Composition I

Thank you for taking an interest in my course this fall. Please contact me at ericlaur@hawaii.edu if you have any questions about the course.

Course description

This course focuses on informative, analytical, and argumentative writing. Each are common genres in both academic and public discourse. A semester-long research project will provide practice with these and other genres, an opportunity to present the finding of your research in several modalities, and a means for developing recursive research and writing processes.

At the beginning of the semester, you will select a topic that you will research and write about for the remainder of the course. By the end of the course, you will have completed a portfolio that includes a major research paper, a multimodal project, and a series of shorter essays.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

  1. Identify the purpose, audience, major claims, and kinds of evidence offered in a variety of texts;
  2. Participate in academic discourse, as well as other forms of writing, by producing text with a clear purpose and audience, supported by evidence acceptable to that audience and, when applicable, using an appropriate citation style;
  3. Develop recursive writing and researching processes, including identifying a controversy within a conversation or discourse community, conducting appropriate research, planning, drafting, critiquing, revising, and editing – taking into account written and oral feedback from the instructor and from peers;
  4. Demonstrate essential information literacy skills, including discovering subject-specific information and arguments, understanding how information and arguments are produced and evaluated in relevant academic communities, critically evaluating claims in sources, and using source material effectively in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning;
  5. Locate resources for the continued support of their development as writers; and
  6. Develop credibility by using appropriate language and diction, by effectively incorporating source material, and by portraying ideas in clear and clean prose.

Assigned books and materials

This course participates in the Interactive Digital Access Program (IDAP). All required textbooks and tools will be available to you automatically through Laulima at the beginning of the course. The discounted cost of the materials will appear on your UH account. If you choose to opt out of IDAP, contact me before purchasing anything so I can help you ensure you purchase the correct materials. I am assigning the following texts and tools:

  • Everyone’s an Author with Readings—Our main textbook.
  • Little Seagull Handbook
  • InQuizitive—an adaptive learning tool that provides personalized practice editing sentences and working with sources.