First Year Writing Seminar [FWS] | Boston College | Spring 2022

Research is formalized curiosity.

-Zora Neale Hurston

👋 Welcome to First Year Writing!

Our Guiding Question

<aside> ❓ How can we approach research as a lens through which to explore our world, to formalize our curiosity?

</aside>

This course is student-centered, collaborative, and studio-based. This means that your engagement is not only crucial for your own learning and development as a writer, but key to the course's success overall. If you've never participated in a workshop or studio-based course before, the type of learning that this course requires might feel a bit different at first— there will be minimal teacher-directed discussion so that the bulk of our time together can be focused on your work— individually and in community with one another.

As part of FWS, this course will provide you with a solid foundation to the type of writing, research, and inquiry expected at the university level. You'll gain transferable skills in reading, writing, and research— meaning that you can expect this course to develop you as a critical reader, analytical writer, and academic researcher, no matter your major or ultimate career trajectory.

Communicating With Your Instructor

Noël Ingram

This is Brodie! He lives in CA with my parents because he’s not “actually” my dog.

📍 Stokes Hall 101N Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:30-2:45pm

📫  [email protected] | Please feel free to contact me via email with questions, concerns, or to set up an individual appointment. I check messages during business hours (9am-5pm) and I do not check messages during the weekend. Messages received during these times will receive attention once I am back online. Otherwise, you can expect to receive a response to your message within 1 business day.

⏳ My office hours are Thursdays from 1:00-1:30pm, 2:45-4:15pm by appointment. You can sign up to talk to me either in person or on Zoom by using this calendly link.

First Year Writing Seminar | Boston College English Department Description & Outcomes

Boston College’s First-Year Writing Seminar (FWS) is a 15-person workshop designed to help you develop and practice skills in writing and research. Over the semester you will learn to write rhetorically, devising effective writing processes for a variety of purposes and audiences, including but not limited to, academic writing. Each workshop allows you to work creatively on a variety of writing tasks and to put yourself in conversation with other writers. You’ll meet regularly with your instructor to make revision plans, learn to give and receive productive feedback to other writers, and develop skills for revising essays before submitting them for evaluation. You may also work with classmates to present and "publish" your work within various classroom, campus, or internet settings.

One goal of FWS is to teach you a variety of strategies to practice in a range of writing situations which, in turn, will help you to understand and plan for subsequent writing challenges in your future academic, professional, and personal lives. Another goal of FWS is to give you the tools and the incentive to keep writing after the course has ended: in other courses, in your community, and for your own pleasure. Part of learning to write well, especially in academic settings, involves putting yourself into conversation with current arguments using the conventions and tropes of relevant discourses. In FWS you will also be introduced to library resources and will practice writing and documenting secondary research.

Course Outcomes

By the successful completion of a semester of First-Year Writing, you will be able to demonstrate:

Rhetorical Knowledge

• Focus on a purpose in your writing
• Respond to the needs of different audiences
• Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations, including but not limited to academic rhetorical situations
• Write in several genres

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

• Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
• Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
• Integrate your own ideas with those of others

Writing Processes

• Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
• Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading
• Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
• Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• Productively critique their own and others' works
• Balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part

Knowledge of Conventions

• Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
• Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics
• Practice appropriate means of documenting their work
• Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Ability to Compose in Electronic Environments

• Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts
• Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources
• Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts.