English: Written Expression

A foundational composition course featuring a sequence of writing, reading, and information literacy assignments. Students learn to write and revise for different rhetorical situations while increasing their mastery of academic conventions. Some sections designed for specific student audiences.

Non CAS first time first year students only until August 1st then non CAS sophomores may also enroll Open to degree and PACE students

In this course you will be asked to work with several different kinds of written expressions for a variety of audiences. Throughout our semester together you will produce explorations, many drafts, and four final writing projects that will help expand your ideas about writing and its purposes within different academic categories. In writing these pieces, you will be introduced to strategies for inventing and organizing ideas, workshopping, and crafting a final product using what you have produced along the way. Each portfolio you will create will build upon the next, demonstrating the links between modalities and the skills you will retain throughout the process. Unlike other English classes you may have taken in the past, you will not typically write about the readings you have been assigned. Instead, we will be looking at these texts as guides and teaching tools about the craft of writing. The texts will teach us how to manipulate prose to reach a specific audience, how to translate scholarly research and showcase it in a piece, and about positioning your own ideas amongst the views of others. The content of your essays will be produced through your own passions and “burning questions,” your independent research, and your reflection on that experience and its relationship to your topics.

Students will further develop skills in crafting engaging community narratives using literary and creative nonfiction techniques, composing a compelling and relevant research question, navigating university databases to aid in research, synthesizing information and extracting important research elements such as thesis statements, methodology, and overall findings, comparing and contrasting the work of various scholars to paint a picture of the overall research being conducted about their research topic, and translating scholarly information into a format that could be consumed by a popular audience. By the end of the course, students will have learned how to write effectively using both creative and technical elements. Students will be proficient in the art of creative nonfiction, annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and magazine feature articles. They will also get the opportunity to practice their presentation skills on their chosen research topic.

Over the course of the semester, you will complete four major writing projects. Each final writing project will be accompanied by a portfolio of several preparatory writing exercises, including a first and second draft of the major project. Most writing exercises will be completed in class, so you should expect to write frequently in class. Staying focused on your in-class writing is part of your overall participation. Assignment Grade Weight Portfolio 1 Social Narrative 17.5% Portfolio 2 Annotated Bibliography 17.5% Portfolio 3 Literature Review 17.5% Portfolio 4 Magazine-style Article 17.5% Explorations 20% Overall Participation 10%