• Reflecting on an Experience Essay in English Composition

    In my previous blog post, I wrote about a reflective essay assignment for a first-semester English Composition class.  The assignment asks students to explain how a personal object symbolizes them.  Students often write a about a valuable object such as their laptop, cell phone, or pickup truck, or they write about an emotionally-meaningful object such…


  • Symbolism Essay for English Composition

    Reflective writing is a major component of how I teach a first-semester English Composition course – two other major components are rhetorical analysis and argumentation.  Students actually write several reflection assignments in my class, as both major assignments and daily writing and reading activities. In this blog post, I am going to describe the English…


  • Parts of a Syllabus

    The beginning of the semester is often the time instructors put together the course syllabus. What should go in a syllabus? Here is a description of the most common components in a college course syllabus. I have grouped the components into categories. Instructor Contact Information and Availability The instructor’s contact information and their availability for…