Mr. Stephen Combs

Digital Professor and Associate Faculty - Adjunct

This fall (2022) I will lead two sections of Comp II (ENC 1102), writing about literature.


My goal is to help you improve your writing for all academic fields and for your eventual profession, business, or craft. Whether you are preparing for a career in engineering, the sciences, education, medicine, business, law enforcement, rock stardom, or something else, this course has the sole purpose of helping you become a better communicator through writing.


My second goal for you is to develop your writing as a way of knowing, understanding that we learn by writing. As we write about a subject, we begin to take ownership of its ideas and gradually develop a level of expertise in that subject. Although for most of us writing never gets completely easy, our mastery of grammar and sentence structure helps us devote more of our energy to crafting readable writing and making strong, effective arguments. I will work with you on those elements of writing as needed, individually or as a group.


I have worked as a writer for much of my adult life, beginning as a newspaper reporter and later as a daily newspaper editor. I am the author, most recently, of a short monograph called Talking With Your High School Student About Writing in College. I also write about writing at busybetsy.com.


If you or someone you know is thinking about taking Comp I this fall, please feel free to call me with your questions and concerns, at 407-629-0762. I am here working most of the time.


Best wishes to fall for a productive fall semester.




Contact

Other
407-629-0762
scombs7@valenciacollege.edu

Hours

By telephone any weekday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and by appointment in Zoom. Contact me at any time by text or email.










































The Purpose of Freshman Comp I:

I offer an interactive course in writing fundamentals. We begin with basic sentence structure, the three-word sentence. Sounds elementary, and it is. But you may have missed some of this in high school, and this lack of understanding of basic English grammar and rhetoric is what trips up a lot of incoming freshman. After drilling in this area, we advance to the study of good paragraph construction, and finally to a documented research paper. This course does not take on controversial political issues. Our mission is not to save the world but to develop the writing craft.