Composition I

Each student taking English 100A will strengthen in his or her ability to read and write with strength and clarity. Vital to your individual success in this class will be the ability to understand, interpret, and analyze information.

You will be invited, through reading and writing assignments, to consider your audience and uncover the most effective delivery for your message. In addition, you will be assigned writings that use sources outside the experiences and knowledge you bring with you, and you will learn how to cite these sources correctly following Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting. At the course’s beginning and end, you will be asked to reflect on the process you go through as you write and to learn about yourself and how you think through this reflection.

I will ask that you create time for writing that will be sufficient for composing written pieces that are thoughtful, clear, and well revised and that you commit to your personal development as a writer. I promise to commit to helping you along the way.

The SLOs for the course are as follows.

  • Compose a text to achieve a specific purpose and respond adeptly to an identifiable audience.
  • Provide evidence of effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading a text in order to produce finished prose.
  • Compose a text that makes use of source material that is relevant and reliable and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide.
  • Compose writing that expresses the writer’s viewpoint and is supplemented by outside sources.
  • Produce at least 5000 words of finished prose, equivalent to approximately 20 typewritten/printed pages.

By the end of the semester, each student should be able to do the following regarding course goals.

  • Understand and put into practice the basic concept of what makes strong writing (organization, complexity of thought, substantiality of development, facility with language, and strong grammar and usage) and how to achieve such writing through a process that has been carefully crafted and individualized for the particular writer.
  • Apply these principles to the writing of essays that include the following elements: intriguing leads, purposeful transition sentences, strong thesis statements, clear topic sentences, and conclusions do not simply repeat what has already been stated but that end with strength and purpose.
  • Understand how to conduct college-level research using scholarly sources and how to use and cite these sources accurately and appropriately.
  • Understand general principles and practice regarding grammar, punctuation, and usage within the English language and apply these principles while learning how to use powerful, clear, and concise rhetorical patterns in your own writing.
  • Develop greater confidence as a writer whose work is more reader-based than writer-based.
  • Build on already established skills as a writer along with other Honors Composition 1 students.

Questions regarding this course can be directed to the instructor at the following email address: karyl8@hawaii.edu (noting that the letter before the 8 is a lowercase “l” and not the numeral “1”).