Composition I

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, and cause-effect analysis.

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 Sentences will be
available at Revolution Books.