We’re going to give you a bunch of information about the course you’re going to teach, but first we want to give you some institutional context to help you locate your course– and yourself!– among the acronyms that are about to come your way.
FIRST YEAR WRITING (FYW) has two related but different meanings. It refers to:
- A rotating cast of English Department faculty who do the administrative and curricular work associated with ENG 110 and ENG 130. We do faculty development that begins with this orientation and continues with regular workshops and events for part-time faculty. We also do scheduling, so you’ll communicate with us about your teaching observations and scheduling preferences in the future. You’ll get to know us, too, as your mentors in the English Department. If you want to talk about any issues that come up in your life as an instructor in our department, we are your first stop.
- The two-semester writing sequence that is required for all students across CUNY: English Composition (EC) 1 and 2. The logic of this sequence works differently at QC than it does elsewhere, because we have a history of teaching writing across the disciplines here. Most sections of EC 1 and EC2 are taught by part-time faculty, and most if not all of you are assigned to teach EC1 (which is known locally at QC as ENG 110) in the fall.
FYW: the people
In the fall, the Director of First Year Writing will be Amy Wan, and Christopher Williams will be the Associate Director. Rachael Benavidez will mentor new faculty and coordinate the program, and Alexis Larsson will mentor new faculty, too, with particular expertise in educational technology. You’ll meet all of us at the orientation, and we will work with you from afar over the summer, too, as you prepare for the fall.
FYW: the courses
Every CUNY college requires its students to take EC1 and EC2, but that sequence works a bit differently at QC than it does elsewhere. Here’s a quick overview of the logic of the sequence as we teach it.
EC1 = ENG 110: Introduction to College Writing is not an “English class” in the usual sense of the word. It’s designed to prepare students for success across the Gen Ed curriculum, so it is interdisciplinary in form and content. Each section of ENG 110 is organized thematically, with themes that invite first-year college students into lines of inquiry that have broad scholarly relevance, like “Monsters,” or “Writing Cultural Identity.”
Your project for the orientation is to decide which theme you want to use– but more on that in a minute.
The definition of the second semester writing course (EC2) is a little more complicated. There is only one course (ENG 110) that satisfies the first writing requirement, but there are a lot of courses that satisfy the requirement for EC2. That’s because we want our students to learn conventions of writing and research that they’ll need to succeed in their major, whatever it is. A student who wants to major in Chemistry, for example, would be poorly served by learning more about close reading and MLA format than how to write a strong lab report.
QC asks its students to specialize in the discipline of their major when they choose how they want to satisfy the EC2 requirement. EC2s are taught across the curriculum, and ENG 130 is the English Department’s iteration.
A student who wants to major in the humanities might reasonably opt to take their EC2 in the English Department, where we use that second-semester writing course to introduce prospective majors to the methods of writing and research that matter most to literary critics. But if a student wanted to major in the sciences or social sciences, they would be advised to take their EC2 in a department where that course prepares them for success in their chosen major.
At FYW, we take it as our responsibility to train you to teach both of these classes that are exceedingly important for our students’ education. We’ll focus our attention particularly on ENG 110 in the orientation and in the practicum, because we take it as our responsibility to help you get ready to teach it in the fall.
