First-year Writing Course at SMC

EN101: College Writing
Desired results: For students to be able to write clear, effective College essays, including an analytical research project using multiple sources and utilizing proper MLA citation format.

  • What skills are needed to reach these goals?
  • Actively engage with and produce critical readings of complex material
  • Understand the principles of analysis, including writing an effective thesis
  • Develop their own voice and arguments in relation to other writers
  • Engage in detailed academic research, including integration of sources and proper citation
  • Understand and practice the principles of effective writing, including clear prose, proofreading for errors, and smooth transitions between ideas

Acceptable Evidence: Multiple essays, culminating in a substantial research project.

Learning Activities: Writing assignments of increasing complexity, geared toward a final research project. Class time and activities will be geared toward preparing students for the writing assessments.
Assignment 1: Personal Essay (2-3 pages): A short essay on a personal experience important to their self-understanding.
Goals: Provide a low-stakes assignment on a familiar subject to help develop voice and assess student writing.

Assignment 2: Close reading (2-3 pages): A Brief analysis of a single text from course readings. Principles of close reading are discussed and practiced in class in preparation for the essay.
Goals: Teach students close reading and analysis; understand expectations of formal academic writing, including effective theses, textual analysis, working with quotations, and grammar and proofreading

Assignment 3: Extended Analysis (5-6 pages): Longer analysis of a single text
Goals: Practice and extend essential skills for academic writing; develop more in-depth arguments and analysis.

Assignment 4: Integrating Sources (3-4 pages): Write a short analysis of a single text/or film, incorporating one source from course readings
Goals: Practice analytical writing from papers 2 & 3; incorporate a single source to learn to situate writer’s voice and argument in relation to others.

Assignment 5: Analysis with Sources (8-10 pages—see below): The work for the research project will be scaffolded over several weeks.
Goals: Continue practice of analytical writing; learn principles and methods of academic research; integrate multiple sources.

Paper 4: Analysis with Sources (8-10 pages)*

Our last paper is a research project on the topic of your choice. This isn’t a book report where you just tell us what others have said. The goal is to develop your own point of view in conversation with others interested in the same topic and issues. Essentially this is a more elaborate version of what we’ve doing all semester, and it will require many of the same things from you: a clear, effective thesis, careful reading, analysis, and response to other people’s writing, and a way of organizing those ideas to inform and/or persuade your reader. Obviously, we’ll talk more about this in class.

All papers should be typed double-spaced, proofread for errors, and have pages numbered. You must use 3-5 sources which you should cite in proper MLA format.

We’ll be working on various aspects of the project over the next few weeks and will go over each of them as they come up. Here’s a reminder of the calendar and due dates:

  1. Research Proposal due Monday, 3/31
  2. 2-3 pg. position paper with focus question/s (using one source) due Tuesday 4/8
  3. Research Presentations begin on Tuesday April 15th.
  4. Complete draft due Sunday, April 27th.
  5. Revision due with portfolio on Monday, May 5th

There will also be check-ins on your research on 4/3 and 4/10.

Step 1: Research proposal (1 page, single spaced), due Monday 3/31 via e-mail

We will be talking about his in class today, but your research proposal should answer the following questions:

  • What do I want to write about?
  • Why do I want to write about it? Why does this matter to me?
  • What do I think/know about this already?
  • You should also list at least five questions about your topic that you’d like to know more about.

Remember, this is just a beginning. Most research projects change substantially as you work on them, and the end product is likely to be different than your initial vision (this is often a matter of narrowing your topic).

An example:
I want to talk about the history and current state of minimum-wage law and its relationship to poverty in the United States. I’m interested in this because I grew up in a working-class family of five which was constantly struggling to make ends meet. My older sister and I are the first students in our family to go to college, and we’re able to afford it only through a combination of loans and financial aid. And this is with my mother and father both having steady jobs that pay well above the minimum wage. So I find myself wondering how in the world anyone makes it on 7.25 an hour (minus taxes), what the point is of a minimum wage law that doesn’t bring people out of poverty, and why the minimum wage law is as low as it is.

I don’t know much about this topic yet, other than that it’s 7.25/hour and that’s not a lot to live on. I also know there are several efforts from the president and congress to increase the minimum wage, but that nothing has happened yet.

Here are some questions I’d like to know the answer to:

  • What’s the history of minimum wage law?
  • Did the first minimum wage laws have any effect on poverty rates?
  • How many jobs in the United States actually pay the minimum wage?
  • Why is the minimum wage so low?
  • Are people actually able to live on their salaries?
  • What are the primary objections to raising the minimum wage?
  • What are the minimum wage laws in other countries, and what effects do higher minimum wage laws have on economic growth?

Step 2: Position Paper (2-3 pages) w/focus questions due Tuesday 4/8

Must respond to one source and list at least two others.

This can be a useful initial step for a research paper, and we’ll use it to focus your project. Think of it as a summary and response. Here’s the task:

  1. Find one source you think will be particularly useful and write a detailed summary of it.
  2. In the second half of the paper, provide a response as to why you think this is important, what you want to say about it, and how it will be useful to you. Remember that this is still an analytical paper and not a report, so you should approach these sources with the same analytical mindset as the last paper.
  3. At the end, list a question or set of questions that will direct your research. Shoot for the kinds of focused questions Hjortshoj describes in his chapter on research.

Remember too that sources don’t have to be things that simply give information and support your argument. They can be things you disagree with, or things that aren’t about your subject directly but help you think about it in other ways.

Think about the way Pollan uses Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, for example. In that article, Pollan actually ends up disagreeing with Singer’s argument is significant ways, even if he finds some aspects of Singer’s position compelling. The source becomes something he’s in dialogue with rather than a mere reference for information. He tries Singer’s ideas on for size and finds some convincing and others deeply lacking.

Or say you’re writing a paper about student mental health policy at St. Mike’s. Sontag’s article on Elizabeth Shin isn’t about that specific subject, but it has a lot to say about the issues involved: privacy, the question of whether students are adults or still dependents, etc. So you could use it to talk about your chosen topic even when it doesn’t address that topic explicitly.

The point is there are lots of different kinds of sources, and a good researcher/writer is creative and flexible in thinking about how to use them.