What to teach? (2-16)

Although Braun and Prineas’ article on academic discourse provided a nice summary of the academic research process, what I found most interesting were the initial questions about whether or not academic discourse should be taught. I feel this is something we, and the authors we have read, have been struggling with all semester, and I don’t think we’ve arrived at an answer. In some ways, we as grad students are in the same place as the first-year undergrads we will probably be teaching; we are both struggling to find our place and figure out what is going on and how we can participate. But, the article also made me think of a tangent train of thought that has been in the back of my mind but we haven’t really discussed. That is, what else, if anything, besides composition should be taught in this class? I’m not as familiar with the undergrad course sequence as I would like to be, but English 1000 seems to be one course that all students will take, and it has a small student to teacher ratio. When I think of my undergrad experience, all first-years had to take a course that included a general introduction to the university. While I don’t think we need to be quite that comprehensive (i.e. I don’t think it is my job to give students a tour of campus or the community), I do wonder about other helpful college hints that maybe I should teach. For example, my instructor talked to us about how to mark a text to help with critical reading. The class also included a library tour. I think the text-marking, library tour, and Writing Lab introduction would all be helpful things that I might like to include in this class. Certainly they would help with the class, but I would also hope they would help with adjusting to college study in general. I think my question for myself is what other type of skills might we need to address in this class? And, what is the limit so that the class doesn’t lose its composition focus?