Fall 1998

This introduction to college writing will teach you to draft, revise, and edit your texts, keeping in mind your audience and purpose in writing. Working in the genre of the essay, you will write and revise six essays, two of them for publication in a class magazine. To provide you with help in the revision process, I'll organize collaborative writing groups so that you can get plenty of feedback on your writing; to provide guidelines for how to give good feedback in your writing groups, you will read Elbow and Belanoff's Sharing and Responding. Your reading in The Bes American Essays, College Edition and in our own UH freshman English magazine Fresh Review will provide excellent models and suggest departure points for your own writing. The class will focus on three general kinds of essays–personal, analytic, and persuasive–thus providing a range of writing experience that will build a good base for future college writing at the same time it allows you to develop your own voice and style.

Much of the semester's writing and thinking will be directed toward the culminating assignment, which is the preparation of a writing portfolio, in lieu of a final examination, in which you present your writing, along with a cover letter reflecting on the writing. In this letter, you should select three essays which you wish to use as the basis of your grade for the semester, explaining how and why they reflect your best work.

To give you some perspective on your own writing skills, and to enable you to develop your own reading and writing abilities in the larger educational community, I am asking you to integrate your study in this expository writing class with a 25-hour service learning project. Service learning projects combine volunteerism in the community with the fieldwork typical of educational internships: the purpose is to serve recipients while providing learning experiences related to course content. The idea behind service learning is to help you gain a better understanding of the academic content of this course by applying your skills and knowledge to benefit society. Philosophically, service learning is grounded in experience as a basis for learning. If you wish your service-learning experience to be documented on your transcript, you can sign up for one credit of IS 291. If you elect this option, you will offer 30 hours across the semester in service.

Although you have the opportunity to tailor a service learning project to your own disciplinary interests and career goals in conference with me, I suggest two projects through which you can integrate your study of writing while serving the larger community:

mentor in the Teens Reading the Pacific Program. In this option you meet regularly with a small group of intermediate and/or high school students to discuss three or four books chosen from the Teens Reading list. Each reading circle will have four or five teenagers, and be led by you, a college student acting in the role of mentor and discussant. The circle members can meet either on school grounds or at branches of the public library to discuss the books. The purpose of this group, called a literature circle, is to provide an attractive, out-of-school, interactive setting so that young readers can discuss books in a non-threatening, non-graded way. You can help them develop a love for literature at the same time you reflect on reading and writing issues from our own class as they come up in the literature circles.

tutor in a local public school classroom. I·ll put you in touch with teachers who will identify students and describe their language needs so that you can develop tutoring strategies.

I'll expect you throughout the semester to integrate the experiences in your service learning projects with our discussion of the assigned readings and with your own writing. Once you get your project set up, I'll ask you to write bi-weekly journals, reflecting on the experience and connecting it with class readings and discussions. Near the end of the semester, you·ll draw on the journal reflections to write an essay that analyzes your service learning experiences and the language lessons you learned as a result of it

Weeks 1 & 2 Introductions; Getting started writing
Week 3 Essay #1; Set up service learning sites
Weeks 4 & 5 Essay #2; service learning journals
Week 6 Revision of Essay #1 or @2 for publication in class magazine
Week 7 Essay #3
Week 8 Service learning project reports
Weeks 9 & 10 Essay #4
Weeks 10 & 11 Essay #5
Week 12 Revision of Essay 3, 4, or 5 for publication #2, class magazine
Week 13 Service learning project reports
Week 14 Service learning essays due
Weeks 15 Preparation of writing portfolio