First Year Writing

Department of English

University of Detroit Mercy

2007-2008

NEW COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

UAS 099 (Basic Writing)

Catalog Description: UAS 099 (Basic Writing) provides instruction and practice in effective writing, including extensive practice in fundamentals of critical thinking and college writing in preparation for English 130 and 131. Special attention is paid to generating, organizing, and developing ideas, as well as editing for syntax, mechanics, and style, and using the computer in writing. Completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better is required in order to enroll in ENL 130. This course does not generate earned hours toward graduation requirements.

UAS 099 will be taught by instructors in UAS.  We expect between 50 and 100 students to be placed into UAS 099 based on ACT scores, self-reflection, and impromptu essay scores.

ENL 130 (College Writing)

Catalog Description: ENL 130 (College Writing) emphasizes critical thinking and argumentation: understanding and representing multiple analytical perspectives fairly; applying analytical reasoning; engaging with college-level texts from multiple disciplines, genres, and media; and adapting writing to contexts and conventions of varied discourse communities. Completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better is required in order to enroll in ENL 131. Prerequisite: Placement through SOAR or successful completion of UAS 099 (Basic Writing).

Instructors who are teaching English 130 in the fall should expect a higher caliber of students than they may have seen in the past. English 130 has been re-envisioned to be an introductory course in the rhetoric of college writing rather than a developmental course in generating and proofreading texts. A significant number of our first year students should place into ENL 130. Think of this course as one in which you introduce students to the conventions of college writing, in particular writing in response to readings, and incorporating secondary sources to further a claim.

Students entering ENL 130 should have acquired general skills of developing essays while still needing some instruction into adapting to the conventions of college level writing. Instructors should expect students in ENL 130 to be capable of reading basic journalistic-style essays and creative non-fiction, but who may need some help with more academic-type prose and with reading for inference. For ENL 130, instructors should build critical reading into the course as an outcome goal rather than a pre-requisite; in other words, it will require some instruction.

A good reader for English 130 might be something like Rereading America where students read a variety of texts on a single theme (education, democracy, urban life, race and ethnicity in America), develop their own positions in relation to the readings, and construct an argument that utilizes information from the readings and their own experiences. While personal experience may be critical to their arguments, the major assignments should not be simple personal narratives. Instead, students might be called upon to re-examine their own experiences critically through secondary readings, or to critique readings through examples from their own experiences, or to contrast different perspectives through academic scholarship.

Students in English 130 should be taught ways of engaging with secondary sources and integrating information and quotes from source materials. They might also be taught the basics of formatting using a simple documentation system such as MLA, though they might be exposed to other systems of documentation such as APA and CMS. By the time students leave ENL 130, they should have a basic understanding of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from source material in order to advance an argument, as well as critiquing ideas in source materials and constructing new knowledge.

ENL 131 (Academic Writing)

Catalog Description: ENL 131 (Academic Writing) engages students in academic inquiry, research, and argumentation: designing research questions; locating, evaluating, and synthesizing secondary research; performing primary research to construct new knowledge; employing critical thinking strategies to develop arguments with purpose, meaning, and significance. In addition to exploring the influence of traditional print-based genres and rhetorical contexts, students will develop an awareness of how these contexts are likewise affected by emerging media. Prerequisite: Placement through SOAR, successful completion of ENL 130 (College Writing), or approved transfer of 3 credits of college composition.

Students going into ENL 131 will be expected to have a basic foundation in academic writing and argumentation so that instructors can devote more time to research. These students should already have successful experiences with college-level writing through AP courses in high school, or other challenging writing courses.

ENL 131 instructors are encouraged to develop project-based assignments where students investigate particular issues through both secondary and primary research. Enl 131 should include a pretty extensive library component, where students gain experience in searching electronic databases (both library databases and other Internet material) for reliable information and develop their results for particular audiences, possibly crossing multiple genres (creative non-fiction; social science research; humanities research) and multiple modalities (print-based essays, visual collages, oral presentations, poster presentations, slide shows). But again, instructors are encouraged to rely on experience and expertise to guide them. What's most important in selecting themes to guide the projects is to focus on something about which you as an instructor are passionate, as well as something about which you think you can inspire students’ passions.

In English 131, students should focus on developing research questions, engaging in secondary research through the library databases and online sources, incorporating primary research through observations, interviews, or autobiographical reflections, and constructing a sustained argument that mobilizes a variety of primary and secondary resources toward a thoughtful, college-level analysis. The main objective in terms of critical reading should be for students to learn to locate, evaluate, and incorporate secondary sources on their own. Instructors should set up an orientation in the library early in the session. To address the line in the course description about “emerging media,” you might provide some exercises on evaluating online sources, as well as navigating some of the electronic databases in the library such as JSTOR, ERIC, and Lexis-Nexis. Students will need practice at developing search queries, sifting through sources to select appropriate sources, and synthesizing that material to form a larger argument.

Source material in ENL 131 might be more academic in order to examine rhetorical strategies for building academic arguments. Instructors are encouraged to look at rhetorical strategies of the social sciences for building case studies, ethnographic accounts, action-teacher research, observational research, content analysis, and other practices of qualitative and quantitative research. At the same time, many faculty members may be wary of teaching research methodology for a field with which they are not entirely familiar, so again, this is something that would need to be adapted to the style and interests of the instructor.

Instructors in ENL 131 might also use a reader such as Rereading America to lay groundwork, and then move on to students locating their own sources. A handbook such as A Writer's Reference may also be helpful for teaching conventions of developing arguments and documenting sources. Students in ENL 131 should have more extensive exposure to principles of citing information from varied sources according to a system of documentation such as MLA, though at this level, a basic knowledge of APA formatting might be helpful for students in their coursework. It also might be appropriate to discuss the rhetoric of systems of citation rather than intensive focus on the minutia of citation systems. Students should know that different systems of citation exists and understand that they have to adapt their format to the discipline in which they are engaging.

Summary

The larger objective of the assignments in both ENL 130 and ENL 131 should be the development of critical thinking skills and internalization of conventions of academic reasoning (privileging logos and ethos over pathos, for example), in addition to fluency in language and rhetorical persuasiveness. Special attention might be paid to the language and rhetoric of scholarly writing, such as the use of unbiased language in relation to gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability, class, sexual orientation, and other markers of difference; avoiding hyperbole, inflammatory language, and over-generalizations; and attending to the relationships between ethics and academic inquiry. In either class, students will write a minimum of 5,000 words of varied styles and forms of writing. At midterm, all instructors are required to submit midterm grades.  During the week before finals (Dead Week), instructors should not schedule exams, quizzes, or major papers. Usually in First-Year Writing, the last week of classes is devoted to conferences or workshops on final papers or portfolios. Having students turn in papers during final exams is acceptable.