R3: The First-Year Course

Studying the courses designed by Anson, Canagarajah, Hesse, and Inoue detailed in First -Year Composition: From Theory to Practice proved interesting. Each proposed components that I advocate, but they also left me with a very important question regarding the purpose of a first-year course.

First, I completely agree with Anson’s emphasis on small class sizes for optimal writing direction and feedback. I have found in my own experience that my writers in smaller classes realize the greatest growth. I emphasize the process and provide live feedback during the composing stage as well as the revision stage. I avoid lecture at all costs by sharing a piece of writing, whether it’s stream of consciousness, advertisement, narrative, etc., and then ask the class to identify what makes the genre. Then we compose a piece of the same genre, and I say “we” because I write, too. When I am stumped, I look at my students’ texts and offer feedback while they compose. When they are stumped, they look at mine and each others’ and do the same. This may be highly successful because the course is a creative writing elective, and all students there have chosen to be there, but most take the course to improve their own style, and it works. The constant feedback and small group size seem to foster significant advancements in composition.

Second, although I have not given a great deal of thought to ESL instruction, I had worked with UD’s English Language Institute many years ago, and that experience alone highlighted Canagarajah’s point about considering ESL students as multilingual instead. I really like that approach because it places greater value on what ESL students can bring to any instruction. Forming the course around variety bolsters the course’s practical application, especially when permitting collaborative research, as is frequently expected in the workplace.

Third, Hesse’s program most closely aligns with what I would consider a fully preparatory writing course. It questions writing solely as text and emphasizes the importance of writing separate from a response to literature. Of course, that is important in an English class, but in a writing class, there must be a more realistic view of writing. Hesse mentions the drive that context has over text, which is definitely worth noting. Based on my own experience, very little writing beyond college arises as a response to literature. Of the many engineers, doctors, lawyers, and even teachers that I know, very few write in response to literature. This touches on Anson’s initial point that “A” students were terribly unprepared for practical writing in the career world even though they could analyze literature with astounding perfection. They were not prepared for the jobs for which college seemed to be preparing them. I, therefore, agree with Hesse that context is very important, and knowing how to compose for varying contexts is even more vital.

Fourth, Inoue heavily emphasizes the labor concept. While I would find this aspect difficult to assess, I do find credence in his key points. The final product, I agree, does not have to be a written report. This relates to my fist response about the importance of digital creations. Where I greatly differ with Inoue is in his insistence that the work have an academic focus. I’m not sure what he means by that, but I immediately disdained this belief because solely academic writing does not prepare students for writing in their future. Herein lies my question: What exactly is the purpose of this writing course? Is it to prepare students for further English course writing? Is it to prepare them for future college level writing? Is it to prepare them for workplace writing? What exactly should a student derive from this course?

R3: Considering Context

As we quickly approach the due date for the initial work on our plan for next year, I find myself searching for common threads throughout all of the approaches we’ve been assigned so far.  One in particular has jumped out at me – the need to consider context.

As we tackled the first 4 readings, I found myself feeling (in certain cases) as though some of the material, though intriguing, may not be applicable in my classroom.  But as Paula Mathieu explicitly points out in her piece, understanding our “place” is critical in determining our approach to a first-year comp course.  As is evident in the numerous academic readings about FYC (Shipka lists 12+ in her suggested reading list, none of which include any of the professors asked to contribute to the text we are studying), approaches to this course inevitably change with time, audience, place, instructor, among other factors like required grading policy guidelines, number of students enrolled in the course, etc.

Crafting our courses will require us to consider all of the factors I mention and the contributing authors allude to, as well as, of course, others, as we adjust to schedule changes (snow days!, last minute assemblies, testing windows, prom, field trips, . . .) and other demands we encounter through implementation.  I do not suggest we not plan – in fact, the plan is CRITICAL – but rather that we heed the advice provided to us to consider our context.

In reflecting for this post, I flipped back through my annotations to look for obvious connections or ideas throughout the texts.  I discovered that many of the ideas I marked were ideas that I thought sounded fun and engaging to teach (like Mathieu’s researched interview – I found this assignment terribly interesting) – I was thinking of myself in the context of the course – what might I enjoy teaching.  I also noticed many question marks with notes like “how might this work at Conrad?” or “would this work in the HS setting?” (like Reid’s publicly posted forums and grading policy). With these notes, I was considering the students sitting in my classroom – my audience.  I even discovered a note in which I mentioned a particular student and how the strategy might be particularly successful for him (I taught him as a 10th grader and know he is registered for this course next year).  Designing a course with particular students in mind has obvious implications (not all positive, of course), but the context in which I will be teaching this course next year (which includes teaching 15 out of the 20 students whom I taught as 10th graders) facilitates some ability for me to consider the context of the particular learners in my classroom to customize the activities to meet some of their specific needs.  This context will be available to me as long as I continue to teach 10th graders and E110 students at Conrad.

To be clear, my plan is not to design this course year after year with my particular students in mind, but I mention my unique context as a consideration, one that is impossible for me to remove from my thinking as I begin to piece together the approach and syllabus for E110 at Conrad.  We must be sure that the context of our individual styles, students, school requirements, and beyond work their way into our course plans, in the same way that each contributor designed courses that met the context of their unique situations.