Approaches to Teaching English 102 (DRAFT)
The focus of English 102 at Boise State is research writing, and the philosophy of the course is described in some detail in its mission statement, recently approved by the English Department. There are several principles and assumptions behind the course that are particularly important.
E 102 is an inquiry-based course. That is, the thrust of the course is to engage students in largely self-sponsored investigations that encourage them to engage in the intellectual practices often central to academic inquiry-- suspending judgment, tolerating ambiguity, question-asking, and dialectical thinking. The course attempts to challenge many of the prior beliefs students have about what it means to do research. For example, many students assume research exclusively involves library work, or that it is an activity a writer only engages in under special circumstances, or that when confronted with a "fact" one can't argue with it. E 102 attempts to help students develop a broader conception of what it means to do research, providing practice not just with library research but with other sources of information, including observation and interview. In this course, students should have the chance to "try on" the role of knowledge makers. A central part of this is the idea that knowledge is made through conversation; students are encouraged to engage in a dialogue with outside sources and experts on their topics rather than taking it on faith that what they say must be true.
There are a range of pedagogical practices that encourage these principles and ideas. In some ways, it's easier to identify the approaches that seem not to be consistent with the philosophy of the course. For example, an E 102 course in which the instructor assigns all the topics, and requires students to write conventional term papers is not likely to challenge students prior beliefs about research writing, nor will it help them learn how to conduct their own investigations or discover their own purposes in writing. In addition, a course that focuses exclusively on introducing students only to academic writing in various disciplines will also be unlikely to challenge students' prior knowledge, nor will it seem like an authentic rhetorical situation since the instructor and fellow students are not a real audience for much disciplinary writing.
It is better to design an E 102 course with a range of research-based assignments that address the following questions:
- Do the assignments encourage students to have experience with a different sources of information? For example, does one assignment focus on field research or observation or is that least an aspect of an assignment?
- Are at least some of the assignments self-sponsored? Are students encouraged to identify an area of personal interest and develop researchable questions around which they conduct an investigation?
- Do some assignments allow sufficient time for students to suspend judgment about what they think? Are some topics assigned or chosen because students want to discover what they think and are they encouraged to approach those topics in an open-ended way?
- Do all the assignments build on what students learned and practiced in English 101? For example, are they encouraged to use invention techniques like freewriting and listing to generate thought and material? Is revision and peer review a feature of the process? Are students encouraged to see the connection between personal and research-based writing?