Notes on English 401 Syllabi (circa 1987)

Excerpts from Syllabi:

Section 04 (Keith Jones)

• Fifteen minute conference per student per week.
• Five type-written, double-spaced pages per week; a major revision will count as a week's work. Your five pages can consist of two shorter papers. Papers are due in conference
• Journals: These are designed to give you more practice at developing ideas through writing; and also to provide you with material for your written papers; One to two pages of journal-writing per week
• You will hand in five papers for grading. One of these will be the research paper; the others will be chosen by the student, or will be developed from in-class assignments. 

Section 5 (Harrigan)

• We're write some essays on various subjects as well as practicing some of the forms of writing you'll be asked to do in other classes: writing about reading, for example, and writing a research paper. 
• Each week I will suggest a possible topic for your paper. Usually, you'll be free either to use that suggestion or to write on any topic you choose. 
• Some of your papers may be revisions of earlier papers. A revision is a substantial reworking, including additional information shaped into a new organization. 
• Once a week, you and I will meet in my office for 15 minutes to discuss your writing. Come to conference prepared with your thoughts and questions about your paper. 
• We'll frequently divide into small groups to discuss one another's writing.
• Your weekly papers will not be graded, but I will keep notes on them. Your grade will be based on four papers: one handed in around the middle of the semester, two submitted at the end, and the research paper. 
• In figuring grades, I will consider homework and in-class assignments, class partiicatiopn, and whether you tried new and difficult subjects or types of writing. 

Section 6 (Qualley)

• This is a reading and writing course. We read. We write. We think about what we read and we write. We talk about what we read and write. We read and write some more. We think some more. Over and over. The structure is the same--weekly writing of papers and journals, conferences, reading and writing groups...
• Reading and Writing Groups: A good part of our class time will be spent in workshops discussing your paper and your reactions to the readings. Writing groups allow you to receive feedback from your writing in progress, possible answers for the questions you ask about things that perplex you. They also serve to give you experience in reading other work in progress--this helps you look at your own work more critically. Similarly, reading groups allow you to work through your thoughts about what you have read. Other people give us the distance we need to see what we think and feel more clearly...
• Grading usually boils down to the difference between work that is adequate (C) and work that is excellent (an A). 
• I will be looking for evidence of growth in you as a reader and writer. Most of the course grade is determined by a selection of papers, journal entries and reading/writing responses that you select to turn in at the end of the semester. 

Observations

I'm struck by 

• the lack of content--by the amazing freedom that the students are given to write about topics of interest to them. 
• the fact that so few other academic writing assignments work in this way. 
• their attention to the process of teaching writing and, perhaps, by their mistaken assumption that what they are teaching the students about the process will somehow transfer to the other kinds of writing students will be asked to do at the university or in their lives. 
• the fact that there will be no scaffolding in other classes to support writing in the ways in which it is being supported in 401. 
• the desire, on their part, to turn the students into a certain kind of writer--an essayist, essentially. There is a particular kind of subjectivity they are trying to create or shape and while I was persuaded by this subjectivity and it engaged me, I'm struck by the extent to which many other students would not seek to identify with this kind of subjectivity. 
• what these different types of writers bring to their courses, for example, above, an MA student in literature, a journalist and full-time faculty member, a Ph.D. student in literacy/education.
• the focus on students and their interests, questions, curiosities...and how little of that kind of writing will be allowed/encouraged in their other courses.
• the extent to which this course at this time was NOT preparing students to write for other academic courses and I'm wondering about the degree of attention even paid to this obligation.
• the lack of the word "academic" or the phrase "academic writing" in the syllabi.
• the lack of awareness about how academic writing actually works (e.g. "keep in mind that you are searching for paper topics").
• the fact that, while almost everything else about ENGL 401 has changed, the course is still conceived of by those teaching it as a course about writing and reading (e.g. "Your development of both these skills--writing and reading--will be demonstrated..." [11]).
• the fact that forty year later, they are still, essentially, assigning "the research paper" or "library paper."
• the continuity of what I'm seeing--five pages per week or writing (substantial revisions can count), a research paper (7-10 pages), a journal, readings and one-pagers, conferences.
• the de-centered authority, particular in discussions of what the conferences are (e.g. "Conferences are not an opportunity for me to deliver a private lecture; instead, they provide an opportunity for us to discuss, together, the strengths and weaknesses of your paper" [11])
• the way in which the faculty attempt to "authorize" students and their work ("...because you will be the greater authority on the subjects of your essays, don't come to a conference expecting to hear me tell you what to do with your essay." [18])
• the way in which they are trying to train students to "become a writer" ("Writing and becoming a better writer aren't that easy" [18])
• whereas the post-war teachers seem to have started from the assumption that writers are rare, the post-1970s instructors seem to have started from the assumption that writers are everywhere (e.g. "...aimed at developing the natural writer in all of us" (42))

Themes

1. this is going to be hard and it takes discipline
2. expect chaos and the challenge of ambiguity--there are no easy answers
3. take responsibility for your work and your writing
4. this class is about you and your questions
5. learning only happens from doing
6. this class is gonna require risk-taking

Constituencies: literacy people (researchers), grad students, writers, others


Interesting Passages and Emergent Themes

• We will be using the notebook like the artist uses the sketch pad--it will be a place to work out our ideas--a place to make our thoughts visible and concrete. (7)
• The notebook is not a diary. Entries should not include lists of daily activities. You should write about things that matter to you, both you or move you. (7)
• Always keep in mind that you are searching for paper topics. (7)
• Each student will pick a specific time during the week which will then be reserved especially for him/her. This specific time, better known at the conference period, shall last about fifteen minutes each (and every) week. During the precious fifteen minutes the instructor and student have together both parties must be fully involved and active in the reviewing of the student's writing. (7, emphasis added)
• Plagiarism is a filthy practice many students succumb to. (7)
• Conferences are mandatory. I will be expecting you. (7)
• Any student who commits plagiarism will be excluded from English 401... (7)
• 749-1292. You may call me at home any time between 9am and 10pm (10)
• The most important thing we will be doing in this course is writing. Lots of writing. More writing than you even thought possible. Reams of writing. Mountains of writing. Write, write, write. (10)
• Many of these papers will be "open topics", that is, you will be responsible for deciding what you have to say about what. (10)
• The department requires us to write a minimum of five pages a week. (10)
• The only way to learn how to write is to write. A lot. This is not going to be an easy course. Write, write, write. (10)
• There will be one research paper. The university requires this paper. More about that later in the course. Don't worry; no big deal. (10)
• The only thing that you are required to put in the journal are one-page responses to the readings that we do, and the exercise and homework that I ask you to do in it. (10)
• Other Resources: Newspapers, meetings on-campus and off, the town of Durham, the city of Portsmouth, your family, your friends, your neighbors, the ocean, the White Mountains, the laundromat--look around you for what you can write about. Write, write, write. (10)
• A writer's first task is to find something to write about, and choosing a topic will generally be up to you. However, it is important to your development as a writer that you work with a variety of rhetorical strategies (e.g., narrative, argument, process analysis), so occasionally I may ask you to write on a specific topic, or develop a topic in a specific fashion. (11)
• You will write one paper (7-10 pp) which employs research, interviewing, and use of the library. (11)
• Conferences are of primary importance. You miss them--we have a big problem. You come, but don't say anything--we have a big problem. (11)
• We will write in class quite often... (11)
• The remaining ten per cent of your final grade will be based on: your willingness to "take chances" with your writing. (11)
• I will accept for a grade only one personal narrative--an essay which tells of a personal experience and which uses chronology as its organizing principle. No exceptions. (11)
• I will assume that you are familiar with the rules of standard grammar and punctuation, and that if you are not, you will go look it up...This is a class in writing--not grammar, punctuation, and spelling. We simply do not have the time to concern ourselves with such matters, except to say that such matters are your responsibility. (11)
• Since we are not working within a specific academic discipline, I've designed the course around a theme--autobiography. (14)
• This course will help you develop skills necessary for success in the university--reading, writing, interpretation, analysis, synthesis, discussion, and reporting. (14)
• We will explore writing as a vehicle to learning, and as a source of public and personal power. (16)
• While English 401 is primarily a writing course, the work we do towards refining the ability to read closely and with greater understanding will be a vital part of the process. (16)
• Upon the successful completion of 401, a student should have the intellectual dexterity and versatility to solve the writing and reading problems he or she will encounter at the university. (18)
• This course is best characterized as several rituals which occur over and over again: weekly essays and conferences, and writing and reading groups. (18)
• ...because you will be the greater authority on the subjects of your essays, don't come to a conference expecting to hear me tell you what to do with your essay. (18)
• Sometimes I will help you see options where you hadn't seen options and problems where you hadn't seen problems. But not all the time. Your task is to become the option maker and problem finder. (18)
• You've got to come to all the practices to play the game. (18)--could be a cool heading or sub-heading
• How to succeed? Listen closely, first to what is important to you, to what your own writing tells you, to what you need to know, then to what your classmates say, to what your instructor says, to what the texts say...But don't look for easy answers. If an answer is easy, don't trust it... Accept that a single question can have many right answers... Expect some chaos, controlled chaos. Tolerate chaos. Learn from chaos. (18)
• Writing Requirements: Billions and billions of words. (19)--could be a cool heading or sub-heading.
• This course will help you learn to develop ideas and to organize information in order to communicate in writing. You will also learn strategies for writing and learn to be a critic of your own work. (22)
• The purpose of English 401 is to help students improve their thinking and writing skills at the college level. The focus of the course will be on extensive and frequent writing and reading assignments. (25)
• The rationale behind everything we will be doing in 401 this fall is to create a stimulating, challenging, and supportive mental environment intended to help you take advantage of your own individual talents and to help you express yourself in a way that the college community can understand and respect. (25)
• The dreaded Freshman English is a demanding course, but it is also a course in which you have a voice. (37)
• You are not learning how to write a 401 paper; you are learning how to write--in your voice, using your experience, colored by your point of view (41).
• ...an extended family of critics. (41)
• The University requires that 401 prepare you for writing research papers, and the English composition program has decreed that you must know how to write papers on what you read. (41)
• Criticism in workshop will follow the same format as the same in class, namely that verbal response to a paper will not start from the "What's wrong with this piece of junk?," as it will from the question "What would you (the writer) like to know from us?" (42)
• In keeping with the novels I've chosen, your papers will address issues confronting disadvantaged people. This is the only limit you have in choosing a topic. (42)--so some sections had themes
• This course is based on two simple but powerful ideas: first, that you learn to write by writing and revising under the guidance of sympathetic readers and editors--your classmates and the teacher--and second, that examining and discussing successful answers to problems that writers have actually faced is more helpful than trying to master lots of abstract theory about composition. (43, Connors)
• We will be working with such varied forms of nonfiction writing as personal narratives, analytical responses to readings, reaction papers, and a research paper. (44)
• Two broad goals govern the design of each section of 401. These are (1) that each student develop an efficient process for choosing and developing a topic into a coherent essay, and (2) that each develop the skills needed to create an essay in response to an assigned topic (in a term report, essay exam, weekly writing assignment, etc.). Both of these goals are part of the broadest goal of all: writing competence and confidence at the University and in life. (401H, 2)