Welcome
This site has begun (Fall 2004) as a class project for English 400: The Rhetoric & Teaching of Writing. The links to the left will be updated throughout the semester.
Course Description
English 400 provides an intensive training in the teaching of composition at the college level; it is especially designed for Case graduate students interested in teaching composition in the English department and/or through SAGES First and University Seminars. The focus of this course will be on gaining an understanding of major themes in composition theory in order to develop a set of coherent, historicized pedagogical practices.
English 400 begins by introducing major trends in composition scholarship, addressing topics such as: assignment design, assessment of writing, response strategies, basics of linguistics and grammar, ESL pedagogy, writing center tutoring, invention, argumentation, and prose style. Intertwined with our tour of composition theory, we will devote significant class time to putting these theories to work, developing and articulating our own individual teaching philosophies. Students will be expected to justify their pedagogical choices with reference to appropriate scholarship.
This web resource page has begun as a class project in Fall 2004. Comments and suggestions are welcome (kimberly.emmons@case.edu).
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The Stories of Composition in US Colleges & Universities
Catherine L. Hobbs and James Berlin, "A Century of Writing Instruction in School and College English." In James Murphy, ed. A Short History of Writing Instruction, 2nd Ed. Hermagoras Press, 2001. 247-289.
“So in English studies, writing instruction has remained at the heart of curricular decisions as to the kind of society we should advocate and the kinds of individuals we should encourage to make up that society. Decisions about writing pedagogy put into material practice our beliefs as to the purpose education should serve in society” (Hobbs & Berlin, 248).
There are a variety of ways to tell this story – as one of adjunct/marginal labor brought in to remediate students’ writing, as one of the decline of classical rhetoric and the rise of the English Literary Tradition, as one of interdisciplinary collaboration and disciplinary formation, as one of cultural literacy and efforts to educate citizens, as one of a series of competing traditions, and certainly as one of the nature of literacy. Nevertheless, the stories of composition – and the allegiances we, as teachers, hold to particular versions – do influence what we do in the university.
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