Course Description - Reading, Writing, Revision

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

Reading
The primary differences between students placed in 101 and students placed in 100 and 100R are their reading comprehension levels, and their abilities to read intuitively. From the start of 100, we should teach students that reading involves a range of skills that require practice over time. These skills include:

• Reading and re-reading an essay multiple times in order to understand an author’s position and project

• Using a dictionary to look up words they do not know, or do not understand in the context of the essays they read

• Identifying key terms, claims, and examples

• Reading slowly enough to digest each paragraph as an individual unit, especially through close-reading and reading out loud

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

• Drawing on general information, or on insights from other texts and from class discussions, in order to make sense of moments in an essay or excerpt that may initially seem opaque

• Using drafts, rereading, and continued discussion to test various interpretations of the assigned material

Writing
Students will come into your classroom with a range of reading and writing skill levels: some will be working in a 2nd or 3rd language, and may or may not be as strong a reader and writer in their 1st language; some have large vocabularies, but are not as successful at using those words effectively and correctly in their own writing; some have not had much practice at all with reading before entering college; and some have had lots of practice with reading, but may struggle with translating their understanding of another author into a coherent essay of their own. Regardless of their level, they all will benefit from practice in 100 and 100R at writing to demonstrate what they already know. They will also begin to practice the work they will continue in 101: 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 position and project of a single author in a single text

• Placing two texts "in conversation" on the level of shared content and, more crucially, on the level of shared issues or consequences

• Using texts "in conversation" as a starting point for thinking that builds on the authors' work but poses new issues or explores questions left unanswered by the authors themselves

• Citing and explaining textual evidence

• Revising to clarify and develop ideas

• Learning the conventions of college-level writing (articulating a position and project, shaping solid paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting evidence, logical paragraph development using transitional sentences and phrases, correct use of quotation and citation)

Especially during the first quarter or so of the term, teachers should focus on solid reading comprehension as evidenced in students’ textual engagement on the paragraph level. Teachers can be less concerned with seeing a fully developed argument and more concerned with deepening the students' understanding of the texts and encouraging them to make specific and pertinent connections among them. Asking content-specific questions can help students articulate their basic understanding of the readings. As the semester progresses, we can follow those “what” questions with “how” and “why” questions in order to deepen their engagement with the essays, and to find the complexity that is always there.

Revision
After receiving each new assignment, students will bring their typed rough drafts to class for the required "peer revision" group workshops. Teachers are free to experiment with different formats for the collaborative evaluation of the drafts, but each student in a revision group should read and respond to the paper of every other student in the group. The groups will not succeed, however, without prior planning on the teacher's part. Just as our students begin English 100 and 100R without knowing how to write about an essay like Susan Blackmore’s “The Ultimate Memeplex,” 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. 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.

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