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| Techne |
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| Techne, the textbook for English 1301, is the product of a collaborative effort by TSTC instructors (and students) and is the outgrowth of one basic impulse: to put together a collection of materials comprised of essays written by TSTC English Department instructors, student essays, composition pedagogy essays, and other outside professional essays on a variety of general topics that best reflect how we teach and why we teach the way we do.
The title Techne comes from the Greek word for “art,” or, more specifically, “an art practiced skillfully.” And it's no secret techne is the root word for technical and technology, which seems particularly appropriate for our setting: Texas State Technical College. |
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The essays by TSTC instructors—the first four that you'll find in the book—are especially important to us because there are two kinds of writing instructors: people trained to teach others to write and those who are writers who also teach writing. In addition, there are a variety of student essays, composition pedagogy essays and general topic essays including, among others, Aristotle, George Orwell, George Will, Richard Ford, and Annie Dillard. For each essay the instructor who chose it has written an introduction explaining why it was chosen (and, in many cases, other pertinent information) and many of them have study/discussion questions along with writing prompts.
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| Also, after each essay are worksheets designed to help students break down the readings into their component elements. That way students can begin to have a more “nuts and bolts” understanding of how essays are constructed. In addition, these worksheets will help students generate their own responses to the ideas and conclusions in the essays as opposed to relying on their teachers to tell them what they supposedly “need” to know about the readings.
If you have comments about this edition, suggestions for future editions, would like a complete list of the essays included, or are interested in adopting Techne for use at your own school, feel free to contact Mark Long at mark.long@tstc.edu . |
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