Welcome to Freshman Composition

 

 

 

Welcome, everyone, to freshman composition. I’ve been teaching this class for twenty-two years and I can tell you writing research papers is about as appealing to students as having to be fully conscious while undergoing liposuction. I see there are forty-five of you in here right now and, against the rules, I’ve added fifteen of you, and here’s why: For the last twenty-two years, without exception, forty-five to fifty percent my English 1A students will drop the class. As soon as the first research paper is due, ten of you will have bailed.

In some cases, it’s not just the weariness of having to complete the research papers that compels students to drop the class. It is also the dubious motivations that draw some students to be here in the first place. Some students are lonely and they enroll in college to meet people. Or some students are forced to go to college because their parents gave them an ultimatum, as my mother did to me: Go to college or move out of the house. Or parents will tell their child to go to college so he can qualify for health insurance. While these motivations are understandable to some degree, they usually prove inadequate for keeping a student enrolled in class and doing the assigned work.

By the time the second research paper is due, another ten of you will have abandoned ship. I am confident that by the time everything has settled, we will have a class of twenty-five students, about five below the recommended limit.

You are required to write four research papers, MLA format, about five to six pages in length, typed and double-spaced. You have to use headers, with the page number and your name in the upper right-hand corner of every page, include a Works Cited page, and integrate a minimum of four research sources into your essay. Eighty percent of the essay should be your own writing voice. About twenty percent will be quoted material. Of course, you can paraphrase and summarize from your research sources as well.

I know you hate formatting your cited works, but there are Internet sites, such as Citation Machine and EasyBib, that pretty much do it for you. You just plug in the information, the site formats the information for you, and then you cut and paste the entry onto your Works Cited Page.

Your essays should have a sophisticated thesis that addresses the complexities of a topic pertaining to one of our readings. Your thesis should be argumentative. You should support your thesis with sharply defined reasons that are clearly organized throughout your essay. Your paragraphs have to be coherent, detailed, and supported with evidence. Additionally, your body paragraphs should be meaty, a good 120-150 words long.

You will need an attention-getting introduction, some sort of salient personal anecdotage or other should do the trick. On the other hand, if you begin your first paragraph with the most stale and dreaded “In today’s society,” I will automatically flunk your paper as “In today’s society” is the most egregious essay opening in the history of freshman composition.

You will also need a brief conclusion paragraph, essentially a dramatic restatement of your thesis. A good conclusion can be as short as one sentence long. But be warned: If you begin your conclusion paragraph with “In conclusion,” or worse, “As you can now clearly see,” you will automatically get an F grade. The former expression is a cliché, while the latter expression is condescending toward me, your reader. You don’t tell me what I can now clearly see. I tell you. I’m in charge of what I think. I’m in control. So don’t insult your reader. And, yes, everyone, your reader is me.

Now for a word about your manuscript. Make it polished and professional. Make sure you have adequate ink in your toner or cartridge. Make sure your pages are stapled in the upper left-hand corner and are arranged in the correct sequence.

Here are some other manuscript pointers based on some embarrassments I’ve come across over the years: Make sure the pages are right-side up. Make sure your manuscript pages are not sullied by bacon grease, hardened cheese, or human detritus. When you turn in a greasy paper with the pages out of order and upside down, you’re making a powerful statement about yourself. And when I say powerful, I don’t mean positive.

A final word about your essays. It’s up to you to choose a topic and an approach that you can get passionate about. It’s hard to fake a good paper. If you’re bored with your paper, your reader will be bored. If you don’t want a limp, soggy, brain-dead squirt of a paper, you need to have a fire in your gut for the topic. If you can’t muster a fiery passion for your subject, you might as well go home, watch TV and eat apple pie. Relax and indulge yourself because you’re not going to succeed in a writing class.

If you can find a thesis you’re passionate about, gather relevant research, support your thesis with well developed paragraphs, and format everything according to the given protocols, you just might succeed.

Now writing four research papers at 225 points maximum per paper, is ninety percent of your grade. But there’s another ten percent and that’s the four surprise closed-book reading tests, 25 maximum points each. I’ll ask you two questions from the readings and each question will need a detailed paragraph response, which will test your comprehension of the reading. A good guideline is that each paragraph should be 50-200 words. If you’re not in class the day of the surprise reading test, too bad. You can’t make it up. You lose those points. If you miss one reading test, you’re grade will not diminish significantly. If you miss three or all four tests, then the chances are you have an attendance problem and your grade reflects your attendance problem.

If you are a student with attendance problems—and I get a few in each class every semester—then you are a student who may want to drop this class. My class is not designed to cater to students with attendance problems. Also if you think my policy of not making up reading tests is unfair, you would be well served to drop this class.

Some of you are responsible students who object to the reading tests because they are a source of anxiety to you. Perhaps, but the alternative, which I have tried, is to not have surprise closed-book reading tests and the results were disastrous. Inevitably, only three students who’ve done the reading show up to class and when ninety percent of the students haven’t read the assignment, the class is a major dud. Let’s face it. Most of us our motivated by fear. The fear of failing a reading test makes us read. Take the fear away and students won’t read. I was the same way. Most people are like this. We can conclude, then, that the reading tests are rooted in a realistic view of human nature.

As far as late papers go, I find I hate them with a passion and about the only generosity I can muster regarding late papers is this: You can turn in a late paper no more than two weeks after its due date and you will lose a full grade.

Many of you want to turn in rewrites after I go through your paper with you. This is a problem because often students make corrections that I’ve made so that the rewrite is essentially me giving extra points for corrections I’ve already completed. If you wish to substantially change the substance of your essay, you are allowed to rewrite ONE ESSAY AND ONE ESSAY ONLY.

One of the biggest challenges I have with students is Finals Week. There are a few students who do woefully bad work all semester, or no work at all, and then during Finals Week, they “find religion” and they want to turn in all their essays to me. Or for a higher grade they want to turn in a bunch of rewrites. Let’s make this very clear: NO REWRITES OR LATE PAPERS ACCEPTED DURING FINALS WEEK.

Now a lot of these policies have addressed irresponsible behavior, or what I like to call predictors for failing student outcome.

At the same time, I think we need to address those students who show predictors for success, specifically, we need a policy that rewards those students who aim for excellence. To make sure these students aren’t lost in the shuffle, here is what I call the Incentive Policy: If you get A grades on your first three research papers and A grades on your four reading tests and miss no more than two classes, you will get an automatic A grade on your fourth research paper. That’s right. You will receive the maximum points for your final paper, which of course will insure an A grade in the class. This incentive is important because we need to encourage predictors for success as much as we need to discourage predictors for failure.

If my writing philosophy, my grading scheme, and my mechanisms for encouraging success and discouraging failure are all agreeable to you, then please stay and we’ll begin the Struggle Toward Excellence together.