Hello John,
The English Dept at U of Regina runs two one-semester courses (Engl
100: Lit-Comp I and Engl 110: Lit-Comp II), the first of which is
required for all students/all degrees, the second of which is required
for Arts majors. Classes are capped at 35 students, taught by a
selection of tenured and part-time, Ph.D. and M.A. level instructors
(most are experienced instructors, though few would consider
themselves compositionists/researchers; one instructor teaches both
parts of the course, choosing how much is lecture and how much is
discussion/workshop, etc. So there is a lot of variation in approach).
Content is based on a two-thirds lit (half of which is poetry study),
one third comp distribution, with individual teachers having a great
deal of autonomy in choosing books and readings. E 100 was designed to
focus on "basic" (sentence- to paragraph-level) skills, E 110 on longer
writing tasks and more book-length works, but both courses now tend to
feature "whole task," writing assignments. Neither course is designed
as a lit-survey course--most lit discussion is organized around related
themes.
Perception of the overall functionality of the course (by students and
non-English faculty) often involves questions about the "use" of
literary study to non-English majors, not to mention the special
challenges of coming to terms with peculiarities of literary language
for ESL-style learners. My experience of teaching comp over the years
(at various places) is that there is not much real consensus among
faculty (in or put of English) about what exactly constitutes
"effective" writing--at least not as much as seems to attach to how to
recognize "bad" writing. So one is vulnerable to charges from the usual
run of stakeholders that "my students still can't write even though
they took a comp course." Generally I'd say one is
perpetually vulnerable to deficit conceptions of the comp program. I
agree that comp needs recognition as a discipline, some high end
marketing would help, though comp teachers are very busy and a single
second's lapse of vigilance usually means we're back to chat about
how to fix people, cheaply, quickly.
A few faculties here (such as Adminstration) offer a second-year course
in writing in the discipline (I teach a section of a
non-required, second-year, credit "Management Communications" course,
capped at 50 students).
Student Services, which oversees First-year Services (which administers
the mature student population [U of R is an open admissions
university--if you're over 21 you qualify to be here], runs UNIV 110, a
writing course that introduces students to "university discourse."
Non-current-traditional, more social constructionist in orientation.
Smaller classes (usually 15 students, max 20), features classroom
interaction, workshopping, lots of one-to-one teacher-student contact.
Tries to move students away from the thesis-support mechanism,
introduce them to issues of textuality, audience. Contingency.
Key words at U of R would seem to be variety, versatility, instructor
autonomy. With a general perception of the central role of literature
in the construction of literacy, from which there are a few
occasional departures into the non-standard.
I hope this is helpful.
Best,
andy stubbs
On Sun, 10 Sep 2000 12:52:03 -0400 "John B. Killoran"
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Colleagues, it's that time of year again when Brock University's rather
> naive English dept dreams up unusual things to do to its young writing
> program, and so I need your help with a couple of questions about Canadian
> 1st-year writing courses:
>
> 1) Do any Canadian universities or colleges offer 2-course sequences in 1st
> year? I know these are common in the US, but general ed requirements are
> also common there. I'm not aware of any such Canadian offerings (correct
> my ignorance please) and I'm hoping Brock sees the wisdom of doing one
> course well rather than two courses poorly. Writing is not required at
> Brock, so students here drop out of the second-term course after surviving
> the poorly designed first-term course. (Of course, Brock's English dept
> blames everybody but itself.)
>
> 2) How many/few campuses attempt to teach writing courses partly out of a
> lecture hall? Aside from Brock, I'm aware of only 5:
> + Toronto: Engineering program
> + Waterloo: English and Math depts (shame on my alma mater)
> + Ottawa: English dept (??? is that correct?)
> + Carleton: English dept (??? is that correct?)
> + Saskatchewan: Commerce program
> Are there others? I need to argue that only 5 (or whatever) other
> universities are attempting this, while the other 1000 or so North American
> universities and colleges don't presume to lecture students into becoming
> better writers.
>
> Ironically, one of the latest proposals the dept floated is for an
> upper-year undergrad course on writing pedagogy. Maybe some of the English
> faculty here will consider taking it.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
>
> All the best,
> John
> ----
>
> John B. Killoran, PhD
> Assistant Professor
> Dept. of English Language and Literature
> Brock University
> St. Catharines, Ontario
> L2S 3A1 Canada
> (905) 688-5550 ext.3886
> [log in to unmask]
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
> [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
> write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
>
> For the list archives and information about the organization,
> the annual conference, and publications, go to the Inkshed Web site at
> http://www.StThomasU.ca/inkshed/
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Andrew Stubbs, Professor, English Department
University of Regina, Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Phone: 306-585-4316 Fax: 306-585-4827
[log in to unmask]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
the annual conference, and publications, go to the Inkshed Web site at
http://www.StThomasU.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
