English 50A/Prep for College Composition
English 50A will help you become a more confident and stronger writer by helping you practice your essay writing skills. During our semester together, we will talk about how to get started writing, how to organize your ideas, and how to create solid essays. Since I’ve found that English 50 classes tend to have students with diverse backgrounds in writing, we’ll start from the ground up in my class, and talk about writing effective paragraphs, topic sentences, thesis statements, introductions, and conclusions. The essays we write will be based on your reactions to articles and texts that we will read and discuss in class.
Since most people have a lot of anxiety about writing, I also spend a lot of time working on strategies to make writing easier and less stressful for you, while also getting you ready to take Palomar’s transfer-level writing class, English 100.
The textbook for our class is Susan Anker’s Real Essays Interactive. In addition to purchasing this textbook, please also purchase our “English 50 Lecture Notes,” which are available only at the Palomar Bookstore.
For a current copy of our course syllabus, please visit our class Canvas site.
Resources for English 50:
- Learning Styles Video #2
- Learning Styles Video #1
- Learning Styles Questionnaire
- Grammar Bytes website
- Shmoop video on the differences between a thesis and topic sentences
- Shmoop video on “How to Write a Killer Thesis Statement”
TED Talks you can write about for Essay #2
- Amy Cuddy “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are”
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story”
- Bryan Stevenson “We Need to Talk about an Injustice”
- Lisa Feldman Barrett “You Aren’t at the Mercy of Your Emotions — Your Brain Creates Them”
- Susan Cain “The Power of Introverts”
- Carl Honore “In Praise of Slowness”
- Shawn Achor “The Happy Secret to Better Work”
- Robert Waldinger “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness”
- Sir Ken Robinson “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”
- Jane McGonigal “Gaming Can Make a Better World”
Other TED Talks you might find interesting:
- Tony Robbins “Why We Do What We Do”
- David Kelley “How to Build Your Creative Confidence”
- Dr. Michael Gregor “Food as Medicine”
- Sherry Turkle “Connected, But Alone?”
- Elizabeth Gilbert “Your Elusive Creative Genius”
- Tom Chatfield “7 Ways Games Reward the Brain”
- Julian Treasure “How to Speak so that People Want to Listen”
- Brené Brown “The Power of Vulnerability”
Just Mercy Resources:
- Bryan Stevenson’s website for Just Mercy
- “Slavery to Mass Incarceration” video (5:50 minutes) from Bryan Stevenson’s website
- National Public Radio (NPR)’s interview with Stevenson
- Jay-Z’s video (3:58 minutes) “The War on Drugs Is a Massive Fail”
Food, Inc. resources for Essay #3:
- “18 Food, Inc. Facts Everyone Should Know” article
- New York Times article called “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”
Other resources:
- Graphic Organizer for organizing your Essays #3 and 4