freshman composition

I know, it is only April, but I am already planning for next fall's classes. The biggest challenge is finding suitable texts. It is not, of course, the first time that I am teaching first-year composition, but I just cannot seem to find one or two texts (in print or online) which would be good enough for me to stay with them for many semesters or even years. So, I keep experimenting and changing things around every term.

I have expressed by lack of enthusiasm for the mainstream first-year comp texts out there many times before and in different venues. It is not that there aren't any "good" texts out there, but their cost really doesn't make any sense to me or my students, especially given the undeniable fact that we won't be able to go through everything in a 600-page reader in one semester.

So, I am looking at online texts. Because I teach a section of the course which focuses on rhetoric of science and the impact of science and technology on society, luckily there are some good choices out there. I am currently considering, among other things, Amy Harmon's Pulitzer Prize winning series The DNA Age. If these texts were to become my students composition "reader," then I could supplement them with some texts of writing, reading, and rhetoric, plus use of the free "handbook style" websites for grammar, citations, and mechanics.

The search continues.

A colleague and I have been charged by our department and college dean to create a version of our rigorous freshman composition course which would focus on the rhetoric of science (not writing for the sciences, mind you) and that might attract the kinds of students who are either already majoring in science or are thinking about majoring in science. Or, just the students who might go for something new, rather than writing humanities-based papers to which they are so used in high school.