Course Syllabus

ENGL 1010 Expository Composition*

Course Description

This course emphasizes critical reading, writing, and thinking skills through writing-intensive workshops. It explores writing situations as a complex process focusing specifically on idea generation relative to audience and purpose, working through multiple drafts, peer collaboration, and revision, and it includes rhetorical analysis. (See prerequisites. Open to Student Support Services participants only.)

Justification

This course satisfies one of the state composition requirements. A student who successfully completes ENGL 1010 will be able to write clearly, informatively, and persuasively in a variety of rhetorical situations. This writing-intensive course provides a foundation for all other college writing.

General Education Outcomes

1. A student who completes the GE curriculum has a fundamental knowledge of human cultures and the natural world. Students will explore human cultures and the natural world in their choice of topics, their research on those topics, and in planning essays on those topics. They will demonstrate their learning through the formal essays in the class.
2. A student who completes the GE curriculum can read and research effectively within disciplines. Students will read critically a substantial number of texts, paying attention to content, structure, and rhetoric. They will demonstrate their critical reading skills in class discussions, group activities, and informal and formal written responses.
3. A student who completes the GE curriculum can draw from multiple disciplines to address complex problems. Students will write well-structured, rhetorically-effective prose and use an effective writing process to do so. They will demonstrate this skill through their formal writing assignments and the planning, drafting, and revising of them.
4. A student who completes the GE curriculum can reason analytically, critically, and creatively. Students will read multiple types of essays throughout the semester. They will be taught to think deeply about these essays and be given the tools necessary to analyze them. For example, a student might read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and examine his use of ethos, pathos, and logos. The student would then explain how these rhetorical techniques contributed to the letter's overall powerful effect. The students will demonstrate their understanding by writing formal and informal essays, and by engaging in class discussion.
5. A student who completes the GE curriculum can communicate effectively through writing and speaking. Students will improve their writing skills in this class designed precisely for that. All course assignments will demonstrate that learning.

General Education Knowledge Area Outcomes

1. Students will show that they can account for audience, purpose, context, and genre by reading and identifying these elements in assigned essays. The students will then demonstrate that they can account for these same elements by including them in their own writing. Students will show that they can account for audience, purpose, context, and genre by reading and identifying these elements in assigned essays. The students will then demonstrate that they can account for these same elements by including them in their own writing.
2. Organize effective arguments that engage readers, provide needed background, present compelling evidence, and respond to opposing viewpoints. Students will demonstrate that they can engage readers, provide needed background, present compelling evidence, and respond to opposing viewpoints by writing formal and informal essays. For example, students may be asked to write an "informal" essay (i.e., an ungraded essay or an essay for few points) in which they organize their thoughts, present evidence, and respond to opposing viewpoints. They will then be asked to repeat these same skills in a larger essay.
3. Write using an effective process that includes planning, drafting, peer workshopping, and revision. This process should be explicit in class activities and assignment design; revision should improve the overall quality of the document. Students will demonstrate that they can draft, utilize peer workshops, and revision by turning in multiple drafts of each major paper. They will receive feedback on these essays which they will use to improve their papers.
4. Carefully and critically read written arguments, identifying the use of rhetorical techniques by the author. Students will carefully and critically read arguments, identifying the use of rhetorical techniques by the author. They will demonstrate this throughout the semester but most specifically in the rhetorical analysis paper.

Course Content

ENGL 1010 is a process-oriented course that emphasizes the various stages of the writing process--discovery, drafting, reflection, revision, editing--in a workshop environment. Students will be expected to write several revised essays using various methods of development throughout the semester. Students will also be expected to read and respond critically to a variety of essays and perform rhetorical analyses. As with all composition classes, students in ENGL 1010 are required to engage critically and thoughtfully with a variety of perspectives in their writing, including those that differ from their own. This will include voices in assigned readings as well as in their class discussion and workshopping.