Senate Document Number 1100S

Date of Senate Approval 2/10/00

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 5:     Deletion of LANG 100 and Addition of LANG 103

Effective Date: Fall Semester 2000

Delete: On pg. 141, title, credit hours, and course description for LANG 100.

Add: On pg. 141
103 Writing Intensive Workshop (1)
Taught in conjunction with LANG 101 and LANG 102. Emphasis is on responding to LANG 101 and 102 assignments by discovering, drafting, researching, revising, and editing. Enrollment in this course by placement or permission of instructor. Corequisite: LANG 101 or 102. (Grading is S/U). Fall and Spring.

Add: On pg. 40 under General Requirements, English Language, 3-7
under General Requirements, College Skills Courses--if required 0-5

After Lang, 100, in sentence, "Depending on performance...."

Below English Language Courses (LANG), LANG 100* Writing Essentials 3

Under Proficiency in Writing * No graduation credit is given for LANG 100.

After sentence ending LANG 101 or 102. Through faculty evaluations, students may be required to enroll in LANG 103 in conjunction with either LANG 101 or 102.

Under LANG 102, Lang 103 Writing Intensive Workshop 1

Delete: On pg. 45, under College Skills Courses,
LANG 100 Writing Essentials 3

Impact Statement:
a. These proposed course changes, deleting LANG 100 and adding LANG 103, do not affect major, minor, or University requirements.

b. The University Writing Center offers tutorial help to all University writers and is staffed with faculty and peer tutors. For the past two years, the Literature and Language Department has offered LANG 171 as a special topics course rather than LANG 100 in order to better meet composition students' needs. The three faculty assigned to the Writing Center have been the instructors for LANG 171, and will now become the instructors for the new course, Language 103. In the fall semester of 1998, the first year of LANG 171, faculty met with the students individually. These additional tutorial appointments proved difficult when trying to meet all other writers' requests for appointments. Therefore, this fall, Dr. Dee James, Dr. Mary Alm, and Ms. Barbara Rhymes have worked with LANG 171 students in pairs in order to provide faculty tutors for these students as well as other students who voluntarily come to the Center. What they have found is that for some students the pairing has been sufficient; for others, one-on-one sessions may be more helpful. Teaching LANG 171 has affirmed that because of the different ways students enter our academic community with different proficiencies but legitimately placed in LANG 101 or 102, we must offer academic support.

It will be a positive change to have students enrolled in the sections of LANG 103 so that the Writing Center faculty can receive instructional credit for their teaching and the students can receive credit for their additional work in composition. The ideal plan would be for the Writing Center to be more fully funded, so that it could be open full-time and have more faculty instructional hours. Until such funding however, the faculty will continue to work with LANG 103 students, as they have this year, in pairs or a one-on-one basis.

Rationale:
Students are required to pass LANG 101 and 102 with a C or better. Most UNCA students, because of previous composition instruction and experience, are able to do so. However there is variation in students' situations--English-as-second language, advanced placement credit without college composition experience, and sometimes transfer credit. Some students benefit from additional support and practice in college-level writing. Having tutorial instruction in pairs or on a one-to-one basis, in conjunction with their composition courses, gives these students opportunities to ask questions they are perhaps reluctant to ask in class and to work on customized exercises that help them better prepare their composition assignments. Students, who are recommended for or who are placed in LANG 103, must satisfactorily complete the one-hour requirement in order to pass the composition course, either LANG 101 or 102, they are currently enrolled in. They will then receive a one-hour credit toward graduation for this additional work.

LANG 100, as a three-hour course, incorporated both classroom and tutorial work, but students then could not complete their composition requirements until at least their sophomore year. Students who come to UNCA with composition difficulties should not be further frustrated by being identified in a class and then delayed in instruction in college-level research essays until after their peers. Also, students need to write well using documented sources by the spring semester of their freshman year. Though LANG 101 does offer some instruction on incorporating sources and documentation, it is LANG 102 that gives more in-depth practice of research skills and construction of essays using multiple sources. Therefore, the Literature and Language Department and the University Writing Center have decided composition students are better served in a one-hour workshop course in conjunction with LANG 101 or LANG 102 rather than being identified and grouped as a separate class and thus delayed in completing their composition requirements.

A number of students come to UNCA with credit for LANG 101 and thus are placed in LANG 102. For some of these students, this higher placement may be problematic. LANG 102 faculty can recommend, based on a student's first essay, that they must enroll in LANG 103 for additional composition work.

Students will be placed in LANG 103 through faculty evaluations of their first essays, assigned at the beginning of the semester. The Writing Center faculty and the composition faculty will work closely to monitor the students' attendance and progress in LANG 103. Together they will determine when the student has satisfactorily completed LANG 103, which may be before the end of the semester. Students are expected to complete the workshop component in the same semester they are enrolled in LANG 101 or 102.