Critical Reading and Writing I: The Academic Essay
Fall 2009 ENGL 0110 S06
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Instructor: Carol DeBoer-Langworthy
Please check the Detailed Class Information for up to date information about this course.
Information on meeting times for this course can be found on Course Schedule at http://selfservice.brown.edu
View course syllabus
Course Description
An introduction to university-level writing. Students produce and revise multiple drafts of essays, practice essential skills of paragraph organization, and develop techniques of critical analysis and research. Readings from a wide range of texts in literature, the media, and academic disciplines. Assignments move from personal response papers to formal academic essays. Enrollment limited to 17. Fall sections 3 and 4 are reserved for first-year students. Banner registrations after classes begin require instructor approval. S/NC.
Instructor's Description
This section offers an introduction to university-level reading and writing. We will begin with the premise that to become engaging writers, we must first become engaged readers. Our approach will interrogate the academic essay (in its many forms) from the inside out. Rather than seeing it as a single mode of writing, we shall experiment with various forms and techniques to let the essay serve as a place of intellectual expression as well as argument. Readings will cover a range of disciplines to show how the academic essay morphs to fit a range of rhetorical demands: how choices in grammar, voice, style, and structure produce effects, arguments, and meaning. Class discussion, in-class writing, keeping a writer’s notebook, short response writings, and in-class workshopping of papers will help us generate papers that really say what we want them to say.
Assignments and Grading
S/NC
Three formal essays are required: a personal narrative, a cultural critique, and an analytical argument. There will be in-class response writing in notebooks and five one-page response writing pieces done outside of class — all culminating in three essays, each requiring drafts, peer revision workshops, and/or conferences. All writing assignments, including warm-up exercises and first drafts, must be completed on time. Consult the course webpage for updates on class assignments.
Regular attendance and active contribution to discussions and revision workshops are required, and will count significantly toward a satisfactory final grade. This is a collaborative learning environment. If you miss three classes without medical or serious reason, you will earn no credit for the course. Please write constantly in your notebook, which will be checked by the instructor: responses to readings and class discussions, ideas for essays, observations overheard, reflections in passing, and other responses.
Readings and Required Texts
THEY SAY, I SAY (Norton & Co., ISBN-13: 978-0-393-92409-1) and coursepack available from Allegra
Additional Meetings/Labs
individual meetings with instructor