College of DuPage
Liberal Arts
English 1101: Composition Workshop
Dear Students,
Welcome to English 1101 online, the first of a two-semester writing sequence. The college course description for E1101 reads, in part, “[i]ntroduces students to college-level writing as a process of developing and supporting a thesis in an organized essay” and “requires students to read and think critically.” In this course, your writing will be the main focus, but we will also read a variety of texts: both verbal and visual. Your textbook (required) for the course is a The Best American Essays (Fifth College Edition) edited by Robert Atwan, and it will provide you with interesting and provocative examples of the kind of essays being written today.
Below, on the Course Information page, you will find the nitty-gritty details of the class: like where to buy or rent you text, when & how work is turned in, etc.); here, I’d like to describe the underlying philosophy of the class as I teach it.
The first premise of the class is that we learn through writing: we discover what we think, we learn about what we know and don’t know. Writing helps us internalize, shape, and makes sense of what we read, see, and experience; it is also an essential way of communicating—especially in this online classroom environment. The poet William Stafford said “ . . .writing is one of the great, free human activities;” and I would add it is a great “freeing” activity for our minds—we can go anywhere in writing.
I will be asking you to do a lot of what is called informal writing on discussion boards and in your class blogs. What I mean by informal writing is the kind of writing you might do in a journal, class notebook, or diary. It is personal but not private; it is closer to a stream of consciousness than an organized and revised piece of writing. It does not get caught up in worries about correctness and pays attention to standards only as far as is necessary to avoid confusion. It is writing used to think through a response to a question, or to mull over what you have read, or to respond to a peer’s draft. It may seem tedious and tiring to do this writing, but in the long run, when you sit down to put together drafts for your essays, I think you will find the informal pieces of writing invaluable. Informal writing will also serves as the main means of “discussing” ideas and drafts with your classmates. Informal Writing cannot be assessed using the same standards as revised and polished work: it is characterized as formative work and will be assessed by the rubrics developed to help you see where you should be putting your energies as you write. Discussions and Blogs will have separate rubrics (what is a rubric you ask? See the explanation of rubrics on the Rubric page).
Informal writing, however, is not just a means of recording what you think and want to say; it is a means of discovering what you might want to say: to quote Stafford again: “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he [sic] is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.” Writing generates thinking and thinking generates more writing. I want each of you to experience a “sense of plenty” in your writing and thinking; the more you write, the more comfortable you will become with your thoughts and the process of putting things in written language.
During this class, you will experience the following:
· Generating many kinds of writing for different audiences and purposes: private, personal, narrative, analytical, and critical
· Writing to develop and focus ideas around a thesis or question
· Learning how to provide and receive constructive feedback
· Experimenting with ways of revising and organizing essays
· Reading and responding to a variety of visual and verbal texts
· Responding to and incorporating the ideas/words of others in your own writing in accurate and effective ways
· Asking questions which lead to beginning research and documentation
· Learning how to proof read and edit final drafts and where to turn for help when you have questions about usage and correctness.
In all classes, Academic Honesty (see your student handbook or Student Affairs tab on the COD website) is important, but it is more in the foreground for a class focused on and built almost entirely of your writing: any writing you do for this class must be yours—you will be turning in drafts and you will be revising these drafts with the my help and that of your peers. It will be important to see and learn from the progression between drafts. Because of this, no essay will be accepted in your portfolio for which there is no earlier, rough draft.
Where will all this informal writing be taking you? To a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and toward a final portfolio of work you have selected to revise and polish—a selection that you feel illustrates your best writing. If informal writing is assessed using rubrics for formative work, then the portfolio and its accompanying metacognitive writing, will be assessed using summative rubrics. What you wonder, is metacognitive writing and what does it have to do with a portfolio?
One of the things you will be doing throughout the semester is continually looking at your writing process: what is easy for you? what is difficult? what questions do you have about writing? reading? What challenges you the most when you revise? These are the kinds of questions we will be thinking and writing about as we go through the semester; they are the kinds of questions that will help you know yourself as a writer/learner and help you improve.
As with many things in life, learning how to write creatively and well doesn’t happen in one semester, or even two: it is an ongoing process. What I hope you are able to do in this class is to build a strong foundation for the rest of your college writing and the writing you will do beyond college.
I look forward to getting to know each of you and your writing. Please read the course outline for more detailed descriptions of the number of and kinds of rough drafts you will be writing, as well as for more information about final portfolio, and other course information.
This is an online class, so I will not be holding traditional office hours: I will be available immediately via email or phone on the following days/times: Tuesdays 10:00 am—12:00 pm and Thursdays 8:00 pm to 10:00pm. Any other time, I will respond to emails within 24-36 hours.
Cheers!
Dr. Glynis Benbow-Niemier
[email protected]
630-942-2800, ext. 00000
All there is to thinking . . . is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing
which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
Liberal Arts
English 1101: Composition Workshop
Dear Students,
Welcome to English 1101 online, the first of a two-semester writing sequence. The college course description for E1101 reads, in part, “[i]ntroduces students to college-level writing as a process of developing and supporting a thesis in an organized essay” and “requires students to read and think critically.” In this course, your writing will be the main focus, but we will also read a variety of texts: both verbal and visual. Your textbook (required) for the course is a The Best American Essays (Fifth College Edition) edited by Robert Atwan, and it will provide you with interesting and provocative examples of the kind of essays being written today.
Below, on the Course Information page, you will find the nitty-gritty details of the class: like where to buy or rent you text, when & how work is turned in, etc.); here, I’d like to describe the underlying philosophy of the class as I teach it.
The first premise of the class is that we learn through writing: we discover what we think, we learn about what we know and don’t know. Writing helps us internalize, shape, and makes sense of what we read, see, and experience; it is also an essential way of communicating—especially in this online classroom environment. The poet William Stafford said “ . . .writing is one of the great, free human activities;” and I would add it is a great “freeing” activity for our minds—we can go anywhere in writing.
I will be asking you to do a lot of what is called informal writing on discussion boards and in your class blogs. What I mean by informal writing is the kind of writing you might do in a journal, class notebook, or diary. It is personal but not private; it is closer to a stream of consciousness than an organized and revised piece of writing. It does not get caught up in worries about correctness and pays attention to standards only as far as is necessary to avoid confusion. It is writing used to think through a response to a question, or to mull over what you have read, or to respond to a peer’s draft. It may seem tedious and tiring to do this writing, but in the long run, when you sit down to put together drafts for your essays, I think you will find the informal pieces of writing invaluable. Informal writing will also serves as the main means of “discussing” ideas and drafts with your classmates. Informal Writing cannot be assessed using the same standards as revised and polished work: it is characterized as formative work and will be assessed by the rubrics developed to help you see where you should be putting your energies as you write. Discussions and Blogs will have separate rubrics (what is a rubric you ask? See the explanation of rubrics on the Rubric page).
Informal writing, however, is not just a means of recording what you think and want to say; it is a means of discovering what you might want to say: to quote Stafford again: “A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he [sic] is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.” Writing generates thinking and thinking generates more writing. I want each of you to experience a “sense of plenty” in your writing and thinking; the more you write, the more comfortable you will become with your thoughts and the process of putting things in written language.
During this class, you will experience the following:
· Generating many kinds of writing for different audiences and purposes: private, personal, narrative, analytical, and critical
· Writing to develop and focus ideas around a thesis or question
· Learning how to provide and receive constructive feedback
· Experimenting with ways of revising and organizing essays
· Reading and responding to a variety of visual and verbal texts
· Responding to and incorporating the ideas/words of others in your own writing in accurate and effective ways
· Asking questions which lead to beginning research and documentation
· Learning how to proof read and edit final drafts and where to turn for help when you have questions about usage and correctness.
In all classes, Academic Honesty (see your student handbook or Student Affairs tab on the COD website) is important, but it is more in the foreground for a class focused on and built almost entirely of your writing: any writing you do for this class must be yours—you will be turning in drafts and you will be revising these drafts with the my help and that of your peers. It will be important to see and learn from the progression between drafts. Because of this, no essay will be accepted in your portfolio for which there is no earlier, rough draft.
Where will all this informal writing be taking you? To a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and toward a final portfolio of work you have selected to revise and polish—a selection that you feel illustrates your best writing. If informal writing is assessed using rubrics for formative work, then the portfolio and its accompanying metacognitive writing, will be assessed using summative rubrics. What you wonder, is metacognitive writing and what does it have to do with a portfolio?
One of the things you will be doing throughout the semester is continually looking at your writing process: what is easy for you? what is difficult? what questions do you have about writing? reading? What challenges you the most when you revise? These are the kinds of questions we will be thinking and writing about as we go through the semester; they are the kinds of questions that will help you know yourself as a writer/learner and help you improve.
As with many things in life, learning how to write creatively and well doesn’t happen in one semester, or even two: it is an ongoing process. What I hope you are able to do in this class is to build a strong foundation for the rest of your college writing and the writing you will do beyond college.
I look forward to getting to know each of you and your writing. Please read the course outline for more detailed descriptions of the number of and kinds of rough drafts you will be writing, as well as for more information about final portfolio, and other course information.
This is an online class, so I will not be holding traditional office hours: I will be available immediately via email or phone on the following days/times: Tuesdays 10:00 am—12:00 pm and Thursdays 8:00 pm to 10:00pm. Any other time, I will respond to emails within 24-36 hours.
Cheers!
Dr. Glynis Benbow-Niemier
[email protected]
630-942-2800, ext. 00000
All there is to thinking . . . is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing
which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It