One of the major components of teaching classes in the General Education Literature program is instruction in writing skills. While it is sometimes perceived as the less-interesting portion of our job, our ability to teach writing skills is a valuable aspect of our program and will serve us in good stead both in terms of retaining our program’s largely unique status and giving our students something tangible to point toward when asked about the value of this course.
It may not be flashy, and it may be frustrating at times, but with a reasonably hard-nosed approach to writing instruction you can see your students improve greatly by the end of a semester’s worth of instruction. The moment of epiphany when discussing a text is flashy but ephemeral; the drudgery of writing over and over is dull but concrete.
Strategies and Tactics for Teaching Writing
Thesis Writing
Structural Concerns
Writing Presentation, Structuring Papers [Steffes]
Structure and Organization in Interpretation of Literature Essays
Paragraph Transitions
Using Quotations
Effective Sentences
Eliminating Intensifiers [A. Stenson, adapted from handout by J. Janssen]
The Cumulative Sentence [B. Landon]
Basic Grammar and Philosophy for Crafting Cumulative Sentences [B. Landon]
Paramedic Method: Getting rid of jargon, passive verbs, and prepositional phrases [A. Stenson, based on R. Lanham]
Writing Sentences with Substance [A. Stenson, adapted from L. Capp]
Building More Complex Sentences [A. Stenson]
Transitions & Topic Sentences
Transitions handout [A. Williams]
Other Concerns
Grades & Grading
- See Grading Resources here.
Rubrics & Guidelines
Essay Rubric Handout [V. Sprow]
Writing Rubric [M. Bateman]
Example Writing Assignments
This section provides a number of different options for writing-focused assignments. For a full page of sample assignments, see here.
Paper #1 [B. Landon]
F09 – Assignment – Major Essay 01 [J. Horn]
F09 – Assignment – Reader Response 04 [J. Horn]
Essay – Cultural Context [A. Pleiss]
Taming a poem [A. Pleiss]
Essay #1: Working with Drafts [S. McCarthy]
Minor Character Essay [A. Stenson]
Contextualizing The Handmaid’s Tale with Current Events [J. Janssen]
Essay #1: Evaluating Character Decisions [L. Capp]
Other Assignments
How to analyze a primary source: Primary Source analysis guide
How to analyze a photograph: Photo Analysis Worksheet
Campus Reading Attendance and Review [A. Williams]
Responding to Brian Doyle’s “Pop Art”: Writing Diagnotic, Pop Art [J. Loman]
Kate Nesbit’s Writing Exercise Curiosity [K. Nesbit]
"A Defence of Rubbish" Essay Prompt