ENGL 5010 Teaching College English
TEACHING COLLEGE ENGLISH
This course is an introduction to the main pedagogical strategies for teaching college English (both composition and literature). The world of college English courses is incredibly diverse, and so we will enter into the conversation of best practices through a few foundational lenses: current trends in college-level pedagogy, strengths-based writing instruction, close-reading as a core practice of studying literature, “coming of age” novels and their place in the literature curriculum, and strategies for teaching older texts. Overall, the goal of this course is to empower instructors to tackle a wide range of English courses at the college level, from first-year composition to upper-level literature seminars. The content of this course stems from the core principle that “writing is an extension of the self” and that writing and the study of literature should, first and foremost, be a tool of empowerment and enrichment for students. This course will also emphasize some of the key differences between secondary English education and university-level curricula. In particular, university-level English courses tend to emphasize the quality of ideas over technical precision, especially with respect to writing.