This semester, I have been fortunate enough to work as a research associate for the First Year Composition (FYC) Task Force at Baruch College. The Task Force consists of faculty from different disciplines, including Zicklin school, and is joined by Suresh Canagarajah, our WAC Cordinator Cheryl Smith, and our own Mikhail Gershovich, to name a few. The Task Force is investigating the current situations in FYC pedagogy, curriculum and objectives inside and outside of Baruch and CUNY schools, and discussing how the new FYC writing program can be organized and implemented at Baruch College.
At the moment, the task force is in the process of studying about and discussing the following questions:
1. Social Context [How the ends and means of literacy are changing]
2. Institutional Context [How universities situate FYC]
3. Academic Context [Expectations of diverse disciplines from English literacy]
4. Departmental Context [Relations between Literature, Cultural Studies, Journalism, and Composition; Relations between adjunct and full-time faculty]
5. Genre Considerations [Which genres the writing course should prioritize; the ways in which the course should relate to the genre conventions from popular culture and native communities brought by students]
6. Language Considerations [Relations between standard English, non-prestige dialects, and other languages in English writing]
7. Models of FYC [The desired sequence, curriculum, and pedagogy for the course]
There are some successful writing programs developed in other universities, including City College, and I am researching about them, coordinating with Cheryl as well as Suresh. As someone who has previously taught FYC and the equivalent of it in Japan and at Lehman College, I am personally very interested in this topic and do have some stories based on my own experience. For the next few posts, I plan to write them to share with you. I would also love to hear any opinions or ideas about this topic from you, as I am sure that some of you readers have taught or are teaching Freshman Composition courses and many more of you must have taken them as a student!
This semester at Baruch I’m working with students who have semester-long research projects. Their first assignment was to propose a topic idea. Most of the proposals were far too broad in scope. This was in no way odd or unexpected. It led me to wonder, though, whether there might be some systematic way to “teach” a sharper focus at the proposal stage.
A colleague of mine shared some ideas she had on the subject, which I’ll paraphrase here. My colleague’s approach is to require students to rewrite proposals until they pass. The proposal has to follow this format: Paragraph 1=Name the focused topic. Discuss what you find interesting in it and how it is relevant to the course objectives. Par. 2=Pose a main research question. This should be a question for which there is no simple (yes or no) answer. Par. 3=Introduce one solid source. Give full bibliographic data, and indicate how this source will contribute significantly to your project. Par. 4=Same as paragraph 3, but with another source. Par. 5=Outline how you will proceed with and complete the project. Indicate what you are still looking for in research, and discuss any potential stumbling blocks.
I’m wondering if anyone else out there has tried this kind of approach. I’m not sure if it would be appropriate for all writers. For some people, the focus seems to come only through the process of writing the actual paper. Any thoughts?
Our old friend Jim Groom of Bavatuesdays, a renowned edublog, just put up a nice post acknowledging the fine work of our very own Luke on Writing New York, a blog for two Journalism courses at Baruch. Subtitled “Posts from the Boroughs and Beyond,” the blog showcases some of the work of students in Prof. Roz Bernstein’s and Prof. Brigette Davis’ classes and is one of the growing number of course blogs the Institute currently supports. Take a look.
According to psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, the “self-esteem movement” and new media are a combination that threatens to undermine the American social fabric. Twenge is the lead author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before, a study that has gotten a lot of attention this week. A team of researchers led by Twenge used what’s called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to measure changes in the level of self-regard in over 16,000 college students since the early 1980s. The NPI asks students 40 questions, including “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.” From 1982-2006, the results of NPI inquiries suggest that American college students have become much more narcissistic.
I haven’t read the study, nor, really, do I plan to. As I learned in one of my first graduate school courses, it’s much easier to criticize a book you haven’t read than one you have. I have though read a lot of the reporting on the study this week, and while I think there may be something to the notion that Americans have become more self-involved, I wouldn’t put it on the younger generation (narcissistic link: they need help to consume critically), I wouldn’t date it to the 1980s (thank you, Dr. Freud), and I certainly wouldn’t accept on its face Twenge’s simplistic notion that “current technology fuels the increase in narcissism. By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.” That is only one of the things these sites do, and to disaggregate that from the other processes at work is to miss the forest for a tree.
Here’s a link to an interview with Twenge, and a response by a certified Generation Me’er (I thought they were Generation Y?). I think the second interview complicates the first a bit. These things are certainly worth talking about, but I don’t think they’re worth getting overwrought about. Kinda like these developments:
One note that may, in fact, contradict what I’ve just written: the AP story on this quoted a young woman from University of Vermont saying most of her contemporaries are politically active and not very self-centered. If a reporter has to go to UVM to get that perspective, maybe we are in trouble.
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