| Course Description:
Course Catalog Description:
Composition I (3) – Frequent writing assignments to produce informal and formal texts, with emphasis on academic thinking and writing. Develops effective writing processes, from inventing and investigating through organizing, drafting, revising, and editing. Helps students meet the needs of their readers. Includes workshop approaches to develop students’ ability to analyze and evaluate their own writing as well as the writing of others.
Course Outcomes:
The student who successfully completes English 111 will be able to:
- Use writing processes that develop exploratory drafts into revised prose for specific audiences.
- Make informed rhetorical choices for specific purposes and audiences.
- Read critically and analyze materials written for university audiences.
- Engage in interactive/collaborative reading and writing activities.
- Employ a repertoire of writing strategies, including the ability to:
- Generate, select, and focus writing topics;
- Plan, organize, and structure writing to develop a focus and purpose;
- Use specific and concrete methods to support positions in a manner convincing to targeted audiences;
- Review, critique, revise.
- Conduct introductory library and other research, integrate facts and opinion from multiple sources, and document appropriately.
English 111 Practices:
- English 111 students’ products will be assessed using clearly defined criteria; see the course rubric and anchor papers. Portfolios, journals, multiple drafts, and conferences may be used to assess process. Both process and product will be taken into account when assessing student work, i.e., no product will be accepted without evidence of its process, e.g., drafts, critiques, invention, peer commentary.
- Students will write approximately 7500 words in the course, no more than half of which will consist of informal texts to encourage fluency, reflection, and critical response.
- Students will write a minimum of five formal papers; two or more of these papers will include introductory research and outside resources. Suggestions for assignments include: a focused narrative which supports a thesis; analysis, summary and response; response and application; argument from personal experience and observation; argument using outside resources; explanation/exposition; comparison and contrast; review of a book, play, or experience; interview.
- To attain the grade of “C,” students will demonstrate significant competency in all course outcomes as well as the ability to write successfully in academic contexts as defined by the English 111 Course Rubric.
- Students will be provided with hands-on opportunities to develop technological skills for research, for communication, and for creating documents, i.e., word processing, e-mailing, on-line researching. The Blackboard Course management System is available, though not required.
- Students will be provided with opportunities for in-class writing as well as instruction in essay exam strategies.
- Students will receive library orientation including a tour and an introduction to hands-on and internet research resources.
- English 111 instructors will actively engage in strategies that work toward student retention and student success.
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