Teaching Composition: Theory and Practice

Introduction
For the last 150 years, no course has been so pervasive, so fundamentally wanted by college personnel and so fundamentally hated by first-year college students, and yet so absolutley remembered by college graduates as the ubiquitous first-year composition course, often known as "English 101" or "Freshman Comp." The course began in the mid-1800s at Harvard (as most historians tell us) as a direct response to the perception some faculty had that students entering college could not write, even though they had gone to elite private schools and had been extensively trained for entering college. Interestingly, although we have taught college composition as a required course at almost every college or univeristy, and despite the fact that we've done so for over a century, we continue to hear one constain refrain: college students can't write. Ask any professor on campus and you're likely to hear that.

So why do we keep teaching this course? Do we have some desire to see ourselves as martyrs for an abstract (and seemingly hopeless) cause? Do really think we're teaching students to be better writers (even if they don't always produce better writing in every situation)? Regardless, the university and the community invest in this course, and our job (should we choose to accept it) is to do the best work we can in the teaching of first-year composition. Such work can be accomplished in several ways. For one, we should know the history of composition instruction, what has and hasn't worked in teaching writing, and why. Second, we should know the research on cognition and literacy so that we understand the possibilities and problems we face in trying to teach "writing." Finally, we should know a great deal about what writing is and isn't, how it functions and doesn't, and what rhetoric can do to help us understand the socio-cultural dimensions of the writing act. Beyond this, we must also recognize the role that digital technologies play in reshaping "composition" and complicating the previous points.

This course exists to help graduate students in English Studies to understand these three big concerns and to be as knowledgeable as possible about the discipline they teach.

Goals of English 6625
Upon completing English 6625, graduate students should be able to

• understand a history of how composition instruction became part of the university and what that history means to how we teach writing;
• recognize and articulate the primary epistemologies at work in various methods of teaching writing at the college level;
• differentiate between "rhetoric" and "composition" and recognize the role each concept plays in a first-year writing class;
• demonstrate a working knowledge of the primary issues facing the composition instructor (assessment and evaluation, the "grammar debate," language acquisition, cultural issues in teaching, the role of gender in teaching, etc.) and begin to develop methods for addressing these issues in their own courses;
• understand their own biases and prejudices regarding language, literacy, and writing, and thus begin to develop methods for working in, around, and through them to better writing instructors;
• and develop an understanding of the roles various computer technologies play both in the act(s) of writing or composing and in the teaching of writing in a digital age.

To meet these goals, graduate students will generally read between 100 and 150 pages per week, take part in online discussion boards, post responses to readings on individual student blogs, and engage in other projects listed below.

Texts

• Tchudi, Stephen, ed. Alternatives to Grading Student Writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1997.
• Villanueva, Victor, ed. Cross Talk in Comp Theory, 2nd ed. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2003.
• Readings To Be Assigned (at times, these will be PDFs available from links on the course schedule and/or assignments links; other times, they will be available on CD or as photocopies)
• Internet-based websites/articles as listed on the course schedule

Other Required Materials

• Three-Ring binder for creating a Teaching Portfolio
• One 256 MB USB Drive (for example, the Sony Micro-Vault); you'll be getting some free software as part of the course, as well as some articles for reading, all of which I'll put on the USB drive for you, which we can then use in class on the computers. These are also excellent for storing your teaching portfolio files, which may be large, as well as your Digital Storytelling Project.

Instructor Expectations
Obviously, I expect a great deal of commitment from graduate students. By choosing to tackle graduate school, you have plunged yourselves further into the world of the "scholar." I hope you will enjoy that work and take advantage of this time to read, write, and think about issues and ideas you haven't considered before, or to go further than you have in the past. "Reading" in graduate school, especially for doctoral students, is an exhausting activity. While I expect graduate students to "read" everything I assign, I hope that you will learn quickly how to "skim and save." Do NOT try to read all these texts like you would poems or novels, pouring over each sentence looking for nuances of meaning. Try to get the big picture, isolate the key arguments/points of the text, and keep it archived for future reference. Some texts, I expect you to devour; others may not hold your interest. That's normal. Regardless, I expect you alwaysto have a passing acquaintance with ALL our readings and an engaged friendship with selected others. Obviously, I expect that we'll have tremendous fun as we work hard together this semester.

Projects
The following brief annotations will provide some context for the sort of projects that this course will require this semester. More thorough explanations, where necessary, will become available over the course of the semester through the "Schedule" and "Assignment" links that bookend this document. The following items will be compiled into a Course Portfolio to be turned in at the end of the semester for final evaluation:

• Reading Responses •
  Students will divide into three groups and take turns writing responses to course readings. When one group writes responses to the readings and posts them on the course blog, the other groups will respond to their classmates' blogs, in effect creating an online conversation about the readings. These conversation are intended to further class discussions. I will announce the groups and when their individual responses will be due.
• Assignment Sequences •
  As the semester progresses, students will be responsible for preparing two assignment sequences: one for a unit from the standard 1100 syllabus and the first assignment from the standard 1200 syllabus. Both sequences will be developed in groups. We will use some class time for these projects.
• Essay Evaluations •
  Students will be given sample student-written essays from first-year composition courses and will be asked to write assessments and provide evaluations of the essays. Students will then participate in a "norming" session based on their evaluations.
• Class Observations •
  Students will be responsible for observing and reporting on six different class meetings of various sections of English 1100/1200. Three of these should be with the same instructor; the other three should be with three different instructors. Two observations are due each month (September - November).
• Digital Storytelling Project •
  Students will take part in a project appropriate for a first-year writing course. Using this project as an example, students will explore the roles that digital technologies now play in the "composing" process.
• Teaching Statement •
  Throughout the semester, students will do various heuristic assignments intended to help them develop a "philosophy of teaching." These teaching statements will involve synthesizing various in-class and out-of-class writings we'll do (e.g., Reading Responses).

All of these "texts" will become part of each student's Teaching Portfolio (Course Portfolio), a collection of artifacts that will count for the majority of the course grade (90%). Students will also complete a final exam during the last week of class (which will be part of the Portfolio) and will be held accountable for appropriate "studentship" in the course (10%). Studentship means attending class, participating in face-to-face discussions, participating in online discussions, and meeting assigned deadlines for projects.

Attendance
Graduate students by default should be at every class meeting. Emergencies and problems arise, so I can overlook your missing a couple of days of class, especially since individual students can contribute significantly on the course blog the days they miss in order to "make up" for not being physically present. Missing more than three class periods, however, will dramatically impact a student's course grade. Graduate classes rely on the students to be successful; as such, your absenses will jeopardize learning for others, which isn't acceptable. Because this course is required for those who wish to teach, I will be especially annoyed by absences; this class is simply too important for you to miss because each absence means that much more you'll not know before you start teaching, and that puts your future students' education in jeopardy!

Late Work
We all have very busy, trying lives, and as such, there come times when we have to complete some work late. Each student in this class is allowed an occasional late blog response or other short piece of writing. Neither major projects nor drafts of major projects may be turned in late, as turning the drafts in late would invalidate the reason for drafting in the first place and turning in final projects late would prevent me from reading and evaluating them in time to turn in grades at the end of the semester. Students may always turn projects in early.

Conferences
Students should schedule conferences with me when they do not understand comments I've made on their projects or when they become confused about the expectations of this course. Likewise, I may require a certain number of individual and/or group conferences during the semester. After midterm, I will schedule conferences to discuss major project proposals.

Academic Integrity
Students are expected to be honest about individual effort and responsible to peer/secondary source materials that are included in their projects. Both plagiarizing and turning in work written partially or completely by someone else are forms of academic dishonesty and carry serious penalties, the least serious of which is a grade of zero on the particular assignment (and thus a D, at best, in the course), but could also result in failure of the class and even expulsion from the university. Students who keep up with their work and consult with their peers and their professor have no reason or need to "cheat." Since this course is focused on research ethics, I expect that students will see me if they are unsure about how to cite or represent ideas/writing by others so that we can figure it out without ending up in a nasty plagiarism case.

Computers in the Classroom
Because we meet in a computer-mediated classroom, we will make frequent use of the machines.  However, certain computer-related behaviors will not be tolerated.  You may check your email or free-surf the web as you please before and after class, but after I announce the beginning of class by starting the roll, any student still using email, chat programs, or web browsers for non-class-related activities will loose points for participation or may even be considered absent from class for the day. **Likewise, students retain sole responsibility for keeping electronic copies of all their work.**  Lost or stolen disks, erased disks, home computer crashes, printer problems, etc. do NOT excuse you from turning in work or having copies of all your work on disk at the end of the semester.  Remember to make frequent back-up copies of files and keep copies on multiple disks.

Accommodations for Students with Special Needs
East Carolina University seeks to comply fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Students requesting accommodations based on a covered disability must go to the Department for Disability Services, located in Brewster A-114, to verify the disability before any accommodations can occur. The telephone number is 252-328-6799.