Please select your course from the list of courses below.

ENG 504 Seminar in the Composing Process: Rhetoric and Analysis
ENG 505 Participant-Observations Experience: Composing Process
AED 663 Research in the Teaching of English

In all my courses, I try to create an environment where success for the majority is the norm. That’s why I prefer a course design that allows me to intervene and comment on writing while papers are still in their draft stages. I delay the assignment of grades until the writers decide that their pieces are in good shape. At the beginning of the process, I serve as a diagnostician and coach, listening to the writers, intervening regularly, questioning, correcting, and giving reinforcement and advice. My working principle is that as an act of communication, writing deserves a genuine human response. I want my students to know that their arguments have been received and that my response, primarily through questions regarding their work, will guide their revision. Reading first drafts, I look past error to consider content first. This is not to say that I ignore grammar and mechanics. When it comes time to evaluate and grade final drafts, I emphasize the record of growth represented by successive drafts and the extent to which the writer moved from generating material, to summoning an audience, to revising the paper for the greatest effectiveness.

I work hard to make sure that my criteria are always crystal clear. In the past few years, I have been developing rubrics/scoring guides for my assignments. My students often collect their essays in class anthologies that I either publish or post on the Web. Publication demands commitment and considerable time and energy from me, but the time is well spent because my students strive for excellence and long-term development rather than immediate gratification.