English 100-29 & 100-36 / Composition I
Fall 2015, Tuesday & Thursday
100-29 time: 7:30 am to 8:45 KUY 308
100-36 time: 10:30 am to 11:45 KUY 407
Kelsey Amos
808-222-5247
Office Hours: Kuykendall 222 ??? and by appointment.
Course Description
This class will give you extensive practice in reading and writing college-level prose, with the aim of empowering you to critically interpret a variety of texts, map out and take part in intellectual conversations, engage with audiences through persuasion, and ultimately, be able to tell a story.
We’ll start out this course by considering how the stories we hear and tell are intimately tied to what we think we know about the world and ourselves. As a case study in the rhetorical power of stories (aka representation) in public writing, we will delve into Hawaiʻi’s rich archive by reading an assortment of texts throughout the semester that take part in public conversations. We will consider these texts and the stories they tell through intensive class discussion, allowing us to develop our critical reading skills together.
With a conversational rhythm established in the classroom, we will turn our attention to how the production of knowledge happens through conversations, whether they are academic debates, political controversies, or arguments among friends. We will examine the relationship of stories to conversations, and I will try to convince you that the process of researching a topic and making an argument is a process of mapping and positioning.
Finally, we will consider how we can express our positions in persuasive ways to specific audiences, with the aim of using our stories to create actual results in the world.
Student Learning Outcomes
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Compose college-level writing, including but not limited to, academic discourse, that achieves a specific purpose and responds adeptly to an identifiable audience.
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Provide evidence of effective strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading a text in order to produce finished prose.
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Compose an argument that makes use of source material that is relevant and credible and that is integrated in accordance with an appropriate style guide.
Course Requirements
This course will require that you write 4 short papers, including a critical reading of a text, a literature review, an argumentative piece in which you put forth your own new idea, and a persuasive text to be shared with a specific audience. Aspects of these four assignments will require collaborative writing, and may be supplemented with a presentation to the class.
All required texts will be provided in pdf form by me.