Stretch Composition: CSUN's New Freshman Writing Courses (Archived Page)
(Photo of giraffe by Mila Zinkova. GFDL, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Program details
CSUN has a completely new series of writing-reading courses for freshmen: Stretch Composition, which was first piloted at CSUN in Fall 2011. If you know any CSUN freshmen, chances are good that they are enrolled in one of the new Stretch classes, which will be taught in six different departments/programs beginning in Fall 2012: Asian American Studies, Central American Studies, Chicana/Chicano Studies, English, Pan African Studies, and Queer Studies. This is an overview of Stretch for the rest of us--those of us who are not teaching the Stretch classes, but want to know what goes on in them, and how 113A/B, 114A/B, and 115 differ from one another. Join Anne Kellenberger (Writing Programs Coordinator at the LRC) and Mary Riggs (CHS Stretch faculty member) for this overview of Stretch Composition:
Topics covered:
- What is Stretch Comp?
- What are the "projects" and "progressions" in Stretch?
- How does Stretch differ from the old 097, 098, 155 sequence ( Developmental classes followed by Composition)?
- How do the Stretch courses differ from one another? How many do courses do students take?
- What's next? Looking ahead towards Directed Self-Placement.
Resources from the presentation:
- CSU system-wide information on the English Placement Test (the EPT): http://www.calstate.edu/SAS/ept.pdf (essentially an online brochure)
- CSUN-specific information about the English Placement Test (EPT)
- Demonstration class: CHS 113A, Approaches to University Writing. Prof. Mary Riggs.
- Sample class: CHS 113B, Approaches to University Writing. Prof. Mary Riggs. (Actual continuation for spring 2012 of CHS 113A demonstration class in 3. just above.)
- Directed Self-Placement (DSP): the next step for Stretch Composition?
- National Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA): annotated research bibliography of Stretch Courses (.pdf, Googledocs); also available as item 2 on the WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies home page at http://comppile.org/wpa/bibliographies/