Sample Sequences

Introduction to Sequencing

Basic Composition is structured around the same principles of sequencing as Expository Writing, with each successive assignment building upon prior assignments. There are many ways to go about choosing your sequence: you might want to start with a reading that you found particularly engaging and then work out from there or you might want to begin with a theme that interests you and select the readings accordingly. By arranging the essays in Points of Departure alphabetically, we mean to provide you with the greatest flexibility in designing your sequences, so that you can start with a reading or theme that seems promising and then construct your own connections to other readings in the book as you see fit.

In Basic Composition, the goal of the assignment sequence is not to encourage students to master particular readings, but to reconsider a particular issue through another author’s perspective, or to reconsider an author’s perspective by introducing a new issue.  We’ve found that Points of Departure works very well for both kinds of sequencing.  Especially with the more difficult readings, students engage most effectively with the complexities of the text when they return to it to write a second or third paper.  The challenge which we present to the students by asking them to read and write about difficult texts can only be met if we give them the chance to return to and re-evaluate their complex ideas.

A few sequencing suggestions specifically for 100 and 100R students:

• This kind of sequencing does not mean that you have to choose readings which will always reflect the same kind of theme. Rather, the readings and assignments should tangentially overlap, but also reflect a kind of evolution.   

• It is important to try to avoid putting readings together that "match" too easily. Students fall easily into comparison and if the readings are too much the same, they will often stop at pointing out the similarities without moving on to the important step of making their own points.

See the Assignment Flowchart for more details about when to assign new readings and how to fit the midterm exam into your sequence.

Sample Sequences
Here are some sequences that teachers have used in the past. Please use them as a model and adjust them as is useful. Each sequence includes a list of descriptive keywords and concepts. Click on the teacher's name to see the full sequence of assignments. You are invited to submit your own sequences for these pages to the 100/100R Coordinator, Carole Marrone, carole.marrone@rutgers.edu.

• Heather Robinson Belkin, Look, Slater, Pinker, Davies, Goodall
  regulating nature; parent-child relationships; altering nature; authentic core of humans; uniqueness of humans in relation to animals; humanity's position in the universe; balance of knowledges

• Alex Socarides Goodall, Davies, Slater, Prose, Hochschild, Kamber
  role of natural world; role of religion in scientific inquiry; drawing the line between the possible and the absurd; new theories of identity and one's place in the world; success of individual versus society; core defining values of America; American cultural treatment of socioeconomic differences

• Jay Kratz Lapham, Davies, F. Johnson, Blackmore, Foer, Edley, Kingsolver
  role of cultural differences in American society; Same-sex marriage and cultural diversity; "memes" and identity; difficulties of resisting social pressure; resisting pressures of globalization on local culture; parochialism and racism; role of social differences in post-9/11 America

• Kathleen Lubey F. Johnson, Hochschild, Kamber, Lapham, Prose, Foer
  evaluating the complexities of an academic argument; relationship between public and private life; freedom in capitalist society; the challenges of diversity in American society; the individual's responsibility to her community; communication between media and its audience; balancing global unity and local identity

• John Aveni Brooks, Kamber, Lapham, Hochschilld, Look, Foer
  the American dream and its social function; explicit and implicit promises between America and its citizens; function of subcultures in American society; false divisions and unifying factors in American life; American enterprise and globalization; losses and gains of accepting American culture; subcultures versus dominant capitalist culture in America

• Lara Tupper Kingsolver, Slater, Blackmore, Prose, Kamber, de Botton
  ethics of genetic engineering; fear of new technology; questioning the idea of "memes"; humanity's protectiveness of the self; learning ethics; attainability of the American dream; the traveling mindset