Full Course Descriptions for ENWR105 and ENWR106

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ENWR105 College Writing I
Course Proposal

I.   Catalog Description
Expository writing.  A workshop course to develop thinking and writing abilities through frequent writing assignments based on critical response to intellectually challenging questions.  Emphasis is on the writing process—prewriting, drafting, revising, using peer and teacher critique, editing, and proofreading.  A minimum of five essays is required, including an extensive documented essay that requires research.  Evaluation is partly based on a portfolio of revised writing. With ENWR106, this course satisfies the two-semester GENED 2000 Communication Requirement in Writing/Literature.  Prerequisite: Passing score on the MSU Basic Skills Test or successful completion of ENWR100.

II.  General Aims of the Course
Through this first semester of intensive writing students learn to write clearly focused, developed, organized and analytic essays in response to contemporary intellectual, social and cultural issues that confront our society.  The dual emphases of this course—on writing strong, clear, analytic essays and thinking carefully about complex issues—are complementary because to become an academic writer means to become an active or generative thinker.  This course aims to inspire and challenge students with issues that are of relevance to them as they negotiate the complex world of the university and the broader culture. 

Intellectual Aims
To develop as a writer is to become an active participant in the intellectual discourse of our culture and to cease to be a passive recipient of information and ideology. College Writing I: Intellectual Prose asks students to explore, amongst other issues, issues of marginalization—an experience that many of our students have already encountered or participated in, even if they are not aware of it.  By increasing students’ awareness of their own subject positions and enabling them to find an entry point to such discussions, this course helps students to develop the ability for critical reflection and discursive agency. 

Process Writing Aims
The ability to engage in generative thought cannot be directly taught, for it is not reducible to any set of skills.  Rather, writing and thinking are best learned as processes.  College Writing I: Intellectual Prose serves to introduce students to the writing processes that writers find valuable in helping them to create meaningful, clear, and intellectually valuable prose.  These processes include freewriting, brainstorming and other pre-writing activities; receiving and giving constructive commentary to peers; learning revision through writing multiple drafts; and editing and proofreading.

Documented Essay
One documented essay is required.  In this essay, students are asked to advance their thinking about a topic that interests them by entering into dialogue with published writers who have written about the topic. The goal is not so much to summarize what others have written but rather to use other writers’ thinking to help student writers work out their thinking.  Students are asked not to think of this essay as a "gathering-and-presenting-information" essay, but rather a "figuring-something-out and thinking-it-through" essay.  A secondary aim for the documented essay is to gain more facility using a standard form of academic documentation. In writing the documented essay students will learn how to find and evaluate appropriate source materials and to integrate ideas and information into an essay using quotation, summary, and paraphrase.  Students will be expected to incorporate four or more sources, using appropriate academic documentation style, such as MLA.

Portfolio
The final grade will be in part determined by evaluation of a selective portfolio of revised student writing. While learning the processes of successful writing, students will amass a considerable quantity of writing, much of which will be revised several times.  The portfolio is in lieu of the final exam and is therefore due on exam day, and not on the final day of class.

III.  Course Objectives
1)  To write clearly focused expository—argumentative, analytic, or exploratory--essays on matters of public concern.
2)  To write essays marked by intellectual engagement and critical reflection.
3)  To demonstrate control over a range of techniques that promote strong writing: freewriting, prewriting, planning, drafting, revising, and editing.
4)  To become a constructive commentator on texts written by peers.

1. To demonstrate the skills of thorough and substantial revision, organization, editing, and proofreading. 
2. To find and evaluate appropriate source materials.
3. To integrate ideas and information into one’s own writing using quotation, summary, and paraphrase.
4. To become an engaged and critical reader and writer about contemporary intellectual, social, and cultural issues of a multicultural, international society.

IV.  Content and Scope
The primary focus of the course is the students’ own writing, and therefore writing, revision, and discussion of student writing in small and large groups will dominate class time. Teachers’ and peers’ written comments on student writing—in progress as well as in its final stages—are central to the learning process. Secondary focus will be on the assigned texts that prompt student writing and thinking.

College Writing I: Intellectual Prose introduces students to writing from a range of disciplines through thematic units.  Thematic unit topics reflect some of the diversity of interests in our student population and in the larger intellectual community on campus.  Topics are drawn from contemporary and historically-rooted ethical, cultural and intellectual issues. College Writing I is a multicultural course both in the diversity of writers that students read, and through the topics students read and write about.  Thematic units invite students to think, discuss, and write about subjects of social, cultural and personal significance such as issues relating to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and national identity. 

V.  Requirements and Methods of Evaluation

1. Students are required to demonstrate their preparation for assigned readings either through journal writing, participation on a web-based bulletin board, or class discussion.
2. Informal writing (journals, response papers, Web postings) will be used to generate and evaluate response to assigned readings and student papers.
3. Students are required to participate in peer critique.
4. Students are required to complete five (or more) different revised essays that have been produced with attention to all phases of the writing process. One of these essays must be a documented essay.  (Approximately 6,000 words total)
5. Students are required to complete a portfolio—a selective collection of revised essays—for final evaluation.  It is recommended that instructors also require students to write a short reflective essay describing and documenting their own growth and development as writers, as well as their semester-end assessment of their own writing strengths and weaknesses.
6. Formal assessment will be based not on tests but on written assignments.
7. Written assignments will be evaluated on a range of criteria including focus, development, organization, analysis/critical thinking, voice, clarity, evidence of productive use of the writing process, and conformity to MSU’s Standards for Formal Written Work.
8. Evaluation will also be based on meaningful contribution to class and small group discussion, on the ability to act as a useful peer commentator, on regular attendance, and on overall improvement in writing and thinking over the course of the semester.

 College Writing II: Writing and Literary Study
Course Proposal

I.  Catalog Description
The second semester of the First Year Writing sequence.  Emphasis on the writing process continues as students study works of fiction, poetry, and drama in order to improve their writing and their understanding and appreciation of complex literary texts.   Required: approximately 6000 words of formal writing.  

II.  General Aims of the Course
The course has two principal purposes.  As a writing course, it continues the development of the thinking, writing, and reading abilities cultivated in College Writing I.  As a literature course, it both builds upon and challenges students’ previous experiences as readers of literary texts. 

The general course goals are:

1. Further improvement in writing, thinking, and reading abilities
2. Improved ability to respond to, interpret, and analyze complex literary works
3. Understanding and appreciation of literature as an art form
4. Understanding of the nature of literary representation
5. Understanding of the roles of the reader and the text in the literary experience, and of the social, cultural, historical, and political contexts that bear upon the production and reception of literary texts

III.  Course Objectives
A. Writing

1. To write clearly focused, interpretive, analytical essays about literary works, based on textual evidence
2. To continue to develop, through practice, techniques that promote good writing at every phase of the writing process: techniques for planning, organizing, drafting, revision, editing, and proofreading
3. To continue to improve as a constructive commentator on texts written by peers

B.  Literature

Students learn to write interpretive, analytical essays about literary works, based on textual evidence.  In the process, they learn:

1. to use various techniques for engaging with literary works
2. to examine literary works from different perspectives and to understand why different critical approaches yield different interpretive results.  These perspectives or critical approaches are not intended to be the primary focus of study, but the course will be informed by the kinds of questions these approaches raise. Note: Instructors will organize the course around theoretical questions, but students will not be learning critical theory as such
3. to engage in critical thinking about the interpretations of others, including peers, the instructor, and literary critics— framing arguments and evaluating those of others, as well as the interpretations and evidence supporting them
4. to understand why all interpretations reflect the knowledge, values, experience, and political and cultural orientations of the interpreters
5. to appreciate the significance and artistic use of formal literary characteristics and to understand why discussion and study of literary works always involves significant attention to these qualities, particularly those relating to genre (e.g., narrative techniques, poetic forms, dramatic conventions, stylistic devices)
6. to inquire into commonly expressed concerns about literature and literary study (See Content and Scope, Item 7, below)
7. to examine some of the ethical issues involved in literary study, including the implications of choosing one interpretation or interpretive strategy over another, the necessity for evaluation as well as interpretation of literary texts, and the value of intellectual honesty in making use of others’ work. 

IV.      Content and Scope

1. Process-based writing assignments involving analysis and interpretation

2. Frequent formal writing:  several essays totaling 6000 words

 

Additionally, instructors are encouraged to require informal writing such as journals, in-class essay examinations, and postings on web discussion forums, as well as creative writing (fiction, poetry, drama). 

3. Text selections include

1. a choice of literary works from at least three genres: fiction, poetry, drama
2. American and British literature dating after the mid-nineteenth century (approximately two-thirds of selections)
3. international literature and earlier British and American literature (approximately one-third of selections)
4. canonical and noncanonical literature
5. U.S. multicultural literature
6. literature by women
7. a few nonfiction texts for comparison

 

4. Practice with various strategies for engaging with literary works:

1. rereading
2. close reading
3. tracking textual elements and structural features
4. recording reader response
5. testing the adequacy and validity of interpretations by consulting the text and comparing one’s own reading with those of others

5. Introduction to several of the more widely practiced interpretive strategies of literary study. These might include, but are not limited to, formalism, historicism, feminism, cultural studies and Marxism, and psychoanalytic and reader-response approaches.

 

6. Attention to topics arising out of students’ perennial questions, issues, and misconceptions regarding literature and literary study.  Common examples are listed below. Individual instructors will add to this list as they deem necessary. 

1. authorship and the relevance of authorial intention
2. universality and the literary canon (including issues related to diversity, e.g. gender, race, class)
3. variety vs. correctness in interpretation
4. "hidden meaning" in literary texts
5. the differences between studying literature as a discipline and reading for personal pleasure, discovery, enrichment, and validation
6. the relationship of adaptations to literary works
7. the relationship of literary study to academic and career success

VIII.   Requirements and Methods of Evaluation

1. Interpretive, analytical essays on literary works (approximately 6000 words total) to be evaluated on quality of thinking (interpretation, analysis, argument), organization, clarity, control over sentence-level error, and—where appropriate—use of source materials. 
2. Formal writing will conform to the university’s "Standards for Formal Written Work."
3. No major examinations using fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, or true/false questions.

 

August 2006