Milestone 0.5

I’m still trying to decide how I feel about English 101.  I was very surprised when I found out that it was still a requirement for English majors.  You would think that we could get excused from it since English majors are already required to take two introductory English courses their freshman year, but those four hours a week is must not be enough…  I’m guessing that the English major specific course, required for English education majors, but not English studies majors, is a lot more instructive for those in the pursuit of teaching English. 

            I do like how free form and student directed the course appears to be though.  Designing our own peer evaluations was a really interesting activity and goes along with teaching us how to approach setting up activities and assignments.  The peer evaluations themselves were surprisingly helpful.  I usually don’t get a lot of peer evaluation, but it was very useful and I feel like I have a much better idea of what my rubric should look like.

As for the genre we are currently on, news articles, I think I can see a lot of traits that will be present in most of the genres we will work with throughout the class.   Newspaper articles are usually short and entertaining or very interesting.  In a society that has the excess money and time for copious amounts of recreational activity, present day United States, most of the text genres we see will be about entertainment or at least be interesting to read.  Anything that does not entertain or preoccupy the reader will be quickly made unprofitable.  Which leads me to my second thought, most of the genres we encounter everyday are short and to the point.  Most people won’t read anything that will take more than a few minutes.  Even the text books we use for class are usually short editions, because no one actually wants to take the time to read the regular, long edition. 

            I have a pretty good feeling that this will not be true of everything we look at in this course, but I also have a good feeling that most of things we do look at will.  The idea of trajectory is also something that stands out so far in this first semester.  It was briefly introduced, but I am interested to discuss it more in class.  The potential trajectory that texts have now compared to only ten years ago is massive.  Social media and the widespread use of cell phones, especially texting and Facebook applications, have made it possible for messages to be transmitted so much faster.

            English 101 seems repetitive after English 100 and 102, but I am hoping that is not the case after unit one. Either way, I am sure that I will learn something and that’s what college is for.