College Writing

EnglWrit 112: College Writing (fall 2019)

Welcome to College Writing! Englwrit 112 is the only course that satisfies the university’s CW requirement. A fundamental part of your General Education at UMass Amherst, this course emphasizes critical thinking and communication, consideration of plural perspectives, and self-reflection on one’s learning.

We have all been writing our entire lives, and you will keep writing long after this class. In this class we will aim to heighten your awareness about your writing practices and use of language(s), so that you can write better, and more consciously, as you continue on in college, work, and life. Writing and what makes writing “good” vary widely across time, place, language, technology, genre, and process. No 14-week course can teach all you need to know for every writing situation, but College Writing is designed to offer substantial instruction in the four modes of literacy—speaking, reading, writing, and listening—in order to practice these skills concurrently in a variety of writing situations.

Everyone can become a better writer, but you’ll need to work hard, take risks, spend significant amounts of time on your drafts and revisions, share your writing with others, and be a good reader for them. In short, we will write a lot, in pursuit of the following questions:

  • Where does writing knowledge come from?
  • How do writers change?
  • How does writing change?
  • Where does writing go?

Course objectives

By writing, reading, and participating in this course, you’ll work to improve your ability to

  • write for a variety of purposes, audiences, and contexts;
  • identify (and even play with) audience expectations and textual conventions;
  • use the writing process, esp. peer review and revision, to re-see and extend your thinking—thus writing essays in which your thinking evolves rather than essays that defend pre-formed positions;
  • develop your ideas through critical thinking, including analysis and synthesis;
  • effectively and critically find, use, and cite diverse sources of information;
  • copy-edit your writing by considering conventional usage alongside your purpose; and
  • develop effective writing processes and strategies to apply beyond the course.

Required texts and materials

  1. The Student Writing Anthology. Floch Arcello, Anna, ed. Plymouth, MI: Hayden-McNeil Publishing, 2019. Print. ISBN: 978-1-5339-1927-4. (You can purchase this book through the SPIRE Course Materials tool; search for Englwrit 112 on SPIRE to get the direct links. If you search for the book online, look for it using the ISBN number to ensure that you’re getting the correct year and editor.)
  2. A notebook for generative writing and other in-class and at-home writing activities
  3. A folder in which to compile each unit portfolio

Course Requirements

College Writing is designed based on scholarly research that has shown that 1) writing is a process and a social activity; 2) people learn to write by writing and giving/getting feedback, and 3) that writers can gain more control over their writing by cultivating an awareness of their own processes and strategies. The course’s four units will lead class members through these topics about writing that are central to the development of their writing:

  • Unit 1: Prior knowledge asks you to draw on personal experience to consider how your life has influenced your writing, and then analyze what this shows about how “prior knowledge” shapes writing practices in college.
  • Unit 2: writing development asks you to read what research tells us about how writers improve their writing and then analyze why myths about writing still exist.
  • Unit 3: rhetorical situations asks you to consider how the value of writing—and the languages shaping it—changes depending on the situation (who is writing and reading, for what purpose), and trace those changes across a series of situations.
  • Unit 4: writing circulation is a very brief unit that gives you space to reflect back on how far your writing has come in the semester and where it is headed next.

Each unit essay requires an extensive writing process, and each will introduce new challenges. In addition to unit essay writing, this process is carried out through the following activities:

  • Reading. In each unit, we will read 3-4 articles or chapters about writing. You will access these readings through our course Moodle page and in The Student Writing Anthology.
  • Writing about reading. Whenever you’re assigned a reading, you can expect to write during class about the reading. The purpose of these activities are to give you time to think about the readings, to prepare you to contribute to class discussion, to form ideas you can develop further in your unit essays, and to develop fluency in writing.
  • In-class speaking and listening. Throughout the semester, we’ll engage in a range of in-class activities, including peer response, and whole-class and small group discussions. These activities are designed to help you think about the course content, understand your classmates’ ideas, develop your own ideas for your essays, and revise your drafts.

Compiling your unit portfolios

For units 1-3, you’ll develop and submit a portfolio that will receive your grade for that unit. To grow as writers, we need to write and reflect, a lot—thus, each part of the process is required, and unit grades will be based on the entire portfolio, not only the final version of essays. Be sure to save every piece of writing because each portfolio will be required to include the following:

  • any generative writing from at-home or in-class activities that you want me to see;
  • your initial draft with feedback;
  • your revised draft with feedback from self, peers, instructor, or others;
  • your further revised and copy-edited final draft; and
  • a reflective cover letter about your process and the choices you made in compiling your portfolio.

Writing Community Membership

Creating a community that enables us to grow as writers depends on each person fulfilling responsibilities, offering mutual respect, and being receptive readers of one another’s writing. All students are expected to adhere to the university’s “Guidelines for Classroom Civility and Respect”: www.umass.edu/dean_students/codeofconduct/classroomcivility/). Speaking up during class is easier for some more than others, but there are a variety of ways to participate in pairs or small groups. I can help out if you don’t know how to enter the conversation—just let me know. Writing community responsibilities include the following:

  • Being prepared. This includes bringing required materials to class and engaging with readings.
  • Responding authentically to your peers. Research suggests that the instructor is not always the best reader for student writing—you need to practice writing for a variety of readers, and you need as many readers as you can get, especially readers who are not also grading you. That means you need to cultivate good intellectual relations with your classmates. Group work is difficult, and it’s sometimes easy to dismiss others’ readings of your papers. But you need to learn to trust others’ readings of your work; you need, also, to provide the kind of readings of others’ papers that you want as a writer.
  • Participating in small and large group activities. Our writing activities will include discussion among the entire class as well as small group exercises—during class time, possibly on Moodle forums. These activities are designed to help you write and reflect on your essay assignments.
  • Talking with you one-on-one about your experience in the course is one of my favorite parts of my job. You will be required to meet with me once during the semester, but I invite and encourage you to meet with me more often. These opportunities for individual instruction are invaluable for both of us.

Tentative Course Calendar

Please note that the calendar is “tentative” which means it is subject to change. It’s difficult to predict how any class will go, so occasionally things may be altered if I think changes will better facilitate your learning.

Unit 1: prior knowledge. where does writing knowledge come from?

Week 1

Tu     9/3          Introduction to class and to each other

Th     9/5          Discuss Yancey, Lunsford

Week 2

Tu     9/10         Discuss Brandt

Th     9/12         Writing Memory due; discuss Hayes

Week 3

Tu     9/17         Writing Autobiography Draft 1 due

Th     9/19         Discuss Tan

Week 4

Tu     9/24         Discuss Reyes, Mulombe

Th     9/26         Writing Autobiography Draft 2 due for peer review

Unit 2: writing development. how do writers change?

Week 5

Tu     10/1         Unit 1 Portfolio due; introduction to Unit 2

Th     10/3         Discuss Downs, Matsuda

Week 6

Tu     10/8         Discuss Sommers & Saltz

Th     10/10       Discuss Rose

Week 7

Tu     10/15       NO CLASS (university follows Monday schedule today)

Th     10/17       Writing Memes Draft 1 due for online peer review

Week 8

Tu     10/22       Discuss Sommers

Th     10/24       Writing Memes Draft 2 due for conferences; discuss Murray

Unit 3: rhetorical situations. how does writing change?

Week 9

Tu     10/29       Unit 2 Portfolio due; introduction to Unit 3; discuss Downs, Hawhee

Th     10/31       Discuss Thaiss & Zawacki, Lippi-Green

Week 10

Tu     11/5         Discuss Anzaldua, Munroe

Th     11/7         Short Rhetorical Analysis 1 due for peer review

Week 11

Tu     11/12       Discuss Munoz, Zanutti, Singh

Th     11/14       Short Rhetorical Analysis 2 due for peer review

Week 12

Tu     11/19       Long Rhetorical Analysis due

Th     11/21       Discuss Grabill et al.

M-F   11/25-29  NO CLASS (Thanksgiving recess)

Unit 4: writing circulation. Where does writing go?

Week 13

Th     12/3         Unit 3 Portfolio due; introduction to Unit 4

Tu     12/5         Discuss Taczak

Week 14

Tu     12/10       Writing Reflection Draft due for peer review

F       12/17       Final Writing Reflection due