This course is an introduction to academic writing that focuses on the practices of analysis and argument, practices that carry across disciplinary lines and into professional and civic writing. These interdependent practices of critical inquiry are fundamental to the work students will do in this course, college-level courses, and later in their careers and civic engagements.
Unit 1: The Personal Essay and Craft
Students will begin to make the shift from high school writing to college-level, academic writing through the examination of the self. Students will compose texts that reflect seminal moments in their lives. Particular attention will be paid to their ability to capture detailed scenes and to juggle them with exposition and reflection where needed. Use of description, characterization, dialogue, and point of view in shaping the essay is expected. Narrative structure will be practiced and applied through the drafting of short scenes, a college essay draft, and a "This I Believe" essay.
Unit 2: Critical Inquiry and Analysis
Students will begin to explore the practice of academic analytical writing. Writing like this requires “locating a middle ground between passive summary and personal response. That middle ground is occupied by analysis” (2). Rosenwasser and Stephen describe analysis as “a form of detective work that typically pursues something puzzling, something you seek to under-stand rather than something you believe you already know. Analysis finds questions where there seem not to be any, and it makes connections that might not have been evident at first” in their text Writing Analytically.
Unit 3: Argument
Argument is important to academic writing. Students will learn that argument involves inquiry and analysis and engages others in ongoing conversations about topics of common concern. Evidence for their arguments comes from analysis, from discussion with others, from their personal experience, and from research in the library and on the web. In addition to being persuasive, arguments can be a means of sharing information, posing important questions, or even raising consciousness about issues.
Grading
Tests/projects: 50%
Quizzes: 25%
Homework/classwork: 25%