English 615: Seminar in the Teaching of Writing (Special Section for GMU Graduate Teaching Assistants)
B442 Robinson Hall
R 4:30-7:10 PM

Professor Chris Thaiss
Office: A423 Robinson
Hours: M 9-10 AM, T 3:15-4:15 PM, and by appt.
Phone: 703/993-1271
E-mail: cthaiss@gmu.edu
 
 
Required Readings Schedule of Classes Assignments Grading Policy

Welcome to ENGL 615! My colleagues and I have been teaching this course each year since 1981 to help prepare our first-year graduate teaching assistants to teach ENGL 101, Composition, to our diverse population of students across all majors at GMU. In addition to the teaching experience that you may have brought with you to Mason, all of you have had a semester of work, study, and guidance in the University Writing Center to acclimate you to the various cultures of writing at GMU and to give you important experience helping our students develop as writers.

I see this seminar as furthering your growth as a teacher and a scholar. It specifically prepares you to teach ENGL 101, with all that that entails. You will do the practical work of designing a syllabus and choosing textbooks; but more essentail than those tasks will be your thoughtful encounters with the field of composition studies--your delving into the controversies of the field, probing the many--sometimes conflicting--models of how writers learn and how they can best be characterized as learners and then taught. You will begin to see how the field has changed, and how our own 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.

REQUIRED READINGS

Cheryl Glenn, Melissa Goldthwaite, Robert Connors. The St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing. 5th Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. (SMG)

Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper, Kurt Schick, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. New York: Oxford, 2001. (CP)

Ruth Fischer, ed. General Education English Courses at George Mason University (2003-2004).(GE)

Michael Ondaatje. The English Patient. New York: Vintage, 1993.

I will expect you to become familiar with and to use for your seminar presentation, draft syllabus, and book review project various composition journals, professional books, and compositon textbooks from the professional library in A420 Robinson (Assistant Composition Director David Beach's office), from the library in the Writing Center, and from Fenwick. 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 local websites of interest are the Northern Virginia Writing Project, the GMU Writing Center, the GMU Writing across the Curriculum homepage, the GMU Nonfiction Writing Universe, and the English Composition homepage.

Of particular interest to students of composition is GMU's own web-based theory journal, Enculturation, edited by the English Department's Byron Hawk. 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).

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

1/22 Introductions: Teaching Composition at GMU

1/29 Overview of Essential Models/Theories of Teaching College Writing; first "position" papers on teaching of writing due; have read SMG, Ch. 7; GE, pp. 1-17. We'll meet the first hour in Innovation Hall, Room 333. Begin Townhall entries.

2/5 Models I: "Process" and "Expressivist"--have read Tobin and Burnham chapters (CP); "Good Journal Writing" and "Conferring with Student Writers" from GE; Emig essay from SMG.

2/12 Models II: "Rhetorical"  and "Writing across the Curriculum"--have read Covino and McLeod chapters of CP; Chs. 8 and 9 and Bartholomae essay from SMG; pp. 21-27 of GE. Proposals for Demonstration Lessons due.

2/19 Models III: "Feminist" and "Basic Writing"; have read Jarratt and Mutnick chapters of CP; Rose and Moss/Walters essays from SMG; "Tips for Working with ESL Writers" and "Working with Students in Distress" from GE.

2/26 Demonstration lessons begin.Models IV: "Technology"; have read Moran chapter from CP; Selfe essay from SMG.

3/4 Models V: The Role of Grammatical Correctness is Composition; have read Ch. 10 and Hartwell essay in SMG. Demonstration lessons. Your report on visit to a 101 class due.

Spring Break

3/18 Designing the First-Year Composition Course and Its Syllabus; have read Chs. 1-3 of SMG and sample 100 and101 syllabi from GE. We'll browse other GMU syllabi in class. Over the week following this class, I'll expect you to browse textbooks from the Writing Center "branch" of the Comp Library. Demonstration lessons.

3/25 I will be at the convention of the College Composition and Communication Conference in San Antonio, but we will continue to converse via Townhall and I will be available by email to discuss presentations and course plans.

4/1 Course and Syllabus Design II: Assignments and Evaluation; have read Chs. 4 and 6 of SMG; have reviewed grading policies from GE and read GE brief essays on "How to Involve Students in Evaluation" and "Portfolio Assessment." Demonstration lessons.

4/8 Course and Syllabus Design III: Technology and Research; have read Ch. 5 of SMG and have studied W.I.T.S. website . Visit by librarian Kevin Simons and technology consultant Susan Campbell. Demonstration lessons.

4/15 Drafts of syllabi due for workshop. Demonstration lessons. Conclusion of Townhall forum.

4/22 Integration of "Text and Community" and Special Events into 101; have read The English Patient, the Text and Community web materials, and parts of the "Fall for the Book 2003" website. I hope you will have attended the Michael Ondaatje reading on April 12. Due: (1) Book Review; (2) Revised Syllabus. Demonstration lessons.

4/29 Course Evaluations. Course Review. Demonstration lessons. Final position paper due. I will return your syllabus and book review.

ASSIGNMENTS

PRESENTATION/DEMONSTRATION LESSON YOU WILL CONDUCT:

By our fourth meeting (Feb. 12), 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 responding to intimacies in student journals, ways to spark good descriptive writing, applications of feminist theory to the writing class, 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 shows 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 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 many fine journals, more than a dozen of which we keep chronologically arranged in the Composition Library (A420) and which you may borrow. Fenwick Library has many more titles from which you may choose. To facilitate your search, I urge you to become familiar with the search tools on the Mason Libraries databases.

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-page document that briefly summarizes your lesson and that lists the works you consulted.

TEACHING/WRITING 'BLOG on TOWNHALL ELECTRONIC FORUM:

Beginning with our second class (Jan. 29), you'll write two entries per week in an electronic forum on GMU's Townhall server. Each week I'd like you to write reflectively about two things: the reading that you are doing and yourself 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 discussions. I ask you to make two entries to the electronic forum each week: one between Thursday and Sunday and one between Monday and Wednesday. 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

After our first class 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 next to last class (April 22), 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. Please use the Composition Library and the Fenwick collection. 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 Forum). 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.

VISIT TO A COMPOSITION TEACHER YOU ADMIRE

By mid-semester (March 4), please hand in a detailed report (about 1000 words) on a visit you have made to an ENGL 100 or 101 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.

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.


GRADING POLICY

I'll base your grade on holistic assessment of all the work you hand in; 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. Final letter grades
mean the following:

B = completion of all requirements on time and according to instructions given above; active involvement in class discussions of readings and issues; clear, competent writing

A = completion of all requirements on time and according to above instructions, plus clear, consistent evidence of imaginative intellectual engagement in writing, discussion, and presentation;

C = completion of less than all requirements on time and according to instructions.

Plusses and minuses will be given according to GMU policy.
 
 

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