RHET 1311

Composition I develops and prepares students for Composition II. Like all courses in the composition program instructors should emphasize the writing process, encouraging small group work, and peer workshops designed to facilitate constructive feedback.

Students will write to express themselves, producing texts that focuses on developing and supporting clear thesis and/or claims. Students will address editing and proofreading issues as it pertains to the nature and structure of the rhetorical situation for the writing and/or discourse communities the writing attempts to engage.

In addition to writing expressively, students in Composition I learn about various rhetorical approaches to organization, and they do more writing about reading. As they prepare for Composition II, students learn how to research, focusing on strategies such as, paraphrase, summarize, quoting from sources, as well as how to analyze and evaluate a text.

Objectives Organized According to WPA Outcomes

Rhetorical Knowledge

• Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts
• Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes
• Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences
• Match the capacities of different environments (e.g., print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations

Critical Reading, Thinking and Writing

• Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts
• Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different audiences and situations

Processes

• Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing
• Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas
• Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities

Knowledge of Conventions

• Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising.
• Understand why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary.
• Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions.
• Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work.

Use these outcomes to plan the development of both mini assignments and major writing tasks. Think; what are the outcomes; ask; what objectives (goals) can I create to meet the outcomes, and finally, develop artifacts (assignments) that will enable students to demonstrate their learning.