Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students should be able to …

• Analyze rhetorical contexts, with particular attention to elements such as audience, purpose, and genre, and adapt composing strategies accordingly.
• Describe scenes vividly in writing, with reference to specific, concrete details.
• Discuss texts with precision and confidence and offer constructive feedback on the work of their peers.
• Organize their writing logically through the use of paragraphing, transitions, thesis statements, and other devices.
• Productively engage in prewriting, drafting, and revising processes.
• Recognize, differentiate between, and compose in various genres (such as the personal narrative).
• Reflect on their own practices and experiences to arrive at conclusions, insights, or theories about composing that they may apply beyond the course.
• Take part in the research process by locating, evaluating, incorporating (through summary or direct quotation), and documenting outside sources ethically, accurately, and effectively.
• Think critically about the relationships between varieties of English and other languages and, when it is rhetorically useful to do so, be able to work within the grammatical, punctuation, and spelling conventions of Standard Written English.
• Use writing as a tool for extended and nuanced inquiry.

Requirements

Writing and Assignments

• Each student must produce 3,000–4,500 words of revised writing (or a reasonable equivalent, with respect to multimodal projects), across three to six major projects. (Exception: English 100 instructors may exercise their best judgment as to whether to ask students to write fewer than 3,000 revised words during the term.)
• No single assignment may require 2,500-plus words of revised writing.
• For each major assignment, instructors must specify to students what evaluative criteria will be used for grading.
• Each major project must undergo revision.
• Students must compose at least one new or alternative media (“multimodal”) project, such as a video essay, podcast, or research poster. This project may be linked to another assignment—a profile of a person, place, or event, for example.
• At least one assignment must ask students to reflect on their writing practices.
• No instructor may assign a literary analysis as a major project, as doing so would compromise students’ ability to transfer credit for the course to other universities. Note that a review of a film or work of literature does not count as a literary analysis.

Instructor and Peer Feedback

• The instructor must provide timely feedback on major projects: preferably no later than three weeks after submission.
• The course must require that students engage in peer feedback, whether through small-group workshops, letters, forum responses, or other means.
• The course schedule (and the instructor’s turnaround time on drafts) must allow students sufficient time to process feedback and revise—in most cases, no less than one week.

Course Materials, Readings, and Themes

• The instructor must assign at least some readings that model or serve as examples of the genres in which students will be expected to write during the term.
• The course can require that students read some imaginative literature (e.g., fiction, poetry, or drama), but all course materials should ultimately serve to advance students’ writing. Remember: English 100, 101, and 111 are writing courses, not literature, cultural studies, or film studies courses.
• Instructors must not assign more than roughly three hundred pages of reading—and preferably considerably fewer pages than three hundred. As wonderful as it may be, please don’t have your students read Middlemarch.
• In the spirit of the above requirement, do not require students to watch or otherwise engage with an unreasonable number of films or other non-alphabetic texts.
• Instructors who choose to teach a thematic course must never allow the course’s thematic content to take priority over the advancement of students’ writing. No class session should focus exclusively—or even primarily—on textual content, cultural issues, critical theory, or other matters not clearly and immediately relevant to students’ writing.
• Films, like all other course materials, should ultimately serve to advance students’ writing. In addition, an instructor should not devote an entire class period to simply viewing a film, though in-class analysis and discussion of a film is permissible.

Learning Outcomes

In this course, students will further develop the competencies introduced in English 100, 101, or 111. Therefore, they will refine their ability to …

• Analyze rhetorical contexts, with particular attention to elements such as audience, purpose, and genre, and adapt composing strategies accordingly.
• Describe scenes vividly in writing, with reference to specific, concrete details.
• Discuss texts with precision and confidence and offer constructive feedback on the work of their peers.
• Organize their writing logically through the use of paragraphing, transitions, thesis statements, and other devices.
• Productively engage in prewriting, drafting, and revising processes.
• Recognize, differentiate between, and compose in various genres (such as the personal narrative).
• Reflect on their own practices and experiences to arrive at conclusions, insights, or theories about composing that they may apply beyond the course.
• Take part in the research process by locating, evaluating, incorporating (through summary or direct quotation), and documenting outside sources ethically, accurately, and effectively.
• Think critically about the relationships between varieties of English and other languages and, when it is rhetorically useful to do so, be able to work within the grammatical, punctuation, and spelling conventions of Standard Written English.
• Use writing as a tool for extended and nuanced inquiry.

In addition, by the end of the course, students should be able to … 

• Accurately represent the relationship between a text and its broader intellectual context—for instance, a scholarly article’s place in an ongoing disciplinary conversation.
• Format projects and document sources in accordance with MLA, APA, or other disciplinarily appropriate style guides.
• Distinguish between popular and scholarly sources as well as primary and secondary sources.
• Recognize and employ diverse academic genres and research methods—including at least one genre and set of research methods not typical of the humanities (e.g., ethnography and fieldwork).
• Synthesize found information with their own ideas.
• Use the library’s resources and other databases or archives to find relevant scholarly and primary sources.

Requirements

Writing and Assignments

• For assessment purposes, the instructor must assign at least one revised researched argument as a major project. This argumentative essay must ask students to find, incorporate, and document outside sources. This assignment does count toward the word requirement described below and ideally should reflect students’ end-of-semester abilities.
• Each student must produce 3,000–4,500 words of revised writing (or a reasonable equivalent, with respect to multimodal projects), across three to six major projects.
• No single assignment may require 2,500-plus words of revised writing.
• For each major assignment, instructors must specify to students what evaluative criteria will be used for grading.
• Each major project must undergo revision.
• Students must compose at least one new or alternative media (“multimodal”) project, such as a video essay, podcast, or research poster. This project may be linked to another assignment—a profile of a person, place, or event, for example.
• At least one assignment must ask students to reflect on their writing practices.
• No instructor may assign a literary analysis as a major project, as doing so would compromise students’ ability to transfer credit for the course to other universities. Note that a review of a film or work of literature does not count as a literary analysis.

Instructor and Peer Feedback

• The instructor must provide timely feedback on major projects: preferably no later than three weeks after submission.
• The course must require that students engage in peer feedback, whether through small-group workshops, letters, forum responses, or other means.
• The course schedule (and the instructor’s turnaround time on drafts) must allow students sufficient time to process feedback and revise—in most cases, no less than one week.

Course Materials, Readings, and Themes

• The instructor must assign at least some readings that model or serve as examples of the genres in which students will be expected to write during the term.
• The course can require that students read some imaginative literature (e.g., fiction, poetry, or drama), but all course materials should ultimately serve to advance students’ writing. Remember: English 102 and 112 are writing courses, not literature, cultural studies, or film studies courses. 
• Instructors must not assign more than roughly three hundred pages of reading—and preferably considerably fewer pages than three hundred. As wonderful as it may be, please don’t have your students read Middlemarch.
• In the spirit of the above requirement, do not require students to watch or otherwise engage with an unreasonable number of films or other non-alphabetic texts.
• Instructors who choose to teach a thematic course must never allow the course’s thematic content to take priority over the advancement of students’ writing. No class session should focus exclusively—or even primarily—on textual content, cultural issues, critical theory, or other matters not clearly and immediately relevant to students’ writing.
• Films, like all other course materials, should ultimately serve to advance students’ writing. In addition, an instructor should not devote an entire class period to simply viewing a film, though in-class analysis and discussion of a film is permissible.