, though very informal, narrative writing style that stemmed from being raised in an oral tradition and a rough lifetime’s worth of stories to tell. Finally, for his course, we also designed genre-based assignments that dealt with research techniques for very different types of papers he was writing. Through these very different activities and discussions, he was able to discover a more academic style without sacrificing his voice.
Department Course Description
A continuing study of composition with emphasis on intertextuality. Students learn to read texts in a variety of ways, to respond to those texts, to integrate voices from multiple sources into a single paper using standard citation conventions, and to find pertinent information through library research or interviews and to use it to create coherent and well-developed papers.:
Course Description:
English 102 dealt primarily with critical thinking and reading along with the development of research skills that culminated in a ten page research paper. The program requirements for this course were twenty to twenty-five pages of finished text by the end of the term and approximately fifty pages worth of reading each week. Because of the graduation requirement attached to this course, I used a text that focused on researching skills and writing across the curriculum. Beyond the text content, we addressed source use, the use of multiple sources, and the use of different types of sources. These topics and a majority of the course readings built to a longer research paper on a topic related to the student’s major. To encourage the development of critical thinking and reading skills students the class discussed obedience to authority in many different forms, which included a literature section using Margret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. The class finished with a section that focused on horror movies and urban legends as a means of reinforcing social norms. This section was meant to be a little lighter as students focused on their research papers.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
I designed the assignments to encouraged students to build toward the final research paper. Thus, students were provided with the assignment guidelines for the research paper at the beginning of the term. Those guidelines were then reviewed at various points in the semester as part of the discussion of other writing and research assignments. Students were first asked to write a formal critique leading to an argumentative synthesis. Common articles were used for these assignments so that the class could work through different discussions and group activities to help illustrate the different perspectives and possible ways to synthesize ideas. The common readings also allowed for discussion of audience and purpose in relation to the materials. Next the class worked with finding books and journals for their research topic or a topic of their choice if they had not chosen a topic. While focusing on research and library skills, I intended this portion of class to also emphasize the importance of preliminary research to develop stronger research questions. The students then used the sources they found in different ways through a series of shorter assignments and culminating in a four page paper. Next we focused on original research via surveys and interviews. Students then conducted a survey or interviewed someone within a career associated with their major. Students then wrote a short paper reporting their findings. The final project was their research paper complete with proposal and research presentation. Students were encouraged to make use of the different types of research they had conducted in order to compose a well reasoned argument connected to their major.
Department Course Description:
A study of the art of composition with special emphasis on the writing process and on essay form. Students study methods of invention and arrangement and hone their stylistic, grammatical, and punctuation skills.
My Sections:
Expository Writing I emphasized critical reading along with features and concepts often associated with academic prose. The program requirements for this course were a total of twenty to twenty-five pages of finished text by the end of the term and approximately fifty pages worth of reading each week. Through a series of mini-themes (shorts papers emphasizing a specific concept of feature) and longer papers, the course addressed many concepts, such as audience, purpose, argument, thesis statements, body paragraphs, logical support, and documentation. To encourage critical reading and the use of sources, the papers made use of course readings that were divided among the general topics of the environment, sexism and racism, history and bias, and ethics.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Along with discussion, group work, and various activities, students wrote four mini-themes (approximately two pages long) that focused on demonstrating specific skills, three papers (four to five pages each) combing skills displayed in mini-themes, and took a test at the end of the term focused on specific concepts and ideas discussed throughout the term. The mini-themes focused first on introductions and argument, then on thesis statements and body paragraph development, issues of source use and logical support, and finally adapting writing to the audience and purpose. The first paper asked students to combine the previous techniques into a coherent paper with proper documentation. Paper two dealt with argument and counterargument via Swift’s “Modest Proposal” as students wrote their own “modest proposal.” The final paper asked students to demonstrate everything they had learned by writing a paper that defined human and defended that definition.
Department Course Description:
An introduction to the challenge of reading and writing academic prose. The course encourages students to become more analytical, interpretative, and self-conscious of the persuasive motives of writing. Students learn to develop, organize, and express complex ideas that are appropriate for the academic context. Study of the writing processes will include multiple drafts, revision, invention, and critical thinking strategies.
My Sections:
English 100A went through a great evolution during the years I taught it. Early sections had a literature and grammar focus. While later sections started with sentence construction, the focus was on rhetorical choices and writing across the curriculum as part of a process based writing course. To this end, the course would discuss sentence construction in order emphasize the relationship and control through rhetorical options. This information was then reinforced throughout the class in the context of the students’ individual papers. Next, students experimented with various means of choosing a topic and prewriting based off their interests and the needs of the audience. The course then moved through different features of a traditional academic paper, such as introductions, argumentative and explanatory body paragraphs, and conclusion. This portion of the course focused on the function of these pieces and the options students when constructing a paper. Once the pieces of a paper were discussed, the class addresses traditional modes of writing that would be assumed knowledge in English 101 and finished with a genre-based discussions based on the different types of writing students would find in their different classes. The main theme behind the design of the course was discovering the function behind rhetorical features in order help students understand and adapt to the rhetorical situations in which they would find themselves throughout their college career.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Daily assignments and group work were both very important parts of this class. The first few weeks moved through sentence construction, sentence combining, and ways of creating emphasis. This knowledge was then consistently reinforced through individual grammar-in-context comments and discussions. Next students began writing papers. The first paper was broken into parts based off the traditional features. Students would construct a paper over several weeks with students experimenting with different forms of the features and discussing the ways that different audiences may perceive the different forms. The composition of a paper over time also allowed for a more distinct discussion of revision as students then needed to combine the daily activities to form a single, coherent paper. As students worked with different types of papers, they also experimented with different types of reflection in order to discover their individual practices and to begin to make conscious decisions about their writing process. Reflection also played a major role in addressing the needs of the intended audience and the purpose of the writing.
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
This course, as with the other levels of the reading and discussion course, was meant to help create critical and reflective readers in order to aid discussion in a traditional UNK classroom. Thus, part of the course was spent working with students to help them find where and how they most effectively read and study. Students also worked with different types of annotation and note taking processes. There was also an effort to work with classroom expectations and cultural cues connected with UNK introductory classrooms through discussions of language and purpose of classroom reading assignments. Readings started with current and cultural events; however, as these particular students would be taking UNK classes, readings then moved to published undergraduate work, and readings collected from various UNK courses across the curriculum. Assignments were designed to promote readings skills, finding/making personal connections to the readings, finding the relationships between the readings and to various class themes or structures, understanding and making use textual and formatting cues, annotating texts, cues as to the type of discussion reading or writing desired (analyze vs summarize), supporting an opinion with a text, and practicing discussion by oneself, as a group, and in the community.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Early in the course, students completed a handout prior to reading that worked with formatting cues, taking stock of personal knowledge of the subject, preliminary research for comprehension, and finding personal connections, and informal synthesis. After the first week, though, this became optional. Starting with the third week, longer readings were assigned for Tuesdays. Class then focused on comprehension and reading process and Thursdays were devoted to extended, more intensive class discussion of the articles. Over the weekend, students were assigned one page, formal critiques to prepare for the week’s activities. Prior to Thursdays’ students then wrote short, informal paragraphs which sought to synthesize the ideas of the various articles read for the course and to explore personal connections to the topics and connections to work for other ELI classes. Students were assessed on their reading comprehension and level of detail in the critique. As the series of short paragraphs were meant as a low stakes, exploratory assignment, student feedback was written as encouragement and to suggest other possible relationships and pieces and points were awarded credit/no credit. Students were also assessed on discussion preparedness and participation. At the end of the term, students took an oral exam which consisted of a five minute, individual discussion with me about the final reading.
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
Because students in this class would be taking full loads of UNK classes in the fall, Advanced Writing was very similar to what was contained in the latter portions of the developmental English class I would teach at UNK. Thus, the class was structured around the general parts of a paper, the features of American academic argument, and the different types of writing that students would come across in the different majors offered at UNK. The class started with general discussions of academic writing, audience, and purpose. Next the class moved through prewriting and into the different features associated with the papers they would be writing as well as the function of those features. The class would discuss different ways of writing an introduction. This would be followed by features generally found in a body paragraph, including the use and incorporation of documented support. We would then work with conclusions and revision. Following the parts of the paper, we would discuss the various types of writing they would be doing in their chosen majors relying on the advice I had gathered from UNK instructors from those majors.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
The first half of the class relied heavily on daily assignments and group work. Following a discussion of the feature and its function, students would break into groups and create examples. For instance, groups would create multiple thesis statements, good and bad. They would then explain why the effective thesis statements worked, what didn’t work with the ineffective thesis statements, and how they could be fixed based off a particular audience and purpose. Students would have daily homework assignments working with examples of the concept as they constructed a paper. Once all of the parts of a paper were discussed, we worked with revision strategies and peer review techniques as students combined all of the pieces and filled in the blanks to form a short paper (three pages using one source) that was due as a midterm. The latter portions of the class dealt with the modes of writing and the types of writing they would be doing in their majors. The final few weeks devoted to a short paper (three pages using two sources) in the style of their major or major associated with an area of interest.
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
Students in this course were encouraged to become critical, reflective readers. Thus, as part of the class, students kept track of where, when, and how they read best. This included experimenting with how they preferred to annotate the readings and take notes. The readings moved from current and cultural events, such as the transition of the Iraqi government, directed at junior high students to published undergraduate work. The Intermediate II class focused on discussion. Students were encouraged to develop an opinion and discuss it in class using the text as support and to find personal connections to encourage interest and retention while looking for connections between themes and other classes.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Each day there was a reading assignment and a five question comprehension quiz. There was also a reading handout to be completed prior to reading that worked with formatting cues, taking stock of personal knowledge of the subject, preliminary research for comprehension, and finding personal connections, and an informal synthesis of two of the readings of their choice. This handout became optional at week four. Early in the term, students were assigned a short summary of the piece read over the weekend. This shifted to short, informal relationship paragraphs emphasize personal connections and synthesis between readings over weekend and five discussion questions for Thursdays. With week six, I introduced critiques, but as students weren’t quite ready for formal written critiques, students began working a more critical element into a more detailed relationship paragraphs with a critique of an article of their choice due at the end of the term. Throughout the term, students were also assessed on discussion participation. Finally, at the end of the term, students took an oral exam that consisted of a five minute, individual discussion with me about the final reading
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
Students in this course were encouraged to become critical, reflective readers. Thus, as part of the class, students kept track of where, when, and how they read best. This included experimenting with how they preferred to annotate the readings and take notes. The readings moved from current and cultural events, such as a discussion of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown versus the Board of Education and banning of religious clothing, directed at junior high students with a focus on comprehension. Students were encouraged to develop an opinion and discuss it in class using the text as support. Students were also encouraged to find personal connections to encourage interest and retention and to look for connections between themes and to other classes.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Each day there was a reading assignment and a five question comprehension quiz. There was also a reading handout to be completed prior to reading that worked with formatting cues, taking stock of personal knowledge of the subject, preliminary research for comprehension, and finding personal connections, and an informal synthesis of two of the readings of their choice. Early in the term, students were assigned a short summary of the piece read over the weekend. This shifted to short, informal relationship paragraphs emphasize personal connections and synthesis between readings over weekend and five discussion questions for Thursdays. With week nine, I introduced critiques, but as students weren’t quite ready for formal written critiques, students began working a more critical element into a more detailed relationship paragraphs and an informal group critique. Throughout the term, students were assessed on discussion participation. Finally, at the end of the term, students took an oral exam that consisted of a five minute, individual discussion with me about the final reading
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
Intermediate writing evolved into the early portions of the developmental course I taught during the fall and spring. Thus, the course started with grammar in the context of writing, such as sentence combination, with a focus on building relationships and rhetorical grammar. At midterm, the course moved to a discussion of the parts of a general American academic paper and American academic argument. As a class, we discussed some of the things that were required in a paper as well as cultural desires and preferences for direct structure and documentation. The course would move from audience and purpose to different ways to construct an introduction and thesis statements. Next, the class would focus on general patterns and functions of things often found in a body paragraph. We would also cover different types of support and ways of incorporating support. Finally, we would move to conclusions.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Daily assignments and group work played an important role in this course. Early on students generated sentences and worked with the concepts we were discussing. Students also write paragraphs to illustrate the relationships. This was followed by a mid-term exam. Throughout the second half of the course, daily assignments and group work continued as students worked with the different parts of a basic paper. Students would get feedback from their peers and from me while building a short paper (three pages with one source). Revision was a strong component as students would then work to make all of the pieces function as a whole.
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
This course, which met three days per week for fifty minutes, dealt with grammatical structures and rules from the program designated book. The general class started with a review of homework along with a question and answer session. Then came a mini-lecture on a specific concept followed with group or individual work with examples or in class writing.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
The assignments, early on, primarily came from the text and the accompanying workbook. With permission from the coordinator, latter portions of the class transitioned to more interactive work with students explaining concepts for the class, creating worksheets and activities for each other, and doing more sustained writing to illustrate the concepts addressed in class. The course also had a mid-term and final exam.
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
Early versions of this course dealt with fill-in-the-blank, skill and drill activities that were, to be honest, easy to grade but didn’t seem to be very authentic or effective.
Basic issues of grammar and sentence structure always played a role, but the focus shifted to a grammar-in-the-context-of-writing focus. The sections I taught in 02 and 05 started with sentence structure and moved slowly through different aspects of more complex sentences often found in American academic prose. The focus of this portion of the course was to gain practice, and, more importantly, to begin to see how to combine sentences to emphasize a specific relationship. The second portion of the course addressed paragraph structure and organization that could be linked with the organization of papers in more advanced classes. The timing of this shift was predicated on the progress and needs of the students. Each of the classes made use of highly visual analogies.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
Beginning Writing made use of playful daily quizzes in which students were asked to write sentences that illustrated specific relationships or concepts as a review of the previous class. Daily activities and participation played a large role as students worked in groups with the concept we were discussing. The homework in the grammar focused portions of the course generally asked students to then work with the skills on their own using sentence they constructed. Latter portions of the course worked with writing fully developed paragraphs in a style that was more conducive to what is generally expected in American academic prose. The course also worked with different ways of organizing and developing a paragraph. During this portion of the course, students would write paragraphs illustrating what was discussed in class on topics of their choosing. The final assignment for the course was a short paper (approximately 250 words).
No Department Course Description
My Sections:
All the classes started with information meant to help create reflective readers. Students were encouraged to think about where and when they read best. Students were also encouraged to find a means of annotation and note taking that worked best for them. Due to the English reading ability of these students, the readings selected for this class dealt with current events. Selections at the beginning of the term were readings from a junior high and low high school level. Though the English reading and speaking abilities for these students was lower, they were still very smart students. Thus, these students were still encouraged to find personal connections to the pieces. Discussions, though slow, were still carried out in a manner to emphasize their intelligence while increasing language ability and reading comprehension. Though the readings were simpler, topics were chosen that allowed for a range of discussion topics such as video games in education, the creation and maintenance of an Iraqi government, and ethics. Many of the topics also allowed for greater cultural discussions.
Assignment/Assessment Structure:
There were daily reading assignments for this class. A handout was assigned for completion prior to reading that worked with taking note of formatting cues, taking stock of personal knowledge of the subject, preliminary research necessary for comprehension, and finding personal connections to the readings. Students were also encouraged to maintain a vocabulary log. As the course progressed, short summaries were assigned for readings done over the weekend. In general, students were assessed on reading comprehension and discussion participation. At the end of the term, each student took an oral exam consisting a five minute, individual discussion with me about the final reading.