Howell 1

Dani Howell
Cheryl Hoy
ENG 6020
13 January 2015
GSW 1120 Self-Reflective Narrative
While there are fewer essay for General Studies Writing 1120 than there were for
General Studies Writing 1110, I still expect that this second half of the composition
course will be more time intensive for both me and my students than the first half was.
Not only are the essays for this course longer than the essays assigned in the
preceding course, but also the content seems to be more demanding. The essays need
to be more developed (since the great majority of the students will be building on the
knowledge they gained from the first section of GSW), and there are more required
assignments. Whereas the only required reading for GSW 1110 was related to how to
properly write argumentative essays, the reading for GSW 1120 is needed for students
to understand the writing assignments and for the content (in this case, the Work
chapter from WARAC for the first two paper units) articles/essays they need to read in
order to write the critique and multiple source essay.
I feel as if one of the biggest differences between General Studies Writing 1120
and General Studies Writing 1110 will be the grading. Whereas GSW 1110 as a pass or
fail course, GSW 1120 is graded on an A, B, C, or No Credit basis, which will be a big
switch for me. I feel as if (and hope) that the descriptions of what each grade requires
and the sample papers with a corresponding grade will help me in figuring out how to
accurately assess each essay. Further into the semester, this will hopefully just come
more naturally as I become familiar and comfortable with grading the essays according
to the letter grade system. In the previous course, I did not have to worry about what
specific grade to give a paper, only if met the minimum requirements for the course.
This sped up the grading a bit (although it still took me eight or nine hours for each draft
and set of my nineteen papers), so I am definitely a bit worried about the grading
workload for GSW 1120. I kept trying to keep my grading time down to twenty minutes
per paper, but I struggled greatly with this throughout the semester. Having to
accurately assess a paper with a corresponding letter grade will likely greatly increase
the amount of time it takes me to grade an essay, especially for the first few
assignments. I am already trying to prepare myself for how long it will take me to grade
all of the research essays, considering the required length of the assignment. I also
realize that the amount of reading I will have to do for this course will be significantly
higher than it was for GSW 1110. Before assigning reading of the articles in Writing and
Reading Across the Curriculum, I will need to take the time to read each article in the
textbook so I can figure out which articles I want to assign and when I want to assign
them. I will also have an additional literature class this coming semester, which will
require me to spend even more time doing my own schoolwork than I spent this past
semester, so this is a tad bit stressful because I had little, if any, free time this fall;
therefore, I will have to take a close look at my daily schedule to figure out how to best
optimize my time so that I can devote a proper amount of time to both my teaching and
my studies, which will likely be a difficult balance at first. I hope that this past semester
has been good practice for this upcoming spring semester in regards to organizing my
available time.

Howell 2
I believe that one of my biggest worries is about student participation throughout
the upcoming semester. Throughout pretty much all of this past semester teaching
General Writing Studies 1110, I struggled with getting my class to actively participate. I
would often ask questions in class, only to be met with blank faces staring back at me.
After somewhere between thirty seconds to a minute, one of about three or four
students would raise his or her hand to answer the question. The overwhelming majority
of my students never volunteered to participate in any class discussion. I eventually had
to resort to having each student write his or her name down on a note card and then
randomly draw students names to answer questions and read aloud, which helped with
getting students to answer specific questions, but rarely created stimulating in class
discussions. I am hoping a lot of this problem is because the class was pass/fail, so the
students had little reason to participate because there was no direct effect on their
grades. Now that participation is a calculable portion of each students grade in General
Studies Writing 1120, I am hoping that students will be more willing to participate
(although I will need to get them to do the assigned reading in order to get them to
participate in class.). If my students can see a direct correlation between their grade and
their class participation, I think it should help to encourage them to participate in class
discussions.
I also think that engaging class discussions will help make my students more
familiar and comfortable with one another. I was surprised that at the end of this past
semester, few, if any, of my students knew who most of their classmates were. A few
knew the names of most of the students sitting around them, but the majority did not talk
to anyone in the class. In this course, I want to make sure that my students are familiar
with one another, which should increase their comfort with speaking up in class. In order
to address this issue, I want to try to do ice breakers every class period, at least for the
first month, but possibly longer. I know that most of my students appreciated that I
learned all of their names within the first week, and I think it will help improve the
environment if I am not the only one who knows all of their names, plus it can be difficult
putting them into groups when they do not know the students who are in their groups.
When this happens, I have to take unnecessary time out of teaching in order to point
students in the proper direction of their groups.
I am pretty excited about meeting my next class of students. I have a few
students from my last class who are taking my course this upcoming semester, so I will
have a mix of new and old faces in the classroom. Overall, I had a good group of
students for my GSW 1110 course this past fall, so I have high hopes for this new
group. After hearing stories from some other classes, I am a bit nervous that my group
of students will not be as on top of things as my last class. I had very few problems with
attendance and students turning assignments in late, or not at all, so I am hoping that
my luck continues for this GSW 1120 course. Looking at my class roster (assuming it
does not change much), I have a diverse group of students, ranging from high school
students to college seniors, so I am expecting a bit of a challenge from diversity in
regards to my students abilities, motivation, and maturity. It will likely be more difficult,
and require more time, making sure that every student is getting the help that he or she
needs. In my first course, all of my students, except one, were freshmen taking their first
college composition course, so while their writing abilities varied greatly, they all

Howell 3
seemed to be in a similar place in regards to their expectations for the class. I am fairly
certain that this will not be the case in the upcoming semester.
Teaching my GSW 1110 class taught me not to base my writing expectations for
my students on the first paper that they submit. I was shocked by the quality of pretty
much every diagnostic essay my students submitted (both rough draft and final draft),
so while I have high expectations for my students, I do not have high expectations for
the first essay. That being said, since this first essay is actually graded, I am hoping that
my students this semester will put more effort into writing it than they did this past
semester for the ungraded assignment. I am also hoping that my students only having
to write four essays over the course of the semester will result in more polished essays
because they should have longer to work on each step of the writing process than they
did in the first section of GSW. I think with a bit more time in GSW 1110, basically all of
my students would have been able to turn in stronger essays, so I am hoping this will be
an opportunity for them to do so. I am optimistic about the upcoming course and think it
will be an interesting semester.