English Department Purdue University
Reconfiguring
Introductory
Composition at Purdue
Sample Syllabi for English 106
Brief Descriptions (see below)
Detailed Plans:
Introductory
Composition at Purdue
By requiring students to identify and interact with other members of the Purdue
community, each of the assignments in the Writing Their Way into Purdue sequence
enables students to become more integrally involved in social action that affects
them on the Purdue campus while developing their college-level writing abilities
and research skills. Assignments include a profile, a public document, an annotated
bibliography, a report, and a proposal.
"You Are Here"
The course asks students to locate themselves in relation to contemporary cultural
domains or "nodes," including (but not limited to) identity, networks,
music, education, and space. Students will write in a variety of genres, from
essays to webpages, and engage in a variety of mediums, such as film, music,
images, text, and webtext. Through their reading and writing, students are asked
to explore the overall theme, "You Are Here," in order to develop
a sense of cultural location. Additionally, the class will introduce and build
upon established rhetorical concepts and techniques. "You Are Here"
helps students develop their rhetorical skills and cultural knowledge while
discovering the complexities of writing, communicating, and composing.
"Rhetorical Situations, 'Real'
Texts"
An approach to English 106 stressing the rhetorical nature of all situations,
the student's ability to identify and work in a variety of rhetorical situations,
the ways in which the audience constantly shapes the writer's work, and the
ways in which rhetoric involves thought, the spoken word, the written work,
design, and performance.
Academic Writing
The academic writing approach to English 106 introduces students to common genres
of academic writing through a sequence of increasingly complex yet related assignments.
Each assignment is designed to prepare students for the next by introducing
reading, research, and writing strategies that students can incorporate in subsequent
work. The approach is supported by the coursepack Academic Writing and Research.
"Fieldworking"--An Ethnographic
Approach
We use the skills of ethnographic research in our everyday lives: watching,
listening, interpreting, and writing. By asking students to complete ethnography,
we also promote the students' awareness of how writing and research shape our
views of our own and other cultures. It asks students, through their writing,
to take part in the local community. It also asks students to become 'experts'
in a chosen area by practicing original and creative research. When students
are empowered to make their own decisions about interpretation and meaning,
they also learn to apply the skills throughout their academic careers.
"Composing Through LIterature"
Through literature-rich investigation, students can explore the world and issues
around them vis- -vis-vis a central lens of intertextuality--the differences
and/or complementarities of texts--and extra-textuality, or what texts tell
us about ourselves and our culture.
"Multiple Multiplicities"
Designed to combine a number of approaches to teaching introductory composition
with instructor design which allows instructors to select readings from their
individual areas of expertise, this syllabus synthesizes the concepts of multi-cultural
studies, multi-disciplinary approaches and multi-narrative “literature”
which allows for a wide interpretation of literature and its applications for
critical writing. Multiple Multiplicities is grounded in work by a variety theorists
such as Sharon Crowley, bell hooks and Delores la Guardia.