Solving Syllabus Problems: Using Reading Assignments to Teach Freshman Writing

        Upper-division Goucher students who were interviewed about their experiences in English 104 and 105 reported being generally happy with what the courses taught them, but our self-study reported that "they were more positive about courses that were well structured, courses that emphasized the techniques of writing rather than literary analysis or just topic discussion" (Tokarczyk).    To get better results from your English 104 or 105 syllabus, prune its readings to the minimum number necessary to accomplish the course's goals, and make sure each remaining reading clearly connects to practical outcomes in students' writing processes.  As long as your students are writing more often and writing better, the course is succeeding, but additional readings may cloud students' perception of what you want from them.  Some instructors teach writing with no readings other than the students' own work, and such classes can work as well as those anchored by an anthology of essays or fiction.

        For every reading left in the syllabus, rethink its location in the semester and its function.  Consider asking a colleague to listen to your rationale for their purposes.  When you reach that assignment, explain clearly to students what they should be reading for.  Most freshmen are not methodical readers, and those who remember a method from high school most commonly were taught to read for what entertains them, for the "main idea," and to detect themes or symbols.  If your reading is important enough to take time when your students otherwise might be writing for you, consider using some of the text as an example of professional writing rather than using it only for content.  Show students how to examine some of the text in a New Critical close reading, using sentences or paragraphs as models how authors make decisions and negotiate readers' probable responses.  If the reading primarily is intended to provoke students' written response to its content, rather than to its form, guide your class toward that content with a written set of questions that will stimulate the kinds of inquiry you seek.  First- or second-semester college students won't often discover the traditions of liberal arts investigation and conversation without careful guidance.  Of course, it's also a good idea to make space in the discussion for students to examine the assumptions they already bring to the assignment.  Discussions of early college readings really can take almost nothing for granted until you have taken the measure of the class's preparation and drives.  That is another good reason to limit the number of readings you assign in a freshman writing course.

        Finally, never let your students forget what they have read and why.  Plan to refer to lessons learned and examples discovered in earlier readings when dealing with later assignments.  Link the students' own prose to techniques they encountered in the readings.  If the assignment can't offer that level of utility throughout the semester, consider again whether another reading, or no reading at all, might allow you to teach better what this one was intended to accomplish. 

Work Cited

Tokarczyk, Michelle.  "Self-Study: Writing Program."  Internal Goucher Email Document.  26 July 2002.