English+431+Syllabus+&+Calendar

**Here is the syllabus and the calendar for English 431 SP10 (Word docs). I'll also update the daily class plan each week here.**


Groups: Huda, Mila, Cassidy, Molly, Joshua Melissa, Stefano, Kali, Nick, Vikky Nicole, Lisa, Gina, Jin, Raechel Nada, Dani, Hwa-Su, Vincent, Chris Sarah, Mary, Ryan, Sammy, Haley

===**The prompts below are intended to help you prep for class and to read more purposefully. You do not need to respond to these questions; just have them in mind as you read and we'll talk about them in class.** ===

**Day 6: March 3**

 * Harris, Muriel and Tony Silva. “Tutoring ESL Students: Issues and Options.” ****//College Composition and Communication //**** 44.4 (1993): 525-537. **
 * Ball, Arnetha and Ted Lardner. “Dispositions Towards Language…” **


 * ===Share ideas from your quick writes. Talk about the feedback you’ve received on your writing and think through some useful principals to consider when responding to student writing. Then, as a group, come up with a working definition for grammar. What do we mean when we say we are “checking grammar”?===
 * ===What are some key suggestions from Harris and Silva we want to consider when working with editing concerns particularly with non native speakers?===
 * ===What is the role of teaching or working with grammar in your internships? What more would you need to know as a leader/mentor/tutor?===


 * ===Consider the arguments made in these two texts. What are the key ideas you think we should discuss?===
 * ===Discuss specifically the passage from Ball and Lardner on page 422 that begins “Until the lawsuit…” And think about what attitudes about students you bring to the classroom.===

Day 5: Feb 24 = QW = In the last 4 weeks, we’ve read Szwed, Bartholomae, Russell, Brandt, and we watched Wesch. Big ideas that come out of this? When you think of this class, you think….?? What questions are you asking now about teaching writing? About mentoring students and their writing? Grobman

How do you see yourself in the internships? What makes you not a student? If I was observing, what about your behavior would signal to me that you’re not a student? What makes you not the professor? Who are you then? What does it meant to stand in between? Use Grobman’s essay to explore our roles as peer mentors: What are the various options in terms of roles/identities for the mentor? What do we do in the classroom given these roles?

Day 4: Feb 17

====2. From Stefano: "It‘s important to bear in mind, perhaps, that Brandt invented the term 'sponsors of literacy' as a way to describe a phenomenon related to literacy learning that she found convenient and relevant; she herself is a sponsor. In the same way that television and radio sponsors bring us the program, 'sponsors' bring us, facilitate, regulate, etc., literacy learning, and in the same way as with television sponsors, there is a payback. Amid all the changing economic conditions and the effects this has on individual literacy learning, all the push and pull, the idea is still to maintain the status quo. The university is perhaps a good example of this, in that it consists of multiple 'sponsors' of multiple literacies, who seem to have their hand on the pulse of the changing literacies, constantly updating their own literacy, learning the literacy of their sponsors and it is in the interest of all that literacy learning thrives among the students because it keeps things in place, preserves the existing tight-knit order. The sponsored eventually become the sponsors. It is a self-sustaining organism, in some sense an island."====

====Let's build on this idea: what kinds of literacies are valued here? what kind of control does the institution have over our literacy practices? What literacy learning is afforded in school? Do the literacy practices valued in the university relate to literacy outside the university? What is our responsibility to students?====

Think a bit about the various communities you belong to. What role do you play in that community--what is your identity there?
What do you have to know to be a part of the community? What are the norms? What are the resources and tools of that community? What would seem foreign to an outsider? How has your participation changed over time? What allowed that? OR what gets in the way?
 * ====For this week’s response, you wrote about the communities you belong to by addressing the questions above. Tell your group about the community you wrote about. Then, together: What would we learn from your collective experiences? How do we become participants in a community? What makes us a member of a group?====
 * ====How does this apply to our work with students who are new to this university? What does it mean to participate here?====
 * ====Then, explore the Russell text together. What is the "take away" for you from reading Russell? What ideas are worth considering? Point to places in the text for us to consider.====

**Finish Szwed, John. "The Ethnography of Literacy." //Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook//. Ed. Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 421-429.**
 * Day 2: Feb 3 **


 * Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University”** // **When a Writer Can't Write: Research on Writer's Block and other Writing Problems** // **. Ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1986.  134-166.**

Quick Write: How does B’s discussion on authority compare or contrast to your writing experiences in the university? Do you “imagine” yourself as an historian, a critic, a biologist, when you write in different fields? Do you notice any changes in your form or content when you write for different fields or instructors?

**In groups:** How does Szwed understand literacy practices (what does he mean by the "social meaning of literacy" (422))? How does he say others define literacy? Why is this narrow definition a problem according to Szwed?

What does Szwed ask us to consider in this text? What assumptions does he address? Direct us to a place in the text for consideration and lead the class in a discussion of that section.

=== Bartholomae has two purposes in this paper. One is to raise complexity over correctness as the evaluative criteria for acceptable university writing, the other is to say that students succeed according to his criteria when they can imagine themselves into positions of authority. What do you think he is saying by “positions of authority?” Share ideas from your quick write—how do your experiences with writing in the university compare to B’s arguments? === ===“What our beginning students need to learn is to extend themselves into the commonplaces, set phrases, rituals, gestures, habits of mind, tricks of persuasion, obligatory conclusions, and necessary connections that determine what ‘might be said’ and constitute knowledge within the various branches of our academic community” (516).===

**Day 1: Jan 27**
Syllabus and introductions Overview of 130/30/130P/SLC and their relation to 431 Choosing internship— What is your role? Reading together—Szwed “The Ethnography of Literacy” In class: ** Quick Write: Imagine that you could view your daily life—start with today and yesterday: write about the instances of reading and writing that appear throughout your day. What do you read and write? What are the conditions? What purpose do the activities serve? As a group—talk about your response to the prompt. What would we learn about “uses” of literacy from your collective literate experiences? Be prepared to share. Szwed, John. "The Ethnography of Literacy." //Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook//. Ed. Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 421-429. ** John Szwed is a professor of anthropology (among other fields) at Yale. His interest in anthropology helps to shed some light on why he is interested in bringing ideas about doing research, specifically the idea of ethnography, to an understanding of literacy. How does Szwed understand literacy practices (what does he mean by the "social meaning of literacy" (422))? How does he say others define literacy? Why is this narrow definition a problem according to Szwed? What does Szwed ask us to consider in this text? What assumptions does he address? Direct us to a place in the text for consideration and lead the class in a discussion of that section.
 * *Sign up for course Wikispace: http://csucwritingmentors.wikispaces.com/ **

This week (by Jan 31): Post a response to the “Welcome” post under the Discussions tab on the Homepage of the Wikispace
 * Weekly post due by Sundays at midnight to course Wikispace**