Come to class, do what I say, and you’ll see: by the end
of the semester you’ll probably read and write better than you do now, and with
less agony for you and your readers too. There will be no exams except for a
practice run toward the end of the semester, when we’ll be getting ready for
sophomore literature, but you’ll be turning in a piece of writing just about
every week: minimum length two double-spaced pages (about 500 words), maximum
length five pages. Not counting in-class exercises or the exam, you’ll write
about 25 pages over the course of the semester.
Texts:
- English 100, Section 39,a collection of readings from a commercial database.
- The Little, Brown Essential Handbook.
- A desk dictionary. Don’t buy this before the first class.
- The online New York Times at nytimes.com. We’ll be spending a lot of time with the daily business section and the special Tuesday section called Science Times, because both of those sections are full of good clear college-level prose about college-level
subjects.