Professor  Laura Harris  M.A.

Information

Hello Students!

I teach online English courses at MJC; I love teaching online because it's a wonderful way of engaging in critical reading, thinking, and writing with 21st century learning tools. I work to make my courses interesting, engaging, and organized with a large variety of content delivered in multi-media format, so my classes are interesting and not boring.

Here are some of the topics we study through reading, reflecting, discussing, learning, analyzing, and writing in my classes:

ENGL 100—INTENSIVE READING, WRITING, AND REASONING 5.0 unit class satisfies ENGL 101 while providing extra support for grammar, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
This is a great course to develop as readers, writing, and thinkers--we learn how to critically think with our own individual process while learning and practicing the reading and writing process. Currently, I teach this course around the theme of SUCCESS!, which really intrigues and engages my students as they learn about themselves, how they learn, and how to be successful not only as students but in many aspects of life.  It's fun; it's interesting; it's amazing as students transform themselves in many ways. We build a foundation for learning, reading, writing, and analyzing that connects to your other courses and your lives!

ENGL 101 Composition and Reading 3.0 units satisfies transfer English requirement for CSU, UC, and other universities

This course is awesome because we learn how to comprehend and analyze what we read, so that our essays are writing themselves while we're reading intriguing novels, enlightening articles, and discussing social development, social solutions, posing problems, and finding solutions while we're developing our reading and writing processes through practicing critical thinking about interesting and relevant issues in the world that we live in. Some of the themes for these classes include--

1. Social Influence/Social Conformity

2. Academic & Personal Success

3. The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

4. Genius!

5. Harrowing stories Immigration from the South

ENGL 103 Advanced Composition and Critical Critical Thinking

This is a fun class spent learning fundamentals of logic, how to break down arguments, recognize and explain arguments, and writing our own arguments.

We analyze commercials and advertisements, urban legends, and critical social issues of our era. We also look at pros and cons of issues of technology, take a position, and construct our own argument for or against. Content is full of intriguing reading, compelling videos, lively discussions, and engaging writing. We have fun breaking down the arguments of video commercials students choose, urban myths, and we tackle a current horrendous social issue with rich readings, videos, and current events. We research this issue individually, find multiple sides of the arguments, then argue for our own solution. It's amazing to hone and develop critical reading, thinking, and writing skills with compelling and intriguing content.

I look forward to meeting you in cyberspace to learn and have fun in online English!

~Professor Harris

Biography

Courses I Teach

Publications

• Academic Literacy Acquisition (ALA), 2015

Downloadable Files