The traditional remedial course

In what ways does that course fit with your ideas about how a developmental reading/writing course should be taught?  In what ways does it contradict your ideas?  How would you modify the syllabus to fit with you own views of how developmental/remedial reading/writing should be taught?

I enjoy reading other instructors' syllabi because it gives me great ideas on how to structure classes and what content I might include that I hadn't thought of before. For this syllabus in particular, it was more than a little reassuring to see that the overall course structure for this remedial course somewhat mirrors my own syllabus in that the semester begins with topic sentences and types of paragraphs, followed by short essays being assigned near midterm. There’s also a lot of emphasis on strategies for being a college student, which I include a bit but would like to address more formally throughout the semester.

I especially like the emphasis in the course SLOs on writing and reading as “mirror” practices. The readings for this class include some classic literature (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ambrose Bierce, Saki), which I think answers the question I asked in my previous blog about whether basic skills classes could and should include in-depth readings. In my basic skills class now, we write a descriptive paragraph early in the semester, and I can see how “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge” would play into that (in addition to just being a great, creepy story).

One surprise is that there are fewer writing assignments in this syllabus than I would have expected. Students have a bit more time to complete assignments than I give, especially for the essays later in the semester. I’m of two minds about this: Because my class doesn’t include much reading, there’s more time for writing assignments, and the fact that students in my class write more doesn’t necessarily mean they write better. In fact, I would suspect that the balance between readings and the corresponding critical thinking skills may bump up students' writing more than the act of more writing would. However, if this class were more than three units, there would be more time in class to work on writing assignments, which would give them both the extra reading work (which I want) AND time to write (which I also want).

Ultimately, there is little I would change about this class. It encourages me to put more effort into the reading balance in my own classroom and seems well-balanced between readings, writing and grammar instruction.