PART I

We imagine that most people will use The New Humanities Reader in their first-year composition courses, as we do at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the anthology was developed. The chief goal of such a course is to teach students how to compose an expository essay that reflects their own point of view and that demonstrates thoughtful engagement with complex readings of some length. Writing that deliberates upon the ideas of others in a thoughtful way is essential preparation for both writing at the University and engagement in civic life.

The New Humanities Reader encourages students to see themselves as participants in an ongoing written “conversation” about the most important issues of our time: globalization, the rise of the “knowledge society,” biotechnology, environmental decline, the encounter between different regions and cultures, the changing nature of identity, and the search for enduring values beyond the prospect of seemingly random change. This conversational or dialogic model of writing projects an imagined community that includes the authors of the assigned texts, the instructor, other students in the class, and anyone else who might be interested. It assumes also that in the absence of definitive “answers,” the writer’s most important task is the understanding of complex issues and the communication of this understanding to others.

The New Humanities Reader presupposes that the context for writing is always prior reading, and in this spirit it is an anthology of readings rather than a textbook or rhetoric (although teachers will probably wish to make use of a supplemental handbook to help students with the basics). The point of the anthology is to elicit writing that closely approximates the work students are likely to do in many of their college classes and the level of engagement they will need to bring to the issues that affect us all. To create writing of this kind, teachers typically construct “sequences” of readings and assignments that will lead incrementally toward work that synthesizes multiple sources while making an independent argument.

Sequencing has become a popular practice in composition pedagogy. At Rutgers, students complete two sequences of readings during their fourteen-week semester, each making use of three core readings (for a total of six essays, plus an additional essay for our final exam requirement). The first assignment of the course addresses a single text, with an emphasis on exploring the implications of the author’s argument rather than on summarizing it or generating a “personal response.” The second assignment provides an opportunity to examine the relations between two texts (the first reading and a new text) placed in “conversation” with one another. The third assignment of the semester—and the final assignment of the first sequence—requires students to develop an argument that draws on all three texts for its conceptual “frame” and for supporting evidence and illustrations. The second sequence—comprised of the fourth, fifth and sixth assignments of the semester—repeats more or less the same stages with new texts. The only difference is that Assignment Four requires students to work with two texts rather than one: one reading from the previous sequence as well as a new reading that will move the second sequence in a fresh direction. To learn more about sequencing, see the sections on the first and second sequence later in this Instructor’s Resource Manual, which includes a number of examples.

Good assignment sequences define a problem or shape a project for students. However, since composition instruction works best when it is interactive, teachers will need to help students advance and articulate their own projects. You could begin this process by listening to the questions that students raise in their discussions of the readings, and then trying to foreground these questions in successive assignments. Often, helping students to discover their own projects means allowing them the freedom to move beyond the questions you raise to take on related questions or problems that they discover along the way.

Reading, interpretation, connective synthesis, and using textual evidence should receive highest priority during the first half of the course, but at the same time, teachers will need to work with students to address sentence-level error and lack of clarity. First-year composition is always a process-oriented writing course to the degree that it incorporates cycles of reading, pre-writing, drafting, rereading, and revision. We should not forget polishing of the final product, of course, but we should not emphasize style over substance or give students the impression that how they say things takes priority over discovering what they want to say in the first place. From the start of the term, we address grammar, clarity, and structural coherence in the context of revision: the principle setting for the discussion of these matters should be rough or final drafts written for the course, as opposed to workbook-style exercises or lectures on correctness and style. Our basic approach is to help students recognize the patterns of error in their own writing, and to see problems of organization as a consequence of conceptual confusion.

The materials in this Instructor’s Resource Manual are the collected wisdom of many instructors and directors of the Rutgers Writing Program. While some pieces bear the names of specific authors, the following people have also contributed directly to the pedagogical tools presented to you in this volume.

List of Contributors

Alex Bain, Robert Abboud, Barclay Barrios, Danielle Bobker, Carol Denise Bork, Michelle Brazier, Kate Briggs, Christine A. Cerrato, Pat Cesarini, Bob Coleman, Christie Cox, Tina Crafton, Michael J. Cripps, Ann Dean, Lisa Dewey, Suzanne Diamond, Loriann Fell, Jim Gibbons, Jason Geiger, Robert J. Gill, Michael Goeller, Barbara Hamilton, Darrel A. Hamlin, Justin Hart, Rebecca Hartman, Megan Heller, Katie Henry, Rachel Hollander, Priti Joshi, Matthew Kaiser, Karen Kalteissen, Anthony Lioi, Kathy Lubey, Andrew Lutz, Kay Lynch, Katherine Lynes, Thomas Meal, Richard E. Miller, Brian Page, Martin Pousson, Tzarina Prater, Brian Roberts, Heather Robinson, Debra Roy, Annette Saddik, Jen Schubert, Nicole Smith, Kurt Spellmeyer, Martin Springer, Kathryn Steele, Steve Syrek, David Toise, Lara Tupper, Carmen Vendelin, Piper Kendrix Williams, Karen Zivi, Madhvi Zutshi.

Basic Requirements of First-Year Composition at Rutgers

• Students read a minimum of seven selections from The New Humanities Reader.

• Students write six five-page essays, including a rough and final draft of each. By the term’s end, a student’s final drafts should total at least 30 typed pages.

• Students make three brief oral presentations in class (see Public Speaking).

• Students take an in-class Final Exam (essay format, graded pass or fail) on a new reading which they must connect to at least one other essay they have read this term. The final exam is graded pass/fail and is intended to test that students carry with them the lessons of the class.

• Students keep all rough and final drafts in a folder, which teachers collect for “folder review” twice during the semester.

• Students must demonstrate competence developing a project or argument, organizing an essay, citing and discussing texts, and writing correct Standard English.

Teaching New Skills

Our students arrive at college with a variety of experiences in writing, but they have generally not been asked by their high school teachers to do the type of writing expected of them in college. The idea that knowledge comes into existence through conversations among informed readers and writers, and that they should take a position of their own in relation to these dialogues, is often quite a new concept for our students. Typically, they have been taught how to summarize or report information, or if their views have been invited it has only been to offer “personal responses” to literary works or to themes assigned by the teacher. Relatively few first-year students at college have read prose texts as lengthy and complex as James C. Scott’s “Behind the Official Story,” Susan Faludi’s “The Naked Citadel,” and Lila Abu-Lughod’s “Honor and Shame”—let alone been asked to read all three and develop connections among them into a project of their own devising. To reach a high level of college achievement, however, students will have to be able to read and make connections among works even more complex than these.

Given our students’ typical preparation, it is important to build an incremental curriculum, one that takes students through the process of reading and developing connections as a step-by-step process. In the presence of extended arguments that challenge and, at times, even threaten to defeat their best efforts at understanding, students need to be reminded that most good readings begin as misreadings, and that reading, writing, re-reading, and revising are essential steps in getting from initial interpretation to making knowledge.

College Writing versus High School Writing

A good exercise to assign around mid-semester is to ask students what type of writing they did in high school and how they think it differs from the expectations they have encountered in your course and in other courses at college. Here are some typical answers received from students in First-year Composition, which is called Expository Writing or “Expos” at Rutgers University:

1) College Writing Requires You to Deal with Readings

• I would just like to say that the writing that I have done in Expos is very different than any of the writing I ever did in high school. My Honors English class last year was primarily creative writing. I have never had to do this much analyzing before.

• In my high school writing class, we had different types of papers to write, for example: expository papers, descriptive papers, persuasive papers and so on. But they did not require any reading. All of these papers would come straight from your brain. My teacher always told us “Just write what you know,” and I have figured out that that will not cut it in this class.

• College writing requires that the student deal with quotes, and that was something that was not important in high school.

2) College Writing Requires You to Analyze in Depth and with Unity

• College writing entails much more detail and in-depth analyses of the material. In high school I was taught to get straight to the point. . . .

• There is greater attention to detail and the explanations are supposed to be more thorough. Before I came to this class I had been taught to write in a way that produced a very concise paper or essay.

• In high school we were taught to learn how to write fast, and under pressure. Many of our essay topics were given to us at the beginning of our forty-minute class, and we only had that class period to write the essays. This process of writing prevented us from examining many of the quotes and hidden meanings in the texts. In college, the essays must be very in depth, with lots of quotations, explanations and examples.

3) College Writing Has You Form Your Own Arguments to Avoid Summary

• In high school, we were never really required to have and argument in the introduction. The introduction was basically a synopsis of what the essay was going to be about. In college the introduction is almost like a preview of what is to come in the essay. When you put an argument in the introduction, the essay seems to transition better.

• I never knew what an argument was in an essay. I’ve never had to make an argument and support it before. So, that aspect is new for me. Another new aspect for me was including my voice in my essay. I was always told that the writer’s opinion and voice weren’t supposed to be in an essay. This class also taught me how to connect two or more readings that may seem unrelated at first.

• College writing is entirely different from what I had previously learned, especially in two areas. I was taught to never—NEVER—use my opinion in any expository essay, and not to incorporate the works of two authors in one paragraph. What I had written in high school was summary as opposed to the analysis this course calls for.

• First, what college writing has taught me so far is: we should not summarize what we have read, rather to analyze the passage, develop arguments, and most importantly support our arguments to prove specific points while creating a conversation. It differs from my previous writing experience because I have always had to summarize and/or agree or disagree with the author’s point of view.

Five Core Components of Writing Instruction

The pedagogy we have developed at Rutgers University to accompany The New Humanities Reader involves a set of practices that we think should be at the heart of any good composition program. We can break these down into five core components: Reading, Writing, Public Speaking, Revision, and Controlling Error.

Reading

From the start of their writing course, we teach students that reading involves a range of interpretive practices rather than simple recognition and memorization. These practices include:

• isolating, discussing, and writing about difficult, interesting, enlightening, or infuriating passages

• identifying keys to interpretation, which include terms, claims, and examples

• drawing on the keys to interpretation, or on insights from other texts and from general knowledge, in order to make sense of moments in an essay that may initially seem opaque

• using drafts, rereading, and continued discussion to test various interpretations

Writing

Students will come into your classroom with a great deal of practice in writing to demonstrate what they already know (a skill that will continue to have value for them in many other courses). They may have had less practice in using writing to discover a position of their own in relation to other writers, and then to communicate that position to others in a cogent way. The practices required for writing of this kind include the following:

• exploring the implications of a single text

• placing two texts “in conversation” on the level of shared content and, more crucially, on the level of shared implications

• using texts “in conversation” as a starting point for thinking that builds on the authors’ work but also poses new issues or explores questions left unanswered by the authors themselves

• citing and explaining textual evidence

• revising to clarify and develop ideas

• rewriting for the purpose of public presentation, acknowledging the conventions of expository prose (including a forecasted thesis or argument, unified paragraphs, transitional sentences and phrases, and credible supporting evidence)

Especially during the first quarter or so of the term, teachers typically are less concerned with seeing a fully developed argument and more concerned with deepening the students’ understanding of the texts and encouraging the formation of sustained and pertinent connections. Asking content-specific questions, as opposed to focusing primarily on rhetorical form, can help students develop richer, more complex perspectives of the readings.

Public Speaking

At Rutgers University, we have implemented a requirement in all first-year composition classes that students engage in at least three moments of public speaking during the term. The main goal of public speaking is to place students’ written work in the larger context of social action. Opportunities for public speaking might include the following:

• interpreting an assigned reading not yet discussed in class

• presenting the findings of a small group that has worked collaboratively to reach an interpretation or make a connection

• responding to questions on the assigned reading prepared in advance by the teacher

• presenting “paper abstracts”: five-minute summaries of the most recently completed final drafts

• presenting work in progress: five-minute summaries of preliminary drafts prior to peer revision

In addition, at Rutgers we require all students to make one presentation on a grammar or syntax issue. A teacher might schedule three or four presentations on the day final drafts are due or in preparation for class discussion of a new text. Alternately, two or three students might make brief (five-minute) presentations of their rough drafts as a prelude to group work. By asking students to make presentations on grammar we turn the often dry and passive teaching of rules into an active engagement in making sense.

We want our students to use the texts in The New Humanities Reader to support, stimulate, and complicate their own thinking. At the same time, we want students to recognize that thinking, speaking, and writing are fundamentally social acts. Understanding by itself is never adequate; the point, finally, is to be understood. As the semester progresses, we can help students see that open reflection and risky engagement with texts are only the first steps in a process that ends with the convincing presentation of a new way of seeing. Without risk, the writer learns nothing; without coherence, the same fate awaits the reader. One way of emphasizing the social process of making sense is to require students, either in peer groups or individually, to evaluate their papers for interpretive accuracy, organizational effectiveness, and general clarity. The process of “peer review” is especially effective in encouraging students to become more engaged with the social act of making meaning.

Revision

Just as our students begin first-year composition without knowing how to write about an essay like William Greider’s “Work Rules,” so they begin without having developed the ability to read with an eye to revision—which is, after all, a very different way of approaching a text than reading to understand. The process of revising thus involves not only improving our style of presentation in writing but also improving the quality, coherence, and accuracy of our reading. The key moment to have students engage in reflection is after they have already begun drafting their essays and have some interpretive work completed. And the best way to make that reflection into a social act is through peer review, where students bring their typed rough drafts to class for collaborative evaluation with fellow students.

Teachers have experimented with different formats for this collaborative evaluation of student drafts, but the groups will not succeed without prior planning on the teacher’s part. Some teachers preface the activities of the peer groups with a general discussion of what to look for in critiquing the draft. Other teachers prepare written worksheets that reflect the changing goals of each new assignment.

For the class meeting that follows peer revision day, teachers can select, copy, and distribute two or three rough drafts for discussion by the entire class. Because the class discussion of these papers gives teachers the chance to intervene decisively in the revision process, this day may be the most important one in the entire cycle of activities that concludes with the submission of the final drafts. After each peer revision day, teachers are likely to notice problems common to nearly all the drafts, and class discussions can be guided toward the recognition of these problems.

Controlling Error

By the end of the semester, we hope that students will have improved the overall presentation of their papers and developed a sense of clear and polished writing. At the very least, students should be able to produce essays with few sentence level errors and no error of the type that interferes with meaning.

Common Problems in Revising

Different assignments typically create different problems that call for different kinds of revision. Here are some common problems we have observed:

Rough Draft of Assignment One

Problem

Students either (1) summarize the assigned reading or (2) respond in a way that leaves the reading behind.

Intervention

In (1), instruct small groups to identify places in the draft where the writer might explore implications while deleting or shortening summaries. In (2), instruct groups to identify the places where connections can be made to the readings.

Rough Draft of Assignment Two

Problem

Students summarize one text, summarize the second, and then, in the final paragraphs, begin to address the question. Or students “compare and contrast” the readings with no specific object in mind.

Intervention

Direct small groups to delete or shorten summaries while proposing ways to develop promising “moments” in the draft where connections move toward an issue, theme, or topic shared by both texts. Discuss ways of using two texts (such as framing) that get beyond “compare/contrast” modes and ask peers to suggest possible projects based on connections that the writer has noticed.

Rough Draft of Assignment Three

Problem

Students make connections linking the three texts but they do so in ways that fail to coalesce into a unifying question, argument, or subject.

Intervention

Direct groups to consider possible subjects or topics that provide an overarching framework for many of the points made in the draft.

Rough Draft of Assignment Four

Problem

The explicit thesis of the paper, as announced in the first paragraph, is inconsistent with the argument that follows; inadequate development of ideas.

Intervention

Workshop on opening paragraphs; direct students to construct paragraph by paragraph outlines of the paper under discussion, with consideration of possible changes and additions; direct students to find passages in the assigned reading that might develop the paper in fruitful ways.

Rough Draft of Assignments Five and Six

Problem

Students make a predictable argument; unimaginative citations; insufficient development.

Intervention

Encourage students, working in small groups, to sketch out less predictable arguments, and to identify passages that complicate or contradict rather than simply confirm the writer’s argument or observations. Discuss with students the uses of complication and contradiction to extend and refine a line of argument.

Controlling Error: Grammar

When commenting on a paper with grammar problems, instructors need to remember the triage method: treat the fatal problems first. Too many instructors look at an error-ridden student paper as a publication to be proofread and leave it full of red ink. Not only does such hyper-correction deprive students of the active engagement with correction that is necessary to create learning, it also overwhelms them with issues they need to work on. By developing a pedagogy that emphasizes patterns of errors that students can correct and focusing first on the most fatal two or three errors (and no more than two or three errors in any paper thereafter), instructors will see incremental improvements through the course of the term. Common grammatical errors include the following:

Subject-verb agreement errors

The thoughts a reader generates is only considered “great” when others know those thoughts.

Sentence fragments and comma splices

We see morality through a new point of view. One that comes from nature, not the human world.

Run-on sentences or comma splices

There is no separation between the private and the public in American life, violation of privacy can happen at any time.

Pronoun errors

Each reader must struggle with the text. They decide what it will mean.

The knowledge class has replaced the working class. This could spell disaster or it could bring new opportunities.

Every school has it’s problems. Their’s is especially troubling.

Confusion of plurals with possessives (apostrophe errors)

The dorm rooms belong to the new student’s, not to senior’s and sophomore’s.

Controlling Error: Punctuation

In addition to controlling grammatical error, students should be able to demonstrate a proficiency in the use of punctuation commensurate with their status as members of the community of “educated readers.” They needn’t know the differences between an absolute phrase and an appositive, but they should be able to use the comma, semicolon, and colon correctly. Most importantly, they should be able to control “fatal” comma errors of the “eats, shoots, and leaves” variety. Uses of the comma we regard as especially important include the following:

• Between items in a series of words, phrases, or clauses

We all know that biotechnology is uncertain, dangerous, mind-boggling in its potential ramifications, and also wildly profitable.

• Between two independent clauses:

We judge people by their economic status, and in doing so we build a scale called the “social hierarchy.”

• On either side of a nonrestrictive clause (a clause that often begins with who, whose, which, when, or where):

The school, which they call The Citadel, is like a fortress against change.

• After an introductory phrase or dependent clause:

After reading de Waal and Nussbaum, I begin to question the belief that culture and biology are totally distinct.

Controlling Error: Clarity

In addition to grammar and punctuation, sentence-level clarity should receive significant attention. A sentence whose meaning is unclear may be grammatically correct but it still fails to perform its principal task, the communication of understanding. Students should be told that sustained difficulty with grammar, punctuation, and clarity (generally, three or more errors per page) will result in their failure of the course regardless of the quality of their ideas. Students should be encouraged to proofread their final drafts before bringing them to class, and teachers are advised to use the peer-revision groups as proofreading groups on the days when final drafts are due.

You will find it helpful to use a handbook, and you should take time to instruct students in its use. Though our comments should emphasize the importance of “global issues”—organization of the argument, paragraph coherence, clarity of transitions, and so on—we cannot ignore issues of sentence-level error. Students with severe or persistent problems with error should be assisted through a combination of work with you during office hours and work with a tutor (especially if your school has a Writing Center).

Best Practices for Teaching Composition

This Instructor’s Resource Manual intends to set forth not only a coherent philosophy of teaching, but effective ways of implementing that philosophy. We would suggest a dozen “best practices” for all composition courses (though this list could probably be extended significantly by others).

1. Put it in writing

In a written syllabus, teachers should distribute clear course policies at the start of the term (including attendance, lateness, late papers, etc.) and should then uphold those policies uniformly. We should also provide a written copy of each essay assignment to students before a given rough draft is due. By putting policies and expectations in writing, we have essentially created a contract with students and we have been explicit about our expectations of their duties.

2. Create an active learning environment

Teachers should conduct classes in a small-group discussion and workshop format as often as possible, in a lecture format almost never.

3. Always connect

With the exception of Paper 1, all essay assignments should require students to write about at least two and preferably three selections from The New Humanities Reader. If students are not making connections among readings then they are not preparing for the difficult work of college writing.

4. Sample your students

Teachers should always collect and review students’ rough drafts before the next class meeting. The teacher can then photocopy sample passages from the rough drafts to present in class in order to discuss strategies for revision or for controlling error. If we discover that many students are misinterpreting a passage or aspect of the assigned reading, a good way to address this problem would be to photocopy several examples of that misinterpretation from the drafts and then ask students, in groups, to re-read the passage in question and then to evaluate and revise the sample.

5. Remember that more writing is more opportunity to succeed

Students should be encouraged to write more than the required amount since it will give them more opportunities to demonstrate or develop good skills.

6. Require a collaborative process of revision

Students should work in peer revisions groups on the days when they bring rough drafts to class, reading and commenting on the rough drafts of other students. Teachers should also provide guidance for peer review, usually in the form of a worksheet or set of questions that requires students to comment on certain important aspects of a given assignment.

7. Focus comments toward improvement

Teachers should not comment (or at least not comment extensively or specifically) on students’ rough drafts or they risk defeating revision and the peer review process. Comments on final drafts should be directed not at justifying the grade but at encouraging improvement on future papers. We should also not forget to tell students what they are doing well so that they will carry those skills forward.

8. Give timely feedback

Teachers should return comments and grades at least one class meeting—but preferably two class meetings—before the next graded assignment is due. Unless students have our feedback in a timely way they will not be able to make consistent progress.

9. Explain the difference between right and wrong

Teachers should take some time during the semester to discuss problems of cheating and plagiarism, with explicit reference to your school’s policy for academic honesty.

10. Make sure everybody talks

Active learning is only effective when all students are compelled to participate. One effective way of compelling participation is to require a public speaking component in your class. Public speaking exercises can be presented by a single student within a small group, by a single student before the whole class, or by a group of students before the whole class.

11. Sweat the small stuff too

Though writing instructors often work most to develop students’ critical thinking skills, we also want to communicate to students that they must control patterns of error in grammar, punctuation, and clarity and that they need to avoid careless errors. A written policy that specifies the number of errors that will fail a paper (for example, “papers with an average of four or more errors per page risk failing”) is especially useful for encouraging careful proofreading. Whatever policy you adopt should be on your syllabus from the beginning of the term.

12. Collaborate with other teachers

At most institutions, there is a process of portfolio review or teacher conferencing to discuss student work and issues of grading. To make teacher conferences most effective, we encourage departments to develop and publish common grading standards for the first-year writing classes. Such collaborative grading practices develop greater transparency, consistency, fairness, and authority in grading and tend to mitigate the common tensions that develop between teachers and students over the issue of grades.

Using Technology to Build Class Cohesion

The first week of the semester can be a hectic time. At our school, teachers can expect students to add or drop from their sections during the first week of classes as they seek to get the best possible schedule for the term. This can be disorienting for both teachers and for students. A good way to center your class, especially if you have to face a similar situation, is by making sure that students know how they can contact you, either during your office hours or through e-mail.

Another good way of building a welcoming extension to your classroom is by setting up a class website. Simply posting information about your class online (either at space provided by your institution or on one of the various free commercial websites) can make a big difference in your class environment, and it can be especially helpful for students who might be adding your class late. A basic website might include your syllabus, contact information, office hours, and your first assignment. These could be simply converted from Word files to HTML using the “save as HTML” feature of most current word processors.

To help build class cohesion, you might also consider holding a class in a computer classroom or participating in an online forum (see the section of the Instructor’s Resource Manual devoted to technology for more details about these). Introducing these technological elements early in the semester helps first-year students acquire a familiarity with the writing technology at your institution and can help spur class discussion.

Website References

The following is a list of key website addresses instructors can use to explore ways of using The New Humanities Reader, including ways we have put our reader to work at Rutgers University:

• The New Humanities Reader homepage: http://www.newhum.com

• Writing Program homepage: http://wp.rutgers.edu

• Rutgers Writing Program’s Expository Writing 101 course homepage: http://wp.rutgers.edu/ courses/101

• 101 teacher resources homepage: http://wp.rutgers.edu/teachers/101

• General teacher resources page: http://wp.rutgers.edu/teachers/general/

• GETIT (Gaining Experience Teaching with Instructional Technology): http://getit.rutgers.edu

There are a number of issues to address on the first day of class, such as calling the roll and distributing your syllabus. Most composition instructors also find it useful to give a First Day Writing Sample. A writing sample can allow you to introduce a selection from the first reading to students and judge how well prepared they are to work on it. In some institutions, the first day writing sample can be used as a check on placement, allowing instructors to recommend students for review. This section describes some of the basic things you might want to think about in planning your first day.

Sample Syllabus

Every class needs a syllabus of some kind, since a syllabus establishes your basic contract with student by telling them what they are signing on to in taking your class. Below is a sample syllabus for first-year composition classes at Rutgers University.

Course: EXPOSITORY WRITING, Section 01

Meeting Time: Monday and Thursday, Period 2, in MU-212

Instructor: Mary Doe

E-mail: mary.doe@rutgers.edu

Office Hours: Mondays and Thursdays, Period 3, in MU-108

Required Texts:

Richard Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer, The New Humanities Reader, 2nd edition

Ann Raimes, Keys for Writers, 5th edition

Course Requirements:

• Six essays, totaling at least 30 pages of finished work, plus required drafts.

• Rough and final drafts must be typed.

• Three brief oral presentations, including one on grammar.

• A final exam (essay format, graded pass/fail). You must pass the final exam to pass the course.

Policies:

• You are expected to bring both course texts to every class meeting.

• Your final grade for the course will reflect the level of achievement you can sustain at the end of the term. It will not be based on an average of all your grades but on your best two papers for the semester.

• One half of a letter grade will be deducted for late rough drafts, one full letter grade for late final drafts.

• Students whose work exhibits significant punctuation, grammar, spelling, syntax, or other errors (generally, three or more errors per page) risk failing the course.

• On-time attendance at all classes is expected. After four absences, for whatever reason (excluding religious holidays), you risk failing the course. These four absences should cover sickness and documented emergencies. If you are late three times to class (without a specific arrangement with me), I will count all subsequent lateness as an absence.

• Students will be asked to review and abide by the University’s code on plagiarism.

• Please turn off all cell phones upon entering the classroom.

Sample 14-Week Class Plan

Use this 14-week class plan to help you plan out your own syllabus. Likely this plan will have to be adjusted to fit your semester and meeting times.

Week 1

• First-day writing sample

• First reading assignment

• Check weak writing samples with campus directors

Week 2

• Rough Draft of Paper #1 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/patterns of error)

• Define goals for peer-revision workshops

Week 3

• Second reading assignment

• Final Draft of Paper #1 due

• Refer students who need tutoring to the Writing Center

Week 4

• Rough Draft of Paper #2 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/ patterns of error

• Define goals for second peer-revision workshop

Week 5

• Third reading assignment

• Final Draft of Paper #2 due

• Photocopy selected rough and/or final drafts to illustrate problems in mechanics

Week 6

• Rough Draft of Paper #3 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/ patterns of error)

• Define goals for third peer-revision workshop

Week 7

• Fourth reading assignment

• Final Draft of Paper #3 due

• Photocopy selected rough and/or final drafts to illustrate problems in mechanics

Week 8

• Rough Draft of Paper #4 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/ patterns of error)

• Define goals for fourth peer-revision workshop

Week 9

• Fifth reading assignment

• Final Draft of Paper #4 due (final draft)

• Photocopy selected rough and/or final drafts to illustrate effective thesis statements and paragraphing strategies

Week 10

• Rough Draft of Paper #5 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/ patterns of error)

• Define goals for fifth peer-revision workshop

Week 11

• Sixth reading assignment

• Final Draft of Paper #5 due

• Photocopy selected rough and/or final drafts to illustrate problems in and strategies for the organization of arguments

Week 12

• Rough Draft of Paper #6 due

• Peer Review drafts

• Workshop samples (project/work with text/organization/ patterns of error)

• Define goals for sixth peer-revision workshop

Week 13

• Final Draft of Paper #6 due

• Student Evaluations

• Reading assignment for final exam

Week 14

• Final Exam

The Writing Sample: Three Examples

Below are three first-day writing samples that we have used in our composition class to introduce readings from The New Humanities Reader. You may notice that some of these writing samples contain a relatively long selection from the text. The purpose of these relatively long selections is to demonstrate how well-prepared students are for the reading demands that the class will place on them.

First Day Writing Sample #1

Please provide the following information. If there is any question about your placement, I will need to be able to contact you so that you can be moved to the appropriate level.

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Instructions: In asking you to produce a first-day writing sample, I am interested in getting an initial sense of your strengths and weaknesses as a reader and a writer. I am also interested in checking to make certain that you have been correctly placed in Expos. 101. For these reasons it is crucial that you do your best work on this writing sample. Use all of the time allowed and produce your best version of what you understand an essay to be. If you finish early, check your spelling, grammar, and syntax.

Please read these passages and answer the question on the following page:

In his essay “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness,” Jon Gertner presents the work of a number of researchers, including Daniel Gilbert, who “have made a slew of observations and conclusions that undermine a number of fundamental assumptions: namely, that we humans understand what we want and are adept at improving our well-being.” He writes:

The problem, as Gilbert and company have come to discover, is that we falter when it comes to imagining how we will feel about something in the future. It isn’t that we get the big things wrong. We know we will experience visits to Le Cirque and to the periodontist differently; we can accurately predict that we’d rather be stuck in Montauk than in a Midtown elevator. What Gilbert has found, however, is that we overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions—our “affect”—to future events. In other words, we might believe that a new BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost certainly be less exciting than we anticipated; nor will it excite us for as long as predicted. The vast majority of Gilbert’s test participants through the years have consistently made just these sorts of errors both in the laboratory and in real-life situations. And whether Gilbert’s subjects were trying to predict how they would feel in the future about a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, the defeat of a preferred political candidate or romantic rejection seemed not to matter. On average, bad events proved less intense and more transient than test participants predicted. Good events proved less intense and briefer as well.

Gilbert and his collaborator Tim Wilson call the gap between what we predict and what we ultimately experience the “impact bias”—“impact” meaning the errors we make in estimating both the intensity and duration of our emotions and “bias” our tendency to err. The phrase characterizes how we experience the dimming excitement over not just a BMW but also over any object or event that we presume will make us happy. Would a 20 percent raise or winning the lottery result in a contented life? You may predict it will, but almost surely it won’t turn out that way. And a new plasma television? You may have high hopes, but the impact bias suggests that it will almost certainly be less cool, and in a shorter time, than you imagine. Worse, Gilbert has noted that these mistakes of expectation can lead directly to mistakes in choosing what we think will give us pleasure. He calls this “miswanting.”

“The average person says, ‘I know I’ll be happier with a Porsche than a Chevy,’“ Gilbert explains. “ ‘Or with Linda rather than Rosalyn. Or as a doctor rather than as a plumber.’ That seems very clear to people. The problem is, I can’t get into medical school or afford the Porsche. So for the average person, the obstacle between them and happiness is actually getting the futures that they desire. But what our research shows—not just ours, but Loewenstein’s and Kahneman’s—is that the real problem is figuring out which of those futures is going to have the high payoff and is really going to make you happy.”

At the end of the essay, Gertner asks Gilbert “If he could wave a wand tomorrow and eliminate all affective-forecasting errors [such as “impact bias”] . . . would he?” Gilbert responds:

“The benefits of not making this error would seem to be that you get a little more happiness,” he says. “When choosing between two jobs, you wouldn’t sweat as much because you’d say: ‘You know, I’ll be happy in both. I’ll adapt to either circumstance pretty well, so there’s no use in killing myself for the next week.’ But maybe our caricatures of the future—these over-inflated assessments of how good or bad things will be—maybe it’s these illusory assessments that keep us moving in one direction over the other. Maybe we don’t want a society of people who shrug and say, ‘It won’t really make a difference.’

“Maybe it’s important for there to be carrots and sticks in the world, even if they are illusions,” he adds. “They keep us moving towards carrots and away from sticks.”

Question for Writing:

Based on your reading of the passages above, why is it important to understand forecasting errors such as impact bias? And how could the findings of Gilbert and others be applied in the real world?

First Day Writing Sample #2

In his essay “Global Realization,” investigative journalist Eric Schlosser tells how globalization is changing many places around the world. Though he focuses on the role of McDonald’s in that process, he gives a number of examples, including these from two towns in Germany, Dachau and Plauen, which he visited while writing the essay. Please read these passages and answer the question on the following page:

In 1997, protests were staged against the opening of a McDonald’s [in Dachau] so close to a concentration camp where gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, and political opponents of the Nazis were imprisoned, where Luftwaffe scientists performed medical experiments on inmates and roughly 30,000 people died. The McDonald’s corporation has denied that it was trying to profit from the Holocaust and said the restaurant was at least a mile from the camp. After the curator of the Dachau Museum complained that McDonald’s was distributing thousands of leaflets among tourists in the camp’s parking lot, the company halted the practice. “Welcome to Dachau,” said the leaflets, “and welcome to McDonald’s.”

The McDonald’s at Dachau is one-third of a mile from the entrance to the concentration camp. The day I went there, the restaurant was staging a “Western Big Mac” promotion. It was decorated in a Wild West theme, with paper place mats featuring a wanted poster of “Butch Essidie.” The restaurant was full of mothers and small children. Teenagers dressed in Nikes, Levis, and Tommy Hilfiger T-shirts sat in groups and smoked cigarettes. Turkish immigrants worked in the kitchen, seventies disco music played, and the red paper cups on everyone’s tray said “Always Coca-Cola.” This McDonald’s was in Dachau, but it could have been anywhere—anywhere in the United States, anywhere in the world. Millions of other people at that very moment were standing at the same counter, ordering the same food from the same menu, food that tasted everywhere the same. . . .

Around the time that Plauen got its McDonald’s in 1990, a new nightclub opened in a red brick building on the edge of town. ‘The Ranch’ has an American flag and a Confederate flag hanging out front. Inside there’s a long bar, and the walls are decorated with old-fashioned farm implements, saddles, bridles, and wagon wheels. Frieder Stephan, the owner of The Ranch, was inspired by photographs of the American West, but gathered all the items on the walls from nearby farms. The place looks like a bar in Cripple Creek, circa 1895. . . . Plauen now has a number of small westernwear shops like Thommy’s that sell imported cowboy boots, cowboy posters, fancy belt buckles, work shirts with snaps, and Wrangler jeans. While teenagers in Colorado Springs today could not care less about cowboys, kids in Plauen are sporting bolo ties and cowboy hats.

Every Wednesday night, a few hundred people gather at The Ranch for line dancing. Members of Plauen’s American Car Club pull up in their big Ford and Chevy trucks. Others come from miles away, dressed in their western best, ready to dance. Most of them are working class, and many are unemployed. Their ages range from seven years old to seventy. If somebody doesn’t know how to line-dance, a young woman named Petra gives lessons. People wear their souvenir T-shirts from Utah. They smoke Marlboros and drink beer. They listen to Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash—and they dance, kicking up their boots, twirling their partners, waving their cowboy hats in the air. And for a few hours the spirit of the American West fills this funky bar deep in the heart of Saxony, in a town that has seen too much history, and the old dream lives on, the dream of freedom without limits, self-reliance, and a wide-open frontier.

Question for Writing:

How is the example of McDonald’s in Dachau related to the example of The Ranch in Plauen? What is Schlosser’s implicit critique of the way globalization affects people in these two German towns? What is your opinion of the effects of globalization that Schlosser describes? Be sure to cite evidence from the passages in your essay.

First Day Writing Sample #3

In his essay “Waiting for a Jew,” the anthropologist Jonathan Boyarin tells how he came to study Orthodox Jews, and how his research made him think about his own sense of identity. In the passage below, Boyarin reflects upon his experiences in Paris (a city in a traditionally Catholic country), where the marginal nature of Jewish experience ironically reinforced his religious and cultural identity, which he marked by wearing the yarmulke (the traditional Jewish headcovering):

In assuming the yarmulke, I perhaps do not stop to consider that neither my actions nor my knowledge match the standards that it symbolically represents. But it works effectively, almost dangerously, as a two-way sensor, inducing Jews to present themselves to me and forcing me to try to understand how I am reflected in their eyes.

Externally, I learn many things about the situation of French Jewry. From the patent discomfort my non-Jewish Trotskyist friend feels at my display of Jewish specificity, I gain some sense of the conflicts young French Jews—coming out of the universalist, anti-historical revolutionary apogee of May 1968—must have felt years later when they first began to distinguish themselves from their comrades and view the world from the vantage point of their specific history. From the young street peddlers, I learn about how much riskier public proclamation of oneself as a Jew is perceived as being in Paris than in New York, and a concomitant depth of instant identification of one Jew with another. My meeting with the old Polish Jew at the American Express office hints at the dynamics of dominant and declining ethnic groups within the Jewish community, so vastly different from those dynamics in the United States.

Internally, I begin to understand that an identifiably Jewish headcovering places its own claims on the one who wears it. The longer it stays put, the more its power to keep him out of non-kosher restaurants grows. More important, people want to know who he is as a Jew. And if he does not know, the desire for peace of mind will spur further his effort to shape an identity.

Question for Writing:

Based on Boyarin’s experience and your own, what conclusions can you draw about the forces that shape identity? Be sure to use evidence from the passage above as well as examples from your own experience.