101

Welcome to English 101, Composition I at BHSU!

Site Navigation

First and foremost, let’s chat about site navigation.  Below is a short description of the various pages associated with English 101:

• Documents and Handouts.  Here you’ll find all the handouts that you need for class.
• Required Texts.  Check to see that you have all the books you need.
• Front Page.  Head this way for announcements about class, office hours, extra credit, etc.
• FAQs.  Pretty obvious.  Go here first if you have a question about class.
• Email Etiquette.  Emailing professors can be tricky, so use this page to help you.
• Turnitin.com.  Enrollment instructions for turnitin.com.
• Writing Prompts.  Check your syllabus about absences; you might need to check the writing prompts if you miss class.

What’s the point of this class?

Now let’s chat about class.

Most universities require students to complete a series of composition classes during their freshman year or at least before they graduate.  These composition courses are designed to introduce students to the basic writing conventions in academia, and these composition courses also introduce students to research techniques.  Much of the information is general in nature but can then be applied to more specific courses.

Class Activities

In order to learn about some of the basic conventions of academic writing, you’ll write six papers with one of those being a final in-class essay exam.  The final essay exam is one that you will take in common with your peers who are enrolled in other English 101 classes at BHSU.

Now, I’m sure that many of you have written research based arguments, literary analyses, and the like in your high school English classes.  And I’m sure that you’ve written about the same topics throughout high school as well.  In order to alleviate some boredom and maybe some repetition, our topic of focus throughout the semester will be monsters, ghosts, and ghouls.  In your first paper, you’ll be writing a horror narrative.  In your second essay, you’ll be examining some horror short fiction.  In your third paper, you’ll be making an argument about horror films… by the fifth paper, we’ll have read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, and you’ll have the option to write about zombies in some fashion.

Why write about one issue for the semester, you ask?  Well, why take a course about one topic, I ask?    Cicero once said: “No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject.”  In your other introductory courses, you learn about biology, calculus, physics, etc. for the fifteen weeks during the semester.  It takes at least fifteen weeks to just begin to learn about a subject, and that’s why I encourage you to chose a subject that interests you and use my course as a way to investigate it.  Rather than seeing Composition I as a series of arbitrary papers about unrelated ideas, I hope you see your papers as a large project that helps you map, define, and refine your knowledge about a gory and sometimes interesting subject.

Now that you understand the paper projects for the course, your next concern is more than likely about the day-to-day class activities.  My classrooms tend to be very light-hearted.  I know we’re covering important concepts that apply beyond just my classroom, but that doesn’t mean that we have to be serious all the time.  During class, I’ll use the projector to focus my lectures and our discussions.  Some days I’ll just lecture about an important concept and then you’ll write.  Other days, you’ll work in small groups on an activity and then we’ll discuss concepts as a class.  You can expect, though, to do a lot of writing in my class.

Outside of class, we can keep in touch via this blog, email, and my office hours.  You’ll always find me in my office (Meier Hall 305) during office hours, and you never need to schedule an appointment – just stop in during office hours.  Use the blog (via Meebo and the comments section) and email if you need to get in touch.

Any questions?  Email me at adairolson@bhsu.edu!  Or head over to the FAQ page.