First-Year Composition

 

Basic Writing

 

The Writing Center

 
 

 

Spring 2007 TA Orientation

When? Friday, January 12, 2007, 12-5 (lunch provided, beginning at 11:30)

Where? The Writing Center

Why? The new English 102 curriculum will be our primary focus; however, those of you who are not teaching this curriculum directly should find the orientation useful as well because you will, in fact, be teaching many of these E102 students by helping them work through the curriculum in one-on-one sessions in the Writing Center.

 

Before the Orientation, you should read . . .

Downs, Doug and Elizabeth Wardle. “Teaching About Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning FYC as Introduction to Writing Studies.” CCC, forthcoming.  <http://faculty.tamuc.edu/scarter/archive/Wardle_Downs_CCCrevision.pdf>

Those of us working in Writing Studies are confronted by the fact that our own research and theory calls our cornerstone course—and the underlying assumptions upon which it is based—into question. Added to this difficulty is the fact that few outside our own discipline know we exist; if they do know we exist, they know little or nothing about what we do as writing scholars. Certainly, our own research and theory about the nature of writing has done little to influence public conceptions of writing. These two problems—teaching at odds with our research and public misconceptions about writing and Writing Studies—can both be addressed through a Writing Studies pedagogy. In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a such a pedagogy.  This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for FYC.  It seeks instead to improve students’ understanding of writing, rhetoric, language, and literacy in a course that is topically oriented to reading and writing as scholarly inquiry and encourages more realistic conceptions of writing.  

Carter, Shannon. “Chapter 1: Introduction” and “Chapter 2: Narrating Literacy.” Literacies in Context. Southlake, Texas: Fountainhead Press, 2007. 5-39.  <http://faculty.tamuc.edu/scarter/archive/Carter%20Reader%202006.pdf>

Malley, Suzanne Blum and Amy Hawkins. “Ethnographic Inquiry as Writing Pedagogy.” Teaching Composition. McGraw Hill, February 2006. <http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/tc/blummalleyhawkins/blumANDhawkins_module.html>. December 22, 2006. 

 

Tentative Agenda for Orientation

Lunch provided, starting at 11:30 (meet in the Writing Center)

12-1:30: Discuss theoretical framework for program via Downs and Wardle and Malley and Hawkins

1:30-2:00: ball-using and general writing (Iris Johnson ala David Russell
"Activity Theory")

2-2:15 (break)

2:15-3:30: Literacies in Context and Discussion Strategies/informal writing
assignments/other innovations (Terry Peterman, among others TBA)

3:30-3:45 (break)

3:45-5:00 (meet in HL 203) "Celebration of Student Writing" (the culminating
project). Information on this event as it occurred at Eastern Michigan University can be found at http://www.emich.edu/english/fycomp/celebration/index.htm. We will also discuss the possibility of submitting top student essays to the journal Young Scholars in Writing (http://www.bk.psu.edu/Academics/Degrees/26432.htm)