English 110 is the only course taken by every undergraduate at UD. The English department usually offers over 100 separate sections of it each semester. All of them share a set of specific teaching and learning goals, with the overarching aim of introducing you to the ways academic writers work with texts and ideas. Let me unpack that statement by looking closely at the three words that make up the course title: Seminar in Composition.
- Seminar: A seminar is a class in which students share and discuss their writing with each other. In a seminar everyone brings their work to the table. You read the work your classmates are doing; they read yours. Obviously, we can no longer sit down at the same table during the pandemic. (Hence that empty seminar table from The Office.) But I will still ask you to share your work online with several of your classmates, and to meet often on Zoom to talk about your writing.
- In: This is not a course about composition. It is a course in composition, in doing things with words. You will be writing all the time, and my goal as your teacher is to help you do so with confidence, authority, and pleasure.
- Composition: To compose is to make meaning—with words, images, audio, video, or whatever other media may be at hand. Writing is one form of composing. But we’ve decided to call this course a seminar in composition to emphasize that you will be asked not only to write words intended to be read on the page, but to compose pieces meant to be read on the screen—and which may include not only alphabetic text but also images, sounds, and videos.
To sum all this up: You should expect to write a lot in this course, to share the work you’re doing, and to read and respond to the work of your classmates. Don’t be discouraged if some of the work I ask you to do seems unfamiliar or hard at first; the goal is to teach you how to do something new, something different. I am more interested in where you end up than in where you begin.
Please see About This Section for more on what you’ll actually be reading and writing about this semester.
E110: Seminar in Composition 