Composition I

This course is
designed to help you develop your critical thinking and writing skills.
Throughout the course of the semester, you will be asked to write online, at
home, and in the classroom in addition to completing and discussing reading
assignments. As a class, we will go over notions of utilizing writing to think
and learn, and we will also think about writing for different audiences.
Because writing is a process, revisions of papers will be assisted by your
classmates as peer reviewers, by the class mentor, and by me in conferences.

 

Final grades will
be determined by the successful completion of written assignments (4-5 essays
(including a research project) and a separate portfolio), attendance, and class
participation.

 

Though a number of
the reading assignments will be available for you to download from our class
website, there are two texts required for this class. The campus bookstore
carries these two texts as a bundle at a discounted price:

 

1. Graff, Gerald,
Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. They Say, I Say, 3rd ed: The Moves
That Matter in Academic Writing
. New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2014. Print.

 

2. Cooley, Thomas. The Norton
Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, 8th ed.
New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2013. Print.