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Writing Expository Prose

Columbia University

Summer Program for High School Students

DESCRIPTION

This course focuses on writing vivid and persuasive prose. You’ll learn to read and observe like a writer and to sweat the details. You’ll gather raw material from a rich variety of sources in order to form questions of moment, craft sophisticated arguments, marshal evidence in support of those arguments and, in the process, make rewarding discoveries. With the help of your professor and your peers you’ll practice narrowing your focus, planning, researching, drafting, reorganizing and refining your work until it is clear, forceful—even elegant. The goal will be to produce an original essay that is deeply informed not only by the content of our discussions, readings and writing exercises but also by their modes of inquiry and rhetorical strategies.

The class will function as part seminar, part workshop. You’ll read, analyze and discuss a number of texts, complete several writing and editing assignments, both in class and at home, and regularly critique one another’s work.

Along the way, we’ll tackle some of the most common problems found in student writing: wordiness and repetition, lack of specificity and examples, the use of the passive voice, clichés, hyperbole and quotations that are carelessly chosen and plunked down without sufficient context, explication or analysis. We’ll also attend to grammatical rules and questions of style.

THEME

One major theme will be our digital devices, the often-unconscious choices we make about when and how to use them and the hidden consequences of those choices. We’ll examine ourselves using text messages, digital cameras and social media, observe those around us doing the same and read a number of texts that help us further interrogate the complicated ways people—particularly young people—incorporate technology into their lives. Our emphasis will be not on what technology is doing to us, but rather what we are—and are not—doing with it.

This is largely uncharted territory, a Wild West in which many rules have yet to be written, but at the same time it is all too familiar ground. The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates spoke of a magic ring that would render whoever wore it invisible to others and of the abuses he or she would likely commit with this newfound power. When told of the race to build a magnetic telegraph that would, for the first time, allow instant communication between Maine and Texas, the 19th century American writer Henry David Thoreau questioned whether Maine and Texas would, in fact, have anything useful to say to one other. Besides recent writing on sexting, cyberbullying and hackathons, then, we may also look at how people responded to the printing press, the railroad, the telephone and other once-new technologies.

SAMPLE ASSIGNMENTS (details to follow)

  • Thick Description. Describe your phone in terms that your 90-year-old great grandmother who has never communicated wirelessly or used the Internet can understand. Don’t tell her how cool it is or use any language that she won’t recognize. Just describe how it works and what you use it for. Try making analogies to things and processes she would be familiar with.

Next, give her step-by-step instructions on how to send a text message to three people, only one of whom is on her contact list. Finally, try to convince her to buy you a newer, better model by explaining the functionalities you’ve had to do without and why you need them.

  • The Stuff of Dreams. Who’s your favorite living performer? What if I told you that you had to choose between singing a song with that person, jamming, rhyming, acting a scene together or having your picture taken with her instead (but nothing more)? Share an intimate moment that will be memorable, perhaps for both of you, or document a more superficial encounter for all time. One or the other, but you can’t do both. Which would you choose? Explain your choice carefully taking into account the trade-offs. Have you ever made a different choice?
  • The Letter Home. What is a letter? How is it different than a tweet or a poke? We’ll look at some examples and explore these questions together and then you’ll be asked to write one. You will not be asked to share the letter, however—that would turn it into something else: a public performance. Instead, you’ll discuss it, quote from it, describe the experience of writing it, and compare it to other communications in order to better understand the kinds of expression and relationships that instant messages both foster and constrain. In other words, what is gained and lost by choosing one form over another?
  • The Loser Edit. Think of this as your anti-college essay. Using anecdotes, data and other supporting evidence you will build a case for why you are thoroughly unsuited to attend some august institution. Document a trajectory that shows why, in spite of your impressive resume, you can never really measure up and are doomed to crash and burn. The biggest challenge here is to embrace your failures and shortcomings, to be able to laugh at both yourself and the nasty process of having to prove yourself worthy to a bunch of strangers. Don’t try to sneak in all your honors and accomplishments, let the screw-ups and disasters take center stage, and at the same time impress us with your remarkable ability to tell as story, craft an argument and not take yourself too seriously.
  • The Proposal for Your Final Project. This assignment involves pitching the idea for your final project and convincing me that you have 1) a set of focused questions that emerge from our discussions, readings and writing exercises and 2) the raw materials and strategy with which to begin to effectively address those questions. It requires you to already have done some research, thinking and prewriting. We will discuss this and the project itself in greater detail.

REQUIREMENTS

Students are expected to arrive to every class meeting on time and prepared to participate actively in discussions, writing exercises, group activities and individual presentations. With rare exceptions that will be indicated in advance, you will be expected to share you work and have it discussed. Most readings are included in your coursepack, which is also available on the course website. They must be read by the day they are due. Others will be distributed in class. Make sure to bring printed copies to every class. Writing assignments must have your name, the date, assignment topic and page number at the top of each page and be double spaced in 12pt. type. Use MLA style for citations and works cited. Submit your writing assignments to me electronically by 11 p.m. the night before they are due; if emailing make sure to use the assignment topic in the subject line. You should also have a bound course notebook (and pen) that you bring to every meeting.