ENGL 471—The Writing Process—Sp06

Readings
Tom Romano, Blending Genre: Altering Style. Boynton-Cook, 2000.

Edgar Schuster. Breaking The Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction.  Heinemann, 2003

Packet of materials at Professional Copy (42nd and U. Ave)

Scope
This course springs from the conviction that it is possible to teach writing in school--not as a series of hurdles and arbitrary conventions, but as a natural and effective way to get your point across when you have something to say. Of course you do have to have something to say, so the course includes work on getting something to say.  There are two goals that guide writing teachers: 1) to help students discover that they have something to say and that developing it through writing makes it more powerful and coherent; 2) to help students use the existing forms and genres of writing to share their ideas and show their mastery of the codes that make ideas important and persuasive.  One goal is focused on the student as an emerging individual, the other on mastering the codes to be taken seriously by others ("society").  Approaches to teaching writing vary according to which goal they find more compelling, and it does seem that school as an institution favors the expectations of society, as if the job of school was, like the Widow Douglas, to "sivilize" the half-barbaric Hucks of adolescence. Both of the books we will spend time with this quarter criticize that vision of school and English/LA in particular and offer alternatives, both at the relatively low level of sentences and at the high level of whole genres.

We will study and try out some of these alternatives, but we do so in the shadow of the first official application of the WASL as a barrier exam in our state. So we will make these alternative ideas answerable to the WASL and vice versa.  

Written Work and Grading

There will be a two-page Response paper each week to one of the readings for the week, a midterm, and a final group project investigating a particular school and outlining part of a writing curriculum. The response paper is due on the date the reading is to be discussed, so you should look over the readings for the week early in the week to decide which one you want to write about

The midterm, final project, and final will each be worth 20% of your grade, the Response papers (taken together) 20%, with the final 20% being for class participation (includes presentation of group report).

Topics and Assignments

(Stripe me!)

Course URL :
courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl471

Office
Padelford A404; M: 2-3; Tu 2:30-3:30