Actual syllabi will vary in number of assignments, emphasis on kinds of assignments, length of papers, and methods of evaluation. First-Year Writing courses at FSU teach writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising. Writing is both personal and social, and students should learn how to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Since writing is a process of making meaning as well as communicating, FYW teachers respond to the content of students writing as well as to surface errors. Students should expect frequent written and oral response on the content of their writing from both teacher and peers.
Classes rely heavily on a workshop format.
Both reading and writing are the subject of class discussions and workshops, and students are expected to be active participants of the classroom community. More specifically, you will write and revise numerous papers, write sustained exploratory journals, devise your own purposes and structures for those papers, work directly with the audience of your peers to practice critical reading and response, and learn many new writing techniques. The Longman Writer's Companion by Chris Anson, Robert Schwegler, and Marcia Muth. All of the written work below must be turned in to me in order to pass the course. Approximately 10 drafts and revisions of the four formal papers.