ENGL1200H: Freshman Honors Seminar: Composition and Rhetoric

Abstract

This is an advanced writing seminar for students in the Honors Program at Stern College– a seminar designed to improve your ability to develop, organize, and present your ideas. Our writing and thinking will focus on classic statements concerning the role 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. Students will be guided through prominent forms of academic writing, culminating in a significant project involving research and formal argument. Because this is an advanced class, by the end of the semester students will be asked to take responsibility for developing their own lines of thought in relation to subject matter of their own choosing. We will also develop more effective approaches to researching, paying special attention to recent trends and innovations related to online research and 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.