This course
aims to teach you writing skills necessary to excel in college. Through
consultation with the instructor, you will develop your own writing projects
and write three essays of different genres as coherent parts of the project. We
will use pre-writing techniques, such as brainstorming and freewriting, to
identify and explore issues/problems that strike you as socially urgent and
that involve and/or challenge your and other peoples’ beliefs and values.
Following the motto that writing is joining an ongoing conversation, you will
research from early on to develop your thinking on research topics through
reading critically as well as empathically other peoples’ beliefs and
arguments. Identifying an audience and aiming specific rhetorical purposes to
accomplish vis-à-vis that audience, you will put your previous
knowledge/experience and present research into a well-articulated thesis and
support it with articulated panoply of reasons, examples, and evidence. To help
you accomplish your writing goals, the course teaches you to effectively use
rhetorical approaches, such as narration, comparison and contrast, cause-effect
analysis, etc.
Major
writing assignments include a writing project proposal (3-4 pages), a
reflective essay (4-5 pages), an informative essay (5-6 pages), and an
argumentative essay (8-10 pages). Research is mandatory for all essays. The
least number and variety of sources required will be provided with the
assignments for the essays. To compensate you for the time you spend on research,
you will be assigned only very few additional readings.
Your
performance in the course will be evaluated on daily work—class work, homework,
quizzes—(25%), the writing project proposal (15%), and the three essays
(reflective, 15%; informative, 20%; argumentative 25%).
We will use
an online handbook, Writer’s Help by Diana Hacker, et al, and a style
guide, Ann Longknife and K. D. Sullivan’s The Art of Styling Sentences. Access to Writers
Help can be purchased online at writershelp.com. The Art of Styling
Sentenceswill be available at Revolution Books.