r/Professors•
sleuthwood

Any ideas on teaching paragraph organization to first-years?

Hi all:

Full disclosure--I'm hitting burnout. I've been tasked with teaching first-year writing to undergrads for the last six semesters with no breaks (creative writing, lit or anything else that actual English majors might take). My current students are all nursing, accounting, business or social sciences and they were placed in 099 last semester, so for most of them, English isn't their best area or even a passion.

Their first paper is due soon and because organization is the thing they all lament about the most (most of them have not yet broken free of the Five Paragraph style essay), I figured talking paragraph organization (topic sentence, claim, evidence, etc) would be good.

Any ideas for spicing up the lesson or making it engaging? I'm becoming as bored by the subject matter as I expect them to be.

Posted Feb 16, 2017, 10:49 PM UTC

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