Monday, October 28, 2013

Brainstorm SFSU Tensions (Blog 2)


I may experience some tension in fully incorporating learning objectives 6 and 7.
With 6 (research), I think there are a lot of problems with the way research is designed / thrown into many FYC classes. It’s a big drain on class time to have to cover what library research is, how to determine the credibility of sources, how to find sources, and ridiculous requirements such as “must reference four academic journals, two newspapers and one online professional database.” Research is a skill that students need for academic success, but it can’t all be taught in a single 4-week unit in Freshman Comp.
With 7 (grammar), I do believe grammar needs to be directly addressed in FYC…but only as the class demonstrates the need or in one-on-one conferences with the instructor. At the FYC level, students should be made aware of recurring sentence-level errors, but the class’s focus is on more advanced writing strategies, like generating ideas, paper structure and organization. I am NOT going to spend time on spelling.

No comments:

Post a Comment