Teaching Guides
Teaching CO130 Academic Writing
For the Summary and Response Using Personal Experience Essays
For the Summary and Response Using Personal Experience essays, the instructor will have to do more of the work on his/her own. Part 2 of the text focuses on examining "cultural collisions" and an interview assignment that emphasizes listening for difference; however, this can be seen as applicable to typical student difficulties in reading (seeing their own ideas reflected in a text rather than the author's). Looked at this way, the readings in Part 2 can be used sparingly to enhance continued work with active, careful reading and response.
The instructor might choose to adapt the response to fit the text more closely while still meeting syllabus goals. One possibility would be to keep a textual response assignment (as the interview assignment does not fit the goals of this syllabus as well), but ask students to examine/explain how the writer's ideas are similar to or different from (stressing difference, since this is what most students seem to have trouble seeing) their own initial expectations or beliefs, rather than simply to "agree" or "disagree."
Suggested readings for Summary and Response Using Personal Experience:
Week 5: Summarizing: pp. 115-124 ("Cultural Collisions") and pp. 143-148 ("Listening for Difference").
Week 7: Focusing, developing, and organizing ideas: pp. 186-193 ("Direct and Indirect Style" and "Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay").
Week 8: Revising to meet audience needs; workshopping: pp. 197-217 ("Revision Workshop" on clarity and paragraphing).
Note: The actual apparatus for summary--what to include, why be objective, etc--will have to be provided by the instructor, as it's not dealt with in this text. Fruitful options for summary/response essays include Kluckhohn, "Designs for Living" (pp. 118-122); Lorde, "From Zami: A New Spelling of my Name" (pp. 65-74); Fedullo, "Mrs. Cassadore" (pp. 149-160); Shen, "The Classroom and the Wider Culture" (pp. 175-185); and Holland, "Discovering the Forms of Academic Discourse" (pp. 171-174). The difficulty level varies greatly, and some are strictly narrative while others use narrative.
