UWP 390: Seminar in the Teaching of Writing
Thursdays 6:10-9:00 PM
396 Voorhies
Professor Chris Thaiss
Office: 171 Voorhies
Phone: 539-754-9197
Email: cjthaiss@ucdavis.edu
Office Hours: M W 9-10 and by appt.
| Required Readings | Schedule of Classes | Assignments | Grading Policy |
This seminar specifically prepares you to teach UWP 1, the University Writing Program's introduction to academic writing at the university level. This course is meant to prepare students for the varied challenges they will face as writers in their courses across the curriculum. Since Davis students major in a wide variety of disciplines, all sharing some principles of discourse but each also distinctive in its ways of thinking and its modes of expression, the purposes of the first-year writing course are multiple and complex.
In UWP 390, you will do the practical work of designing a syllabus and choosing textbooks; but more essential than those tasks will be your thoughtful encounters with theory and practice in composition studies, including your delving into some controversies of the field, probing the many--sometimes conflicting--models of how writers learn and how writing can be taught. We will study a small part of the 2500-year history of the field, and how our own local version of the composition course has changed, under the pressures of cultural change and technology innovation. I trust that our discussions in class and online, as well as our sharing of methods and principles, will have the same energy that characterizes the entire field. I look forward to working with you.
Cheryl Glenn, Melissa Goldthwaite. The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing. 6th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. (SMG)
Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, Kurt Schick, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. New York: Oxford, 2001. (CP)
I will expect you to become familiar with and to use for your seminar presentation, draft syllabus, and book review project various composition journals and professional books located in Shields Library, as well as composition textbooks from the collection in the Main Office (by Dee Shannon's desk).
I strongly recommend your joining (at the greatly reduced student rates) the National Council of Teachers of English. Membership includes a subscription to a journal of your choice and email receipt of the NCTE Inbox Newsletter.
In this seminar, you will also be visiting a number of websites devoted to composition at various places in the U.S.,among them the Council of Writing Program Administrators and the WAC Clearinghouse. Among local websites of interest are the UWP homepage, the Learning Skills Center, and the Campus Community Book Project.
Of particular interest to students of composition at Davis are our annual magazine of excellent student prose,Prized Writing, and our peer-reviewed journal of the teaching of writing,Writing on the Edge.
For background for your demonstration/lessons and for your further inquiries into all matters compositional and rhetorical, I also recommend the CompPile database (maintained by Richard Haswell and Glenn Blalock).
4/3 Introductions and Overview
4/10 Models/Theories of Teaching College Writing--have read SMG, Ch. 11 and essays by Emig, Bartholomae, and Lunsford/Glenn, plus the description of UWP 1 on the UWP homepage. In addition, bring to class the roughly 500- word "position paper" on the teaching of writing (see Assignments)
4/17 Models I: "Process" and "Expressivist"--have read Tobin chapter (CP); Chs. 1-3 and Sommers and Bloom essays from SMG. Guest consultant: Aliki Dragona, UWP Assistant Director for the Lower Division. Proposals for Demonstration Lessons due.
4/24 Models II: "Rhetorical" and "Writing across the Curriculum"--have read McLeod chapter of CP; Chs. 6 and 7 from SMG. Guest consultant: Ellen Abrams, Writing Specialist, Learning Skills Center.
5/1 Models III: "Feminist" and "Basic Writing"--have read Jarratt chapter of CP; Rose, Leki, Moss/Walters , and Horner/Trimbur essays from SMG. Demonstration lessons begin.
5/8 Models IV: "Technology"--have read Ch. 10 and Selfe essay from SMG. We will meet this evening in 247 Olson. Demonstration lessons.
Note: To prepare for this class, part of the "reading assignment" is to browse a number of online tools in composition and rhetoric, including
* blogs (such as those for teachers and program leaders on the NCTE and CCCC websites)
* multi-media journals, such as Computers and Composition and Kairos.
* resources for writing students, such as the OWLs at Purdue, George Mason, and MIT
* online "communities" for teachers and schools, such as The WAC Clearinghouse/International Network and the National Writing Project
* Computers-in-writing resources in the UWP (Don Meisenheimer, coordinator)
5/15 Models V: The Roles of Research in First-Year Composition--have read Ch. 9 in SMG. Demonstration lessons. Guest consultant: Sandy Vella, research librarian, Shields Library. The class will meet in 165 Shields Library.
5/22 Designing the First-Year Composition Course and Its Syllabus--have read Chs. 4 and 5 of SMG and sample 101 syllabi from binder in Main Office and UWP 1 web resource. We'll browse other Davis syllabi in class. Over the week following this class, I'll expect you to browse textbooks from the Main Office collection. Demonstration lessons.
5/29 Due online: Report of Visit to UWP 1 Teacher. No class meeing this week, but the wiki discussion will focus on syllabus design questions and ideas.
6/5 Drafts of syllabi due for workshop. Demonstration lessons. Conclusion of wiki-based forum.
6/10 8:30-10:30 PM (Scheduled Final Exam) Course Review and Evaluations. Due: (1) Book Review; (2) Revised Syllabus: (3) Final position paper. Demonstration lessons. NOTE: For our final meeting this week, we can try to find another mutually agreeable time and location.
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PRESENTATION/DEMONSTRATION LESSON YOU WILL CONDUCT:
By our third meeting (April 17), I'd like you to have chosen a subject for a thirty-minute presentation/demonstration pertinent to the teaching of writing. Previous classes have chosen such subjects as peer response techniques, ways to spark good descriptive writing, ways to build arguments, celebrating cultural diversity in the classroom, ways to help ESL students, ways to work with students with learning differences, computer applications, use of films and music in the comp class, etc.
The presentation/demonstration should include two parts: a very brief overview (no more than 10 minutes) of the issue and summary of several sources (books, articles) you have consulted, and a "hands-on" activity (about 15 minutes) that involves, for example, in-class writing, small-group discusion, etc.--showing how you'd apply your idea to the classroom. You should leave about 5 minutes for questions. Let me emphasize that these presentations are experimental--first drafts as it were. They are an opportunity for you to share with us techniques that you are thinking of using when you teach in the fall.
Plan to ask us to read an article (no more than ten pages) or give us some other type of homework (e.g., a writing or research exercise) in preparation for the presentation. You'll have to make enough copies of readings for the class, including me.
In preparing the presentation, I'd like you to consult at least four print or online sources closely pertinent to the subject. Your working bibliography of sources must be handed in for my comments at least two weeks prior to the scheduled date of your presentation. The field of composition and rhetoric possesses hundreds of useful journals. Shields Library has many titles from which you may choose.
You may work with one other person on this project, if you so choose. If so, the pair of you will have an hour for your presentation, and I'd expect you to consult and include in your bibliography at least seven sources. The additional time will allow you to give a more detailed intro and allow us more time for the "hands-on" exercise. If you do a joint presentation, it must be clear that there has been equal participation by both persons.
At the time of the presentation, please distribute to the class and to me (as one of your handouts) a one-to-two-page document that briefly summarizes your lesson and that briefly annotates the works you consulted.
TEACHING/WRITING 'BLOG on SmartSite Wiki:
Beginning with our second meeting (April 10), you'll write two entries per week in an electronic forum on the Smartsite wiki. Each week I'd like you to write reflectively about two topics: (1) the reading that you are doing and (2) your evolving self as a teacher or prospective teacher of writing.
Each week I will give the seminar a prompt that springs from our topic for that week or from our in-class discussions. I ask you to make two entries to the electronic forum each week: one between Friday and Monday and one between Tuesday and Thursday.
In this way, all of us will take part early in the week between classes and then later. These later responses can be reflections on comments made by other members of the seminar. I ask that your entries for the week total a minimum of one full screen of text. Entries should always maintain professional courtesy but should not avoid an honest, critical analysis of issues or of comments by other members of the seminar. When it works well, this forum has provided a great way to let us delve into important issues, share expertise and ideas, and get to know one another better as professionals.
POSITION PAPERS ON THE TEACHING OF WRITING:
Before our second meeting (Apr. 10) and before our final class, you will write 500-750-word statements of your "position" as teacher of writing: your goals, your sense of the issues, your sense of the students' needs, your questions, your doubts, your joys--anything that helps to define you as a teacher or prospective teacher at the present moment.
The second paper should take the first as its starting point and explore changes that have occurred in your position since the start of the course. I'll read your first paper after our second class and your final paper after our last class.
REVIEW OF A PROFESSIONAL BOOK:
At the last class, hand in as part of your folders a three-page analysis (about 750 words) of a professional book you have read during the course. The book is of your choice. If you wish, you may use the Shields Library collection or those in Voorhies. Please approve your choice with me. Write the analysis as if you were reviewing the book for a professional journal (e.g., The English Journal, CCC, Composition Studies). Focus on specific benefits the book would have for other teachers (or students, parents, policy makers, etc.). What does the book lack that you feel it should have? What questions does it raise in your mind? How might you use the book? If you wish, feel free to submit a discovery draft of your analysis up to two weeks before it is due, for my comments.
REPORT OF A VISIT TO A TEACHER OF UWP 1:
By May 29, please hand in online a detailed report (about 1000 words) on a visit you have made to a UWP 1 class taught by an experienced faculty member. Describe in detail and reflect on the class session. How was learning taking place in the class? What did the teacher do? The students? What ideas or techniques would you adapt to your own teaching? How might you modify what this teacher was doing? Why? If you can, talk with the teacher about his/her philosophy of teaching and include your reflections on these views as part of the report.
DRAFT AND REVISED DRAFT OF UWP 1 SYLLABUS
On June 5, the draft of your syllabus for UWP 1 will be due in class for the peer workshop. Bring three copies of the draft for the workshop. The revised draft will be due at our final class, June 10.
Because the syllabus at this point in your preparation for the Fall quarter will still lack some important details (e.g., some specific readings, fully-detailed writing assignments), your goal for this version of the syllabus will be to shape
* the types of assignments, their length and complexity, in as much detail as possible at this point
* the themes of the course (goals, emphases, key ideas)
* the pace and schedule of processes and deadlines
* tone
* policies and procedures
You should follow the good examples of more experienced syllabus-designers for the course, while using your own imagination. Follow as precisely as possible the format and policies of the UWP, as enacted in current syllabi; again, though, use your best judgment in adapting tone and policies to your vision for the course.
SEMINAR PARTICIPATION:
Your full, active, well-prepared, and thoughtful participation in our discussions is essential toward both the success of the course and your own success in it. I look forward to many evenings of productive, intense, enjoyable discussion and to excellent online conversations as well.
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I'll base your grade (Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory) on holistic assessment of all the work you hand in and perform online; on your active, thoughtful participation in the seminar; and on your presentation. Since so much of the work is experimental and exploratory, I'll be looking most closely for experimentation and exploration: speculative thought, trying out different ideas (including those you might feel initially uncomfortable with), asking questions, probing your assumptions and those of others, writing with imagination and a sense of possibilities.
I encourage you to express your reactions and opinions in regard to readings, issues, etc., but don't be satisfied (I won't) with just expressing your impressions. Look at pros and cons and try to entertain alternative points of view. All the issues we deal with in this course are controversial, and I'd like you in your writing to try to see through the eyes of persons who hold different views from those you bring to the discussion of each issue. Please don't hesitate to ask for my feedback or that of others.
Please remember that throughout the seminar I'll be getting to know you both as a scholar/thinker/writer and as a potential teacher of UC Davis writiing students. How you engage with me and others in the seminar and how you work with the assignments and deadlines of this course will help me imagine your future as a college teacher.