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This course aims to be a rigorous university-level
composition course, offering students a varied and provocative reading and
writing agenda; a thorough introduction to grammatical, rhetorical, and
stylistic basics of writing at the university level; an introduction to
research using reliable sources from university libraries and the Internet; an
opportunity to work in groups with fellow students and in conference with the
instructor; and a forum to share reactions and explore questions in an open and
supportive atmosphere.
This is not a “theme” course. Rather than exploring in depth
one subject throughout the semester (gender construction, folklore, or
sustainability, for instance), this course will offer an eclectic and hopefully
engaging mix of readings on politics, race, society, commerce, language,
sports, sexuality, drugs, music, and so on. We will also mix and match genres,
analyzing speeches, memoirs, short stories, encomia and invective, business
memos, and essays galore: expository, analytical, argumentative, some written
by professors, some written by students. Perhaps the only constant will be the
high quality of the writing. Each piece we read will offer unique lessons in
style and clarity, subtlety and depth, construction, correctness and
persuasiveness.
In addition to our regular in-class work of writing in
various modes (freewriting, directed writing, collaborative writing,
brainstorming, summarizing readings and individual class sessions, etc.),
students will submit twenty-one pages of polished prose (five three-page papers
in various rhetorical modes and one six-page research paper); they will
workshop each others’ essays, give several group presentations, and take ten
quizzes.
Required Texts:
Class readings are available on-line and free at our UH
Laulima page under Resources. I ask you to print and bring to class up to 300
pages of readings that I will post on our class site.
Faigley, Lester. The Brief Penguin Handbook With
Exercises (Includes 2009 MLA Updates) |
