College composition courses are important not because students "didn't get it in high school," but because they have entered a new discourse community. They write to acquire particular ways of communicating as college students, as prospective scientists, business people, historians, teachers. They learn the written "dialects" that these disciplines sanction. They practice the forms of discourse appropriate for communicating with other members of the community.
A freshman composition course, then, should serve two ends: It should encourage students to discover more about themselves as writers, and it should help them become confident participants in the discourse communities to which they seek entrance. English 101 is both an introduction to college writing and a workshop in which students investigate the ways discourse functions in various communities.
Writing practice informed by frequent, meaningful feedback teaches writing. This premise underlies the design of the course as well as the textbooks used in English 101. Students need opportunities to plan, draft, and revise their work in consultation with others. English 101 is a student-centered course, as are all of our writing courses. The focus is not on textbooks but on students' writing. For this reason, classes provide a workshop format with regular emphasis on group work.
The class must become a supportive community of writers, and every class meeting must provide opportunities for group work. Students need opportunities to discuss their plans for writing assignments, to discuss the results of their reading and research, and to help one another improve drafts with suggestions for revision. Students must listen carefully to what their classmates have to say, offer helpful suggestions, and be willing to share their writing with others.
Effective writing develops over time, and although a certain amount of native ability never hurts, the skills involved can be learned. Consequently, the course design assumes that all writing assignments will require students to practice writing and rewriting. Students should write multiple versions of each assignment before they publish a version for grading, and we suggest that each of the different drafts receive peer responses in writing groups.
In addition, the suggested assignment sequence encourages students to use shorter forms of writing, such as regular, assigned entries in reading notebooks or journals; in-class paragraphs to plan new assignments, explore organization options, or analyze audiences; reflections on the comments they have received from group members; assessments of their revisions on various versions of an assignment; even explanations of why they think they received the grade they did on an assignment. These assignments also lend themselves to student explorations of the discourse communities they are studying in their other classes.
English 101 is designed to take full advantage of the workshop classroom. Students' research, the written materials they collect, and their own writing represent the major readings for the course. Students will spend much of their class time in their groups, discussing these materials and planning their papers-in-progress. Student versions also can be duplicated for the class to discuss. The teacher's role in such a course is not to lecture on readings from a textbook but rather to plan carefully the opportunities for group work and to monitor student progress from one class meeting to the next.
English 101 workshops serve several functions. First, they ensure that students plan assignments carefully and write multiple drafts. Second, they offer students responses to their work, from classmates as well as the teacher. Third, they encourage students to be critical readers, benefiting from multiple perspectives on texts. Fourth, they establish the notions that collaborative work is normal and that students are capable of offering one another good advice. Students need to develop confidence in their ability to judge good writing and to depend a little less on their instructor to tell them what they have done right or wrong.
Establishing a workshop environment allows students to become members of their own communities in the classroom, engaged in the social act of sharing writing and ideas about writing. Activities reinforce the concepts of collaborative communities and writing as a social act.
The English 101 assignment sequence addresses audiences in three discourse communities of increasing formality-those immersed in broad-based pop culture; those immersed in more serious public issues; and those engaged in scholarly research. Perhaps the fundamental questions common to any discussion of discourse communities are how each community uses written conventions to help define itself and what constitutes appeal and credibility within the group. Encouraging students to explore these and related questions on their own and with their peers is crucial to the success of the course.
Each assignment in English 101 follows a whole-language approach, beginning with planning and research. This approach combines the four language modes-speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Whether collecting data through field work, interviews, or memory, students must investigate how language defines a particular community, how its members communicate with one another in writing, how writing generates concepts for understanding human experience, and how it sometimes results in community action. Part of their research should involve collecting relevant samples of writing that the community has produced. In the process, students will begin to understand the background of each community.
Next, students must analyze the texts as expressions of people interacting in a community. Through group work and class discussion, students must recognize the rhetorical strategies and techniques in the texts, what conventions and assumptions the community has established for written discourse, and how a writer can best use that written "voice."
Finally, for each unit, students will produce a piece of writing that demonstrates their awareness of the conventions of various discourse communities. In preparation for that final project, two to three feeder assignments are recommended.