First-Year Writing/Seminar: 3 credits -- Writing/Composition / Introduction to Academic Inquiry
Inquiry: Israel takes a core-curriculum approach, and our First-Year Writing/Seminar course is "the core of the core."
The course is simultaneously rigorous and exploratory, and it serves several key functions that together make it a powerful catalyst for intellectual and personal growth. At its most fundamental level, it approaches the writing process as an inquiry-driven thinking process -- not merely a recording or publicizing process -- and it functions thereby as an introduction to academic inquiry. Some of the general objectives in this regard are developing and refining real "figuring-something-out" questions and strong hypotheses; evaluating, using, and integrating sources; distinguishing between sources of supporting evidence, sources of complicating evidence, and sources of material useful for developing new approaches to the evidence; analyzing evidence closely and in adequate detail; and revising for substance and editing for correctness. These objectives and their various constituent skills are the intellectual "moves," or habits of mind, that provide a foundation for the writing-intensive nature of the program as a whole and its objective of honing the student's ability to think analytically, creatively, precisely, and flexibly.
In many institutions, the first-year writing course ("English 101") is often a missed opportunity at best, particularly with regard to content, or what the students are to actually write about: instructors often impose subject matter based on their own personal whims or ideologies. In contrast, at Inquiry: Israel, we encourage students to develop their analytical and rhetorical abilities through the work of constructing projects that arise out of what they are learning and encountering both inside and outside the classroom.
Building on this starting point -- the lines of inquiry that are arising for the students based on their experiences and preoccupations -- we move through a sequential series of exercises and essays that use close and precise analysis to think through real conceptual and/or practical problems, draw connections between various bodies of knowledge and inquiry, and engage in conversation with other thinkers and practitioners who share those interests. Student projects in the course can pursue various kinds of inquiry: personal, academic and professional, religious and spiritual, political, scientific, cultural, and others, and various combinations of these categories.
In this way, the course serves as a conceptual center for students' experiences in Israel, enabling them to use the writing process as a framework within which to actively, substantively, and thoroughly reflect on, analyze, and think through what they are learning and encountering both inside and outside the classroom. The course thereby serves a grounding, centering function, providing students with ways to think carefully and deliberately about their experiences and how they will respond to and integrate them as they go about the vital work of clarifying and refining their identities, goals, and plans.
The course does not, however, "try to bite off more than it can chew." Rather than seeking instant or all-encompassing answers, it emphasizes an inductive approach, guiding students to narrow their focus and work incrementally, pursuing precise lines of inquiry that can, over time, be assembled together into a larger set of conclusions.
The course will meet three times per week, on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.
Click here to see examples of student projects from previous versions of the course.
Click here to see excerpts from student evaluations of previous versions of the course.