English 401 Guidelines

 

Mission Statement for English 401  

English 401 is designed to help students become better able to use writing for academic, professional, and personal goals. The course is part of a university-wide effort, lasting all four undergraduate years, which offers multiple opportunities for students to develop their writing skills. The Undergraduate Composition Program also shares with the wider university community a commitment to developing the habits of mind that constitute critical thinking. Specifically, the program encourages students to move beyond a passive view of learning, where knowledge is simply received, to one where students assume the intellectual and ethical responsibility to construct meaning—to frame interpretations, to explore multiple perspectives, to defend assertions, and to relate the new to the known.

English 401 engages in this task by teaching students to view writing as a process, involving a series of recurring activities: locating a topic or central idea, developing content, planning, drafting, revising, and editing for clarity and correctness. Since beginning writers often have particular difficulty with elaboration, a major focus is on the ways writing is "built": using detail, evidence, quotations, examples, and reflection. Instructors also work with students to ensure that all aspects of any given written work are devoted to a central purpose. Through regular conferences with their instructor and in-class workshops with their peers, students develop the vocabulary and skills they need to evaluate and refine their own writing.

In all of their efforts, instructors work to help students learn how they might transfer the skills they acquire in English 401 to the other writing situations they will encounter in their other courses and throughout their lives—so that, in writing as in active learning, students will be able to relate the new to the known.

Communities and Audiences 

On March 8, 2004, the UNH Faculty Senate approved the "Statement on Diversity as a Compelling Interest." This statement addresses the need for UNH "to offer its students exposure to that multicultural diversity that comprises our nation." Such exposure can and should happen in every corner of the university, but it is our belief that English 401 is perfectly situated in each UNH student's curriculum as a site where students have the opportunity to explore, interrogate, and examine issues of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, language, geographical location, religion, and physical ability.

English 401 is defined as a course in which students "assume the intellectual and ethical responsibility to construct meaning--to frame interpretations, to explore multiple perspectives, to defend assertions, and to relate the new to the known" (Mission Statement). Guided by this definition, teachers of English 401 ask students on a daily basis to think critically about how issues of diversity function in the courses they take at UNH, in the workplaces they have entered and will enter, and in their everyday lives as active and engaged citizens. English 401 is the course where students build on and from their experiences to understand ways of thinking, writing, and living other than their own. To enable this kind of understanding, English 401 teachers offer course readings, prompt class discussions, and create writing projects that bring multiple perspectives into the classroom--perspectives which call students to reflect on issues of difference, commonality, and power. Since the objective of English 401 is to teach students "to construct meaning"—to communicate—then placing issues of diversity at the center of the courses enables students to recognize the complexity and the exhilaration of the communication process. Thus, the critical thinking and writing skills that students learn in English 401 prepare them for thoughtful interactions and examinations in their other courses at UNH and for life beyond the university.

The Range of Writing Assignments in English 401 

In all of our writing assignments, we emphasize writing as a process, one that includes thinking on paper and then organizing one's thoughts, expressing oneself and then learning to identify and address one's audience, drafting, redrafting, and editing. Writing is a process on a larger scale as well, as students learn from one writing assignment how to address the challenges of another--again, to construct meaning by framing interpretations, exploring multiple perspectives, defending assertions, and relating the new to the known. Accordingly, we use various frameworks for writing in our efforts to help students first distinguish between and then negotiate the relations among informal and academic writing, personal opinions and persuasive arguments, individual style and disciplinary conventions. Our goal is to provide students with the tools and experiences they will need if they are to take control over the writing process and not simply submit to a set of expectations--for without some degree of control and confidence in this regard our students can hardly be expected to be able to adapt their abilities to various and changing demands in their academic, professional, and personal lives. These goals can be met in a variety of ways, and by way of different kinds of writing assignments.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. All students should gain experience in personal, analytical, persuasive, and researched writing. Some of these forms of writing could be and should be a part of the researched, persuasive essay assignment, but instructors should introduce their students to all of these forms over the course of the semester.
  2. Students should have experience in working to develop their sense of themselves as writers, including some form of a first-person performative voice--either by way of a personal narrative, a literacy narrative, a cultural literacy narrative, or by other approaches to what is generally called "personal writing."
  3. English 401 should help students understand that the first-person voice or the presentation of individual experience is appropriate only in certain rhetorical situations. In other words, students should be taught to be aware of the audience for their writing, including an awareness that clarity, eloquence, and effective writing can mean different things in different rhetorical settings.
  4. Students should receive instruction on responding to texts that exemplify this awareness both of audience and of the demands of different rhetorical settings. Students should understand that there are various appropriate responses to readings, and they should gain experience in writing such responses. The range of responses encouraged in any section of English 401 might be large--and might include informal, subjective responses as well as formal analysis--but all students should gain experience in a sampling of different approaches to textual analysis.

The Researched, Persuasive Essay 

Given the importance of the researched, persuasive essay in promoting effective critical thinking and writing skills, this is the one specific writing assignment required in all sections. But while we expect this essay to be assigned in all sections of English 401, meeting the various goals associated not only with this specific essay but with the various tasks involved in academic work might well require multiple writing assignments and various pedagogical approaches. Teachers can introduce students to the conventions of academic writing either through various discrete assignments that focus on specific concerns (an annotated bibliography, for example) or through a single assignment that guides students through an ongoing process involving research, critical thinking, and persuasive writing.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. The majority of the course work should be devoted to the methods and conventions appropriate to academic writing. This can include several, discrete assignments devoted to different genres or tasks of academic writing, or it can be accomplished by several writing exercises devoted to a single researched, persuasive essay.
  2. English 401 should teach students to formulate topics, develop a thesis, and present a persuasive analysis and argument.
  3. English 401 should help students understand the appropriate voice for different rhetorical situations and audiences.
  4. English 401 should teach students various methods for explaining and reporting, including a basic understanding of different expectations in different academic disciplines.
  5. English 401 should prepare students for university-level research. Students should know how to identify and determine the value of multiple sources, and students should acquire experience in summarizing, classifying, and comparing the conflicting views and information presented in different sources. As stated in the "WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition," students should "understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources."
  6. Students should be prepared to adapt the skills used in English 401 to the needs of a single long assignment. In other words, if English 401 teachers rely on short essays, they should keep in mind that their students will be required to write 10-page essays (or even longer papers) for their other classes, and they should find ways to prepare their students for that challenge.
  7. Students should receive careful instruction about various forms of plagiarism. Students should gain experience in summarizing and paraphrasing (with appropriate cittion of the source), and students should learn how to integrate quotations into their writing--including ways to avoid quoting entire sentences or paragraphs (except when necessary) and ways to develop the art of quoting within one's own sentence only that phrase that captures the central idea that one is trying to present.
  8. Students should learn that they can expect to encounter various documentation styles in their courses. They should learn to enquire about the appropriate style, and they should practice either the MLA or the APA style to the point of proficiency.

The Library Sessions and Information Literacy 

All English 401 teachers should familiarize themselves with InfoBoost, an online, self-paced tutorial designed to guide students through the basics of library research. InfoBoost is available through the UNH library webpage. This tutorial includes:

Module I: Starting Smart, which helps students identify a variety of information sources, both in the library and on the Web;

Module II: Building a Search, which covers topic selection and helps students identify keywords to search and refine the topic;

Module III: Using the Catalog, which helps students work through the process of locating and acquiring the books they need;

Module IV: Finding Articles;

Module V: Using the Web; and

Module VI: Citing Sources, which includes information on citation, plagiarism, and copyright.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. The introduction to research methods should begin before the students enter the library, perhaps including an on-line tutorial but always involving in-class preparation for the research process.
  2. The initial library session itself should be focused and directed, as much as possible, to the needs of the assignments in which the students are engaged. Accordingly, English 401 teachers should inform the Reference Librarians of their plans for the assignments and their goals for the initial introduction to the library.
  3. English 401 teachers should follow through on these introductions with assignments that require various kinds of sources and that guide the students through various sections of the library. In addition to the writing assignment itself, teachers might consider, among other possibilities, devoting a week's conference time to small-group library sessions.

Instructor-Student Conferences 

Individual attention to our students is a hallmark of the UNH program, and instructor-student conferences are an essential part of our approach to this course. Indeed, the conference is the one thing that sets English 401 apart from almost all other courses students will take in their university life. The conference offers a wide variety of opportunities to "reach" student writers. Instructors benefit from a closeness with their students that allows for a conversational approach to the demands of the course, demands often complicated by our students' sometimes difficult transition into university life. Through the conferences, students often come to understand that the instructor genuinely cares about the work they are doing; the students see that the instructor is actively considering their thoughts and ideas--and considering them seriously. Most students take English 401 either in their intimidating first semester or in their somewhat more jaded second semester at the university, and these students are at a particularly exciting, sometimes difficult, occasionally bewildering, and decidedly transitional period in their lives. Accordingly, without the conference, the effectiveness and value of English 401 would be diminished significantly.

While conferencing is central to each section of English 401, different teachers take different approaches to the principles behind this component of the course. All teachers in the English Department are expected to hold 3 office hours each week; teachers of English 401 are expected to devote some or most of this time to instructor-student conferences. Many instructors meet their students once every two to three weeks for approximately 15-20 minutes. Some meet less frequently but build into their courses other ways of engaging individual students in regular conversations (through use of email and Blackboard, for example). All instructors are expected to meet with students in person at least at various critical points throughout the semester. Some instructors meet with each student individually, and some meet with 2-3 students at a time.

It is important, of course, for instructors to think carefully about how best to use this conference time and how to prepare for it. Most conferences revolve around new essay drafts or ongoing, larger projects and papers. Some instructors ask that students come prepared with topics and questions about work in progress, or about writing in general. Most instructors "cold conference"--meaning that they read or skim the draft for the first time in the student's presence. Many instructors practice a variation of the cold conference: they are familiar with the draft but have not yet offered significant commentary on it, reserving their thoughts for the one-on-one exchange during the meeting. Most instructors do not read and "correct" papers before the conference, for doing so would not only be time consuming but probably of limited value and possibly even counter-productive. It is generally best to offer written comments on later or final drafts of student work.

How an instructor might best use a conference can depend on where one is in the semester-long process of instruction and on how the student is responding to that process. One might devote one's attention in a conference to concerns being emphasized in class. For example, if class discussions are focused on formulating and placing a thesis in an essay, then the instructor might look for the student's thesis--and then devote the conference to a discussion of the results of that search. Or one might use the conference to focus on more individual concerns--a lack of confidence, or a lack of initiative in the writing process. Through a conference, an instructor can talk with a student directly while working indirectly on conceptual or attitudinal concerns, all the while reinforcing and refining the process of writing that the instructor orchestrates in class.

Most instructors want their students to guide the process--that is, they want the student to take an active role in the revision process. If the student is willing in this way, the conferences tend to be less directive and more conversational. If the student is reticent, instructors offer the students their best thoughts on the writing, thus allowing the student a chance to absorb not only writing skills but also the ability to communicate effectively about the writing process (brainstorming, drafting, revising, developing ideas and a thesis, revising again, editing, and proofreading).

Beyond these different practices are a core set of goals. Students should come away from the conference with a general sense of what is working and what is not working in their essays. Students should have a plan for revising their work (with the recognition that sometimes "revising" means "rewriting"). Students should understand not only what was hampering their work (vague writing, passive voice, problems of sentence structure, under-developed ideas, etc.) but also why it is important for them to begin to implement more effective techniques into their writing life, and how they can develop those skills that will carry them from English 401 into the rest of their academic work and, beyond, into the world at large.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. Instructors should meet with students, in person, for a series of conferences spread throughout the semester.
  2. All English 401 instructors are expected to build into their courses a mechanism for facilitating instructor-student dialogue devoted to individualized review and guidance of each student's writing.
  3. The instructor's approach to conferences with students should allow for the kinds of interpersonal exchanges that promote students' confidence and comfort with, self-awareness about, and developing authority over the process of writing.

Foundational Writing Skills 

Many students come to English 401 with serious problems at the foundational level—grammatical problems, an inability to write correct sentences or focused paragraphs, a general ignorance of conventions for citing sources and presenting titles (of books, articles, films, etc.), and relatively little experience in negotiating the mysteries of punctuation. English 401 instructors cannot devote their attention to teaching students all of this material without sacrificing their attention to matters of explanation, analysis, and persuasion--and most students will experience renewed difficulties with some or all of these concerns as they enter into new rhetorical situations. In all sections of English 401, we address basic writing problems in context and in process. We are able to address some concerns only generally or on an individual basis. Some concerns, though, we can address regularly and with some force, including some aspects of the basic elements of sentences, the appropriate use of punctuation, frequently misused words (for example, lie/lay, who/whom, its/it's, etc.), the appropriate use of the possessive, and a sampling of conventions for citing sources.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. English 401 will provide instruction on Standard Written English in the context of our regular writing assignments. Individual teachers will determine which concerns are most pressing for the students in their section of the course.
  2. English 401 will provide students with regular experience in using a grammar and style handbook. They should acquire the habit of identifying the right questions about their writing and looking in the handbook for the answers--and by the end of the semester, they should know where to look in the handbook and how to do so quickly. Students should be prepared to use this handbook throughout their university careers.

Consistency Across Sections: Goals, Standards, and Assessment  

A core principle of our program is that teachers must have considerable freedom in determining their approach if they are to be both engaging and effective. Of course, pedagogical freedom does not include the freedom to decide what the course should be about--for just as someone hired to teach calculus cannot teach a course on algebra instead, so those hired to teach English 401 cannot decide to teach a fundamentally different kind of writing course. Accordingly, we need to ensure that all English 401 teachers are working towards a common goal, and we need to work together to encourage, support, and promote innovative and effective approaches to the course's core goals.

Naturally, it will be important for us to verify, for ourselves and others, that our standards are consistent across all sections of the course, and doing so will require attention to our methods for evaluating student writing (including but not limited to the determination of final grades for the course). This is a challenging goal, for our teachers draw from various philosophies and methods, all informed by scholarship on the assessment of student writing. Some English 401 instructors use portfolios to evaluate student work--that is, they guide students through a number of writing assignments but base a major portion of each student's grade on a portfolio of revised assignments, including a self-assessment cover letter and other documents in which the student reflects on the process of writing. Some instructors grade each writing assignment (or final revision of same) as it comes in. Many instructors use some combination of the different assessment methods--some arriving at grades at the end of a process of ongoing revision and others providing some form of graded (and sometimes provisional) assessment at various stages of the process. No single method is either required or restricted in English 401.

The following guidelines must be followed in all sections of English 401:

  1. The syllabus for every section of English 401 should include, at the very least, the attendance policy, other class policies (for example, class participation requirements), a statement that describes plagiarism and that identifies the consequences of plagiarism in course work, and a detailed and specific description of the methods by which the course grade will be determined. The sample syllabus attached to these guidelines should be used as a guide in this regard (as in others) for all English 401 syllabi. For the purposes of this program, it is acceptable to reprint verbatim plagiarism statements and other policies from the sample syllabus and from this document.
  2. Students must receive, in writing, their grade thus far for the course at mid-semester. This grade must include all considerations that will be factored into the final course grade, including such matters as attendance and class participation. If asked, instructors should explain to students, in detail, how the grade was determined. Instructors should be able to document all of the factors that they use to determine this grade, if only by referring students to the papers that they have received. Students can be held responsible for holding on to their papers if they wish to document any challenge to their grades.
  3. All sections of English 401 will follow the same attendance policy. Students are allowed three absences--and a missed conference counts as an absence. A fourth absence will result in a full grade reduction for the final course grade (from A to B, for example). With a fifth absence, the student will fail the course. These numbers include all absences. In other words, if a student has a combined total of three absences (of classes and conferences together), then even with a doctor's excuse, a death in the family, or any other situation, a fourth absence will mean a full grade reduction for the course. Accordingly, students should not miss classes or conferences unless absolutely necessary, if only to prepare for the unexpected later in the semester. If there are cases where the instructor feels that there are unusual circumstances that require special consideration of an individual situation, or where there are established exceptions to attendance policies (for example, the responsibilities of religious observations or of military service), then the student should appeal to the Director of Undergraduate Composition, who will work with the instructor to determine the appropriate course of action so as to ensure an equivalent involvement in the course work. Students who can anticipate schedule conflicts (for example, for athletic commitments) should either plan to take English 401 the previous semester or wait for the following semester or the summer of their first year. Obviously, all instructors should keep careful attendance records.
  4. Final course grades should reflect the priorities presented in these guidelines. In other words, a majority of the grade must be based on the student's performance in academic and research assignments. The final grade should provide the student with a realistic assessment of his or her preparation for writing in other courses. Keeping in mind that it is the student's responsibility to apply, in other courses, the methods presented in English 401, the final grade can, of course, account for the process of writing, but the grade should reflect a balance of the student's successful participation in the process of the course and the student's ability to conclude that process with effective and correct writing. In other words, grades should reflect the quality of the student's writing as well as the process of writing and revision.
  5. Class participation should count for no more than 10% of the final grade, and instructors should explain, in the syllabus, how these grades will be determined. Instructors can, of course, include informal writing assignments (free writing, written brainstorming techniques, journals, etc.) as part of class participation, in which case the class participation grade can count for a higher percentage of the final grade--but the methods and percentages of the class participation grade that will be based on written work should be identified and explained.
  6. All English 401 teachers should maintain a teaching portfolio, including the course syllabus, in-class handouts, and a sample of a paper with the instructor's comments. If asked, teachers should be prepared to produce a short statement about their approach to the course.

Communication, Coordination, and Collaboration Across the Curriculum 

English 401 offers students focused and deliberate writing instruction that should prepare students to adapt their skills to a number of different academic, professional, and personal challenges. However, English 401 can serve only as the foundation for ongoing writing instruction throughout students' university careers and across the curriculum. Accordingly, it will be important for faculty throughout the university to work together to coordinate our efforts--to build, when possible, on the instruction presented in English 401, and to help us refine our methods when necessary. We look forward to working with the University Writing Program and with all interested UNH faculty.

We suggest a need to address especially the following concerns:

  1. Discuss ways to develop and articulate effective writing assignments across the curriculum. Some students might perform poorly on a given assignment simply because they didn't understand the specific expectations of the assignment.
  2. Provide students with models of good student writing across the curriculum.
  3. Discuss ways of integrating the use of a grammar and style handbook in courses beyond English 401.
  4. Discuss effective approaches to assessing student writing.
  5. Discuss the value and limitations of different approaches to writing instruction--including different ways of guiding students through the process of locating a topic or central idea, developing content, planning, drafting, revising, and editing for clarity and correctness.

* * * * * * *

The teachers in the UNH Composition Program are committed to preparing our students for a wide range of rhetorical challenges in their years here at UNH and beyond. We are committed to encouraging and preparing our students to be active learners, educating them through inquiry-based instruction that connects the personal with the academic and professional. Finally, we are committed to providing a strong foundation for what must necessarily be a university-wide approach to writing instruction, and we look forward to working with faculty across the campus and across the curriculum to prepare our students for full and satisfying professional and personal lives as active, aware, and effective writers




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