Syllabus for Introduction to Expository Writing (Fall 2015)
Creators: name: Carlson, Brooke
Publisher: name: unknown
Year: 2015

description: "You be me for a while, and I'll be you."
-The Replacements


Introduction to Expository Writing is designed to provide instruction and practice in writing, editing, and revising short narrative and expository essays. It will also provide instruction in organizing your material and in Standard Edited American English. The purpose of this course is to develop the critical reading, writing, and research skills essential for post-secondary academic scholarship. In this particular section of English 101, we will read a number of essays organized around a series of topics that are central to our being in the world today.
 
As the epigraph from The Replacements suggests, this course is centered on the notion of subjectivity. The framing of this subject is also expository writing, which means we will be exploring how we think and write about what we know. We will begin the semester with life at death, or the dying self. These brief essays will lead us into birth and ways of living, or being; followed by words on living with the knowledge of death; and the body - sexed, raced, and gendered. We end with the choice of life, and what that might mean, and we will grapple with these questions across both a short novel and film: Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (1987), and Niko Cara's adaptation, Whale Rider (2002). 

You will be expected to critically engage with the ideas presented in these readings as you participate in class discussions, as you think through and write through the material, and as you write your formal essays. My hope is that this course will prepare you for your academic future, as well as assist you in becoming a critically engaged and informed citizen, committed to living and being in a more just and peaceful world.
description: "You be me for a while, and I'll be you." -The Replacements Introduction to Expository Writing is designed to provide instruction and practice in writing, editing, and revising short narrative and expository essays. It will also provide instruction in organizing your material and in Standard Edited American English. The purpose of this course is to develop the critical reading, writing, and research skills essential for post-secondary academic scholarship. In this particular section of English 101, we will read a number of essays organized around a series of topics that are central to our being in the world today. As the epigraph from The Replacements suggests, this course is centered on the notion of subjectivity. The framing of this subject is also expository writing, which means we will be exploring how we think and write about what we know. We will begin the semester with life at death, or the dying self. These brief essays will lead us into birth and ways of living, or being; followed by words on living with the knowledge of death; and the body - sexed, raced, and gendered. We end with the choice of life, and what that might mean, and we will grapple with these questions across both a short novel and film: Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (1987), and Niko Cara's adaptation, Whale Rider (2002). You will be expected to critically engage with the ideas presented in these readings as you participate in class discussions, as you think through and write through the material, and as you write your formal essays. My hope is that this course will prepare you for your academic future, as well as assist you in becoming a critically engaged and informed citizen, committed to living and being in a more just and peaceful world.