W350 1831-1834 STAFF
Advanced Expository Writing

1831 9:05a-9:55a MWF (25) 3 cr.
1832 8:00a-9:15a TR (25) 3 cr.
1833 9:30a-10:45a TR (25) 3 cr. Cariello (description follows)
1834 4:00p-5:15p TR (25) 3 cr. Sperry (description follows)

COAS INTENSIVE WRITING SECTION. PREREQUISITE: W131 OR EQUIVALENT
This advanced writing course focuses on the interconnected activities of writing and reading. It engages students through a series of writing/reading assignments in the kinds of responding, analyzing, and evaluating that are part of the work in many fields in the university. Students will work closely on a variety of texts, including their own writing, in order to develop an understanding of the assumptions, choices, and techniques that comprise the writing process.

FOR CARIELLO SECTION 1833:
THIS SECTION OF W350 HAS BEEN DESIGNATED FOR EDUCATION MAJORS

TOPIC: THE TEACHER AS WRITER

This section of W350 has been designated for the Education major or for those seeking secondary teaching certification. It fulfills the intensive writing requirements of both the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences.

The aims of this course are threefold: first, to help education students further develop their writing skills; second, to explore key issues in teaching and learning; and third, to provide a model of inquiry about education that prospective teachers can bring to their future work. In short, this course is designed to help education students become reflective practitioners of their craft.

Through a sequence of writing assignments, students will be asked to analyze various viewpoints on teaching and learning with an eye toward developing arguments about current issues such as multiculturalism, bilingualism, literacy, and the ways in which race, class and gender play out in the classroom. Course work includes two essays of five to seven pages, one essay of up to ten pages, workshop responses, reading summaries and group presentations.

FOR SPERRY SECTION 1834:

THIS SECTION OF W350 HAS BEEN DESIGNATED FOR EDUCATION MAJORS

This section of W350 has been designated for Education majors or for those seeking secondary certification. It fulfills the advanced writing requirements of both the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences.

“I think it is wrong to teach late-adolescents that writing is an expression of individual thoughts and feelings. It makes them suckers and, I think, it makes them powerless, at least to the degree that it makes them blind to tradition, power and authority as they are present in language and culture.”
-- David Bartholomae

“…we [need to] help students learn to write language that conveys to others a sense of their own experience….I’m thinking about autobiographical stories, moments, sketches—perhaps even a piece of fiction or poetry now and again.”
-- Peter Elbow

How to teach writing has been the subject of lively debate for many years now, so that as you consider entering secondary teaching, you may find yourself having to sort out the implications of various practices, aims, and roles. The purpose of this section of W350 is to help you improve your own skills as a writer and reader while examining some current approaches to writing instruction in academic contexts.

We will explore the relation among various approaches to the teaching of writing and how those create conflicts in aims and practices in writing classrooms. By examining the development of some key concepts, we will try to understand some of the influences on our ideas about how to teach writing and the limitations those ideas place on our students. The reading assignments will ask you to think about terms such as error, the writing process, discourse community, growth, and voice: Are those consistent metaphors? Who or what is privileged by various views of each, with what probable effects? And so on.

There will be 2 major papers (4-5 pages), as well as 3-4 shorter writings (2-3 pages). Writing assignments will include: an analysis of your experience in writing classrooms in the context of the course readings; practice with inquiry-based writing on a set of readings on the issue of Japanese internment during World War II, including summary, analytical synthesis, and position papers over those readings.

Tentative selection of texts:
A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966, Joseph Harris (Prentice-Hall)
Writing Analytically, 2nd edition, David Rosenwasser & Jill Stephen (Harcourt Brace) A course packet of readings to be provided in class
Optional: The Longman Handbook for Writer and Readers, Chris M. Anson & Robert A. Schwegler (Longman)