One Approach to Teaching ENG 101
Using Acting Out Culture
Introduction
As noted on the ACT 335 from for ENG 101, students who complete this course must be
able to:
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Read critically
Evaluate a writing task for purpose, audience, context, and point of view
Address a topic using a rhetorical strategy appropriate to the writing task
Locate and use outside information sources with basic proficiency
Develop coherent and persuasive essays that present carefully developed and wellsupported theses
 Use formal, standard usage, grammar, and punctuation
 Cite the work of others using a standard model of documentation
 Adopt ethical writing standards
One way to help students reach these goals is to adopt an approach to the course in which
students read a variety of essays grouped according to theme and then write on each theme
at the end of each group of readings. With this approach in mind, I’ve put together the
attached syllabus and the subsequent supplemental notes for teaching the course. Please
keep in mind that this is only one approach, and the department stands behind your efforts
at finding innovative ways of meeting the objectives listed above based upon your unique
skills as a teacher. What matters most is that all students who complete ENG 101 have all of
the skills listed above.
Assignment Overview
One way to approach the assignments in ENG 101 is to design them so that they ask
students to do more work as the semester progresses.
1. A typical first assignment might ask students to make an argument about a topic like
education. This assignment would not require students to use outside sources or to
respond to an argument they’ve read in Acting Out Culture; rather, it would ask the
student to make and support an argument about education based on the student’s
own personal observations. If students are accustomed to using outside sources and
citing them properly, they may do so, but they’re not required to do so.
2. The second assignment might involve responding to an argument in one of the
readings. Such an assignment would require the student to correctly identify the
argument in an essay and to respond to it. The response doesn’t need to be positive
or negative (i.e. the student doesn’t need to simply agree or disagree); rather, the
student can agree with a difference (i.e. agree up to a point, but make an important
distinction and explain why it matters) or explain how the author’s argument
applies to or fits into a different context. In this assignment, the student should
integrate outside information properly and cite the essay in question as a source.
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3. The third assignment might build on assignments one and two by asking the student
to do some research to support an argument regarding one of the topics you’ve
discussed in class. Given the research angle of this assignment, it would be ideal to
invite a librarian to your class in advance of this assignment to discuss information
literacy and strategies for finding information relevant to the project. As with
assignment two, effectively integrating and citing sources should constitute a major
part of writing this essay.
An alternative to this assignment might be to ask the student to revise the first
assignment and to add outside sources in order to support the paper’s argument.
4. The fourth assignment can combine elements of the second and third assignments.
In other words, this assignment can ask the student to respond to one of the essays
in a given group of readings and also to use outside sources to support that
response. As with the second and third assignments, integrating and citing sources
should constitute a major part of writing this essay.
As with assignment three, an alternative to this assignment might be to ask the
student to revise the second assignment and to add outside sources in order to
support the paper’s argument.
5. By the time the fifth assignment is due, your students should have basic (or better)
proficiency with respect to the outcomes from ENG 101, so assignment five can be
much like assignment four. To put it another way, if the first four assignments give
your students an opportunity to practice good writing habits, then the final
assignment is an opportunity to put them all to good use and impress you with what
they’ve learned over the course of the semester. Thus, for this assignment, you can
once again ask the student to use outside sources to support a response to one of
the arguments in the text. In this case, however, you can allow the students to
choose from any of the texts they’ve read over the course of the semester in order to
encourage their engagement with the project.
The Readings
Week One
It’s not uncommon for the first week of classes to be abbreviated, so the readings for this
week are somewhat brief. The readings from A Writer’s Reference provide an overview of
the writing process. This overview includes information on annotating texts, prewriting,
drafting, and revising. Additionally, the overview includes valuable information on
formulating a thesis. Since writing “carefully developed and well-supported theses”
constitutes a major component of ENG 101, it can be especially helpful to focus a good deal
of class discussion on the characteristics of an effective thesis listed on page 16.
Complementing the overview offered by A Writer’s Reference, the “Introduction for
Students” section of Acting Out Culture asks students a number of questions regarding their
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relationship to popular culture. By asking these questions, this introduction is, in effect,
asking students to think about ways of forming tentative theses about the world they live
in. Additionally, this introduction provides a framework for investigating the various texts
that the students will encounter throughout the course of the semester. Given the ways in
which the texts overlap, one approach to discussing the readings from A Writer’s Reference
and Acting Out Culture might be to ask the students to draw parallels between them.
Another way might be to use the questions regarding the Max Factor ad on page xx to start
a discussion and then to use that discussion as a pre-writing exercise culminating in the
formulation of a thesis or theses.
Weeks Two and Three
By beginning the semester with a discussion of Alfie Kohn's “From Degrading to Degrading,” you'll be starting with a subject that's near and dear to their hearts: their grades.
Or, more broadly, you can begin to discuss their reasons for being in school, and how ENG
101 fits into that bigger picture. Additionally, the bigger question of whether grades are
necessary can lead to a debate over the relative merits of each side of the issue. The
students can suggest pros and cons, which you can list on the board, and then you can press
them on the details of each item on the list before moving on to a discussion of which list is
stronger and why. A discussion along these lines can help your students start thinking
about the level of detail that goes into making and supporting an argument.
The other readings in this unit are also relevant to the topic of education. John Taylor
Gatto’s “Against School” raises the issue of whether school is necessary, and Brigid
Schulte’s “The Case of the Purloined Paper” challenges students to examine the difference
between cheating and “borrowing.” At the big-picture level, these essays will allow your
students to start thinking about why they're in school. At the micro-level, you can ask the
students to “dissect” each essay to figure out not only what each author is arguing, but how
(and how effectively) each author makes an argument. Additionally, Schulte’s essay gives
you a forum in which to cover the final objective of ENG 101, “Adopt ethical writing
standards.”
With further respect to writing, the readings from A Writer’s Reference begin with the
mechanics of writing unified paragraphs and conclude with strategies for linking
paragraphs with effective transitions. Instructors who use or have used rhetorical patterns
to teach composition will find some of the material in this section of the book familiar, as it
discusses ways of using such patterns to organize individual paragraphs. One fruitful
“homework” activity might be to have students identify two or three rhetorical patterns
that Kohn, Taylor, and Schulte use in their essays on education, and then to discuss in class
why the authors might have chosen to use these patterns to support their arguments.
Needless to say, this activity can be repeated throughout the semester when examining
various texts.
As the due date for the first assignment draws near, pages 48 and 49 of A Writer’s Reference
will furnish students with an example of what their papers should look like. Since some of
our students are not as tech-savvy as others, a brief tutorial on the functions of Microsoft
Word (margins, headers, page numbers, double-spacing) might also be in order.
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Weeks Four, Five, and Six
Considering that many of our students see a direct link between getting an education and
embarking on a career path, the second unit of study for the semester follows the
discussion of how we learn with a discussion of how we work. More specifically, Barbara
Ehrenreich’s “Finding a Coach in the Land of Oz” (from week four) examines the job-search
“industry,” the essays by Christopher Byron and Louis Uchitelle (from week five) offer
contrasting images of corporate excess and povery, while Judith Warner’s “This Mess”
(accompanied by several images of working women from popular culture in week six)
examines employment from the perspective of gender.
Because the second written assignment will likely ask students to respond to one of the
essays they’re reading in this unit, the readings from A Writer’s Reference focus on writing
about texts, constructing reasonable arguments, and evaluating arguments. Once again,
students are reminded to read actively and to annotate texts as they read. Additionally, A
Writer’s Reference provides information on the distinction between summary and analysis.
One exercise that students might perform in small groups or as a class is to sketch a fairly
accurate summary of one of the essays they’ve read and then to analyze it. In other words,
ask the students to develop reasonable arguments in response to the essays they’ve
summarized, and also to discuss the essays in terms laid out in the “evaluating arguments”
section of the book.
By this point in the semester, you will also have had a chance to grade the first assignment,
so you might want to consider discussing student papers. If you do so, be sure to ask
students for permission before sharing their work with the class. Additionally, offer to
remove the student’s name from the paper so that it remains anonymous. When choosing a
paper to discuss, think about the issue you’d like to cover in a given lesson. For example, if
there are specific grammar issues you’d like to address in class, examine a paper that needs
work with respect to those issues. Alternately, if you want to focus on developing a strong
thesis, you might want to try giving your students a selection of three different opening
paragraphs and asking them to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Weeks Seven, Eight, and Nine
Given the prominence of topics related to diet and nutrition in the news in recent years,
students should have no problem finding resources for their research paper on the subject
of the third group of readings: how we eat. Topics in this group of readings include eating
disorders, portion sizes, eating competitions, and hunger in the United States. As with
previous readings, this group should provide many opportunities to discuss both the
content of the essays and the strengths and weaknesses of the rhetorical strategies that the
authors employ.
Because the assignment for this unit requires the student to do some basic research to
support an argument on a topic from the readings, the readings from A Writer’s Reference
focus on conducting research and evaluating sources. One way to link this information to
the readings from Acting Out Culture might be to perform a quick internet search on
information related to a topic in one of the essays and to evaluate different resources that
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the search turns up. After a librarian has visited your class to discuss information literacy
and the library’s resources, another in-class activity might be to compare the results of an
internet search with the results of a search through MC3’s online databases.
Again, because the assignment for this unit requires research, this would be a good time to
request a visit from the librarian to discuss the library’s resources with your students. It’s
generally a good idea to give the librarian a sense of what you’re covering in class and what
you expect from the students in terms of research for the next assignment so that the
librarian can tailor the lecture to your needs. It’s also a good idea to schedule your visit
early in the semester—definitely within the first two weeks of class.
Weeks Ten, Eleven, and Twelve
The penultimate unit of the semester focuses on the media. Topics include, among other
things, the relationship between news and entertainment, the “branding” of identity, and
the ways in which the media “frame” experiences in relation to race. Given the issues at
hand, many of the essays in this unit are certainly debatable—and thus lend themselves
nicely to assignment four, which, similar assignment two, requires students to respond to
an argument from one of the essays that they have read in this unit. The main difference,
however, is that the students are required to incorporate outside sources into their
discussion.
By this point in the semester, there are no new readings from A Writer’s Reference, but it
never hurts to return to previous readings for purposes of review. Specific areas that
students frequently need to review include developing a thesis, integrating sources, and
documenting sources. Additionally, you can continue to use sample student papers to cover
various issues as needed. In terms of A Writer’s Reference, tabs S (sentence style), W (word
choice), G (grammatical sentences), P (punctuation), and M (mechanics) prove especially
helpful when addressing such issues.
Weeks Thirteen and Fourteen
During week thirteen of the course, you can encourage students to think more broadly
about themselves as writers and about issues surrounding communication in general as
you discuss Stephen Miller’s “The Way We Don’t Converse Now.” This discussion can serve
less as a prompt for the final assignment than as a means to consider the meaning of the
activity they’ve been engaged in this semester and how that activity relates both to their
academic careers and to their lives beyond academia.
As with the first week of class, the last week is frequently abbreviated. Since the final
project is due on the day of the final exam, you can use the last week of class to review all of
the issues that you will consider when grading the papers. You can also allow students to
submit paper or portions of their papers for commentary from the class during this week.
Final Exam Date
Collect final papers. Some teachers invite students to give readings of their papers during
this meeting. Others invite students to bring food and soft drinks for a small social
gathering.
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