ENGL1100: Composition and Rhetoric

Abstract

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES: This course is an introduction to college level writing—a class designed to teach you ways of developing, organizing, and presenting your ideas. Our writing and thinking will focus on the topic of education, but the techniques you will learn apply to every subject that demands clear, logical, and cogent exposition. Throughout, we will approach writing as an ongoing process of thinking and learning that begins the moment you start to ask questions about a subject, continues through note-taking and other forms of “pre-writing,” and develops into a presentable product through cycles of drafting, feedback, and revision.¶ Students will be guided through prominent forms of academic writing, culminating in a significant project involving research and formal argument. We will also develop more effective approaches to researching, paying special attention to recent trends and innovations related to online research and electronic databases. I hope for students to emerge from the course with confidence in their ability to write at a high level in their personal and academic lives—and that we will come to have bold ideas and be able to clearly articulate this new thinking in writing, as well as in speech.¶ GOALS FOR THE COURSE: • Students will become more effective writers in their academic and professional lives. • Students will learn to assess the content and quality of their own ideas. • Students will develop sound research skills to structure and inform their thinking. • Students will develop analytic skills in relation to classic essays on the nature, role, and best practices for education in American society.