Course Description - Goals & Assumptions, Points of Emphasis

Introduction, Required Texts, Basic Requirements, Standard Policies | 100 & 100R
Goals & Assumptions, Points of Emphasis | Reading, Writing, Revision

Goals and Assumptions, Points of Emphasis
English 100 and 100R are preparatory courses for Expository Writing at Rutgers. By the end of each course, you will be able to compose a 5-6 page paper in clearly written prose that reflects your own point of view, and demonstrates thoughtful engagement with complex readings. Being able to do this means you’re ready to enroll in English 101. In this sense, English 100 and 100R function as the first half of a year-long course in writing composition that begins with Basic Composition or Basic Composition with Reading and finishes with Expository Writing.

These courses encourage students to see themselves as participants in an ongoing written “conversation” about contemporary issues of great importance: genetic engineering, urban and suburban development, racial profiling, globalization, immigration, environmental conservation, patriotism, democracy, the ways our perspectives change over time and in different places, and the pace of modern life. This conversational model of writing assumes the notion of a community that includes the authors of the assigned texts, the English 100 or 100R teacher, and all other students in the class. 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 in writing.

English 100 and 100R presuppose that the context for writing is always prior reading, and in this spirit the centerpiece of the course is an anthology rather than a textbook or rhetoric, although teachers will make use of the handbook, Grammar That Works, throughout the semester and also possibly in English 101. The anthology, Points of Departure, aims as its highest goal to interest students in the project of reading, not simply for information, but to inspire a response of their own in writing. The essays in this anthology are highly readable, enjoyable even, as they present contemporary problems and observations, and propose various positions in response. We hope these essays will begin by making students want to read, and end by giving them a host of reasons to want to write. They are the “points of departure” for every draft and paper. But each final paper is also a point of departure for the next rough draft. This is because we structure the entire course around “sequencing.”

During the 14-week semester students build on their ideas in each paper with the addition of a new text from the anthology. 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 summary or on “personal response.” The second assignment provides an opportunity to examine the relations between two texts placed in “conversation” with one another. In this way, the students reconsider the first essay with a new perspective in mind, and through a new assignment question, often geared towards a different aspect of the first essay. Sequencing like this gives the students practice at reading and re-reading, the nuts and bolts of improving reading comprehension. For the third paper, students will address the 2nd and 3rd essays assigned and drop the 1st, so students in Basic Composition and Basic Composition with Reading will mostly be writing papers on two essays. Near the end of the semester, some instructors encourage their students, especially those writing at the B-level or above, to try their hand at three essays, a challenge that all students who advance to 101 will eventually rise to and meet.

By the end of the semester, students must demonstrate solid reading comprehension, competence in presenting a coherent project in writing, solid paragraph structure, paragraph development in the service of the project, appropriate and relevant use of quotation, the ability to revise their own papers in the drafting process, and basic sentence-level clarity and correctness. But they cannot acquire all these skills simultaneously, nor can we, or should they, expect to acquire them all at the beginning of the course. So we prioritize them, and add a new priority to each paper as the students become comfortable using each new skill.

As students practice reading comprehension with each new essay, we expect that they will become more intuitive readers, able to discern what an author is implying, even if not stated directly. Students must also be able to distinguish between an author’s position on an issue and the other positions he might present in his essay. This is not always easy to discern, and many of the essays in this anthology have been chosen to give students practice at separating out different positions in a single essay. Being able to articulate these positions in a paper is a form of summary, a skill students must be able to handle with integrity very early in the semester. Being able to summarize well allows them to distinguish between positions presented within an essay, and what will eventually become the student’s position, thus opening the door to critical analysis of the student’s own.

Writing: our goals are to teach students to:

• Assert their own position and project in response to an assignment question provided by their instructors

• Select interesting and relevant passages from an essay and use them in their own writing

• Analyze selected quotations in detail

• Recognize the difference between paraphrasing or summary, and quotation, and decide when to use each

• Distinguish between summary and analysis and move beyond summary in their own essays

• Generate ideas, and develop and sustain them throughout a 4-6 page essay

• Make connections between at least two texts and develop those connections by engaging with the texts, and extending the ideas with their own contribution

• Structure an overall project and understand its elements (main idea, paragraphs, transitions, logical development of ideas).

It is important to remember that 100 is preparation for 101. Thus, students are not held to the standards of 101; neither are the students taught an "easy" class in order to "help" them: the first holds them to a standard they are not prepared for and the second does not adequately prepare them for that standard. Striking a balance between the two is the goal of Basic Composition.

If you are teaching 100 or 100R, be sure to also visit the Teaching 100/100r Resources page.

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