English 1200H: Freshman Honors Seminar

Abstract

COURSE DESCRIPTION:¶ This is an honors writing seminar designed to teach you ways of developing, organizing and presenting your ideas in writing. Although I’ve chosen a subject for you to write about (short stories by American writers), the techniques you will learn will apply to every subject that demands clear, logical and cogent exposition. Throughout the course, we will approach writing as an ongoing process of thinking and learning that begins the moment you start to ask questions about a subject, continues through note-taking and other exploratory writing, and develops into a full thesis argument.¶ The focus of the course this semester is writing – but we do need to write about something. This semester, we’ll be reading some classic short stories, poems and a novel about family and community. We’ll be reading short fiction by Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and George Saunders and some poems by Robert Frost. We’ll end the course with a novel, Sula, by Nobel prize winning author Toni Morrison.¶ In this course, you will learn important aspects of academic writing that will teach you to develop your ideas, support your arguments, and make your insights clear and convincing to other people. We will begin by writing about one of five short stories (your choice). Through reading and discussing the story, you will learn how to talk and think about fiction, and practice a key skill called “close reading,” which you will use throughout the semester. For your second essay, you will practice writing a comparison essay, this time focusing on two stories. The final paper is a research paper about Ishiguro’s novel and will include secondary sources to help you in strengthening and developing your argument.¶ GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:¶ The goal of this class is for you to learn to write a thesis-driven academic essay that articulates a complete, clear, logical thesis, and supports that thesis through a logical series of claims supported by well-chosen evidence and effective analysis.¶ SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES include  learning the elements of a complete thesis;  learning how to identify and articulate claims;  learning how to support claims with evidence and analysis;  learning how to logically arrange and relate claims;  learning how to close-read and comparatively analyze texts;  learning and practicing the principles of academic integrity;  learning basic techniques for scholarly research;  and learning to utilize secondary as well as primary sources to support an original thesis