Students often enter college writing courses believing they will be taking an “English” course that revolves around reading literature, writing creatively, and/or focusing on grammar. In fact, that is often not the case.
At Macomb Community College, each student is required to take either ENGL 1181: Communication I or ENGL 1210: Composition I. In practice, college writing courses teach students about writing and composing processes, how to think critically and rhetorically, and how to use and refine their writing process.
Macomb has several options for first-year writing classes.
There are two options for the first course in the first-year writing course sequence: Communications I and Composition I. Additionally, Macomb offers a one-credit writing co-requisite course for students who would like extra support to complete ENGL 1181.
In ENGL 1181, students learn to think rhetorically and develop transferable writing skills. In this class, you will read, analyze, and write in a variety of genres, including multimodal texts. Additionally, you will learn to...
make appropriate choices for audience, purpose, and genre,
develop and organize your ideas,
revise your work based on feedback, and
reflect on your writing process.
After ENGL 1181, you may need to take a second writing class. If so, you will have two options: ENGL 1190 and ENGL 1220.
The alternative to ENGL 1181 is ENGL 1210. ENGL 1210 focuses on essay writing and developing your personal writing style.
For students who feel they could use extra support to successfully complete ENGL 1181, Macomb also offers the one credit hour co-requisite class ENGL 1170. Students in ENGL 1170 will focus on the organization and development of the essays in their coinciding 1180 section as they continue to learn sentence structure, paragraph structure, and mechanics. Additionally, students in this cohort will enhance their understanding of how to utilize Canvas and other web-based documents and applications, resolve writing problems, and explore pre-writing, revising, and text comprehension strategies.
There are also two options for the second course in the first-year writing sequence. Check your degree plan or with an advisor to determine if the second first-year writing class is required for your program. Once you have completed either ENGL 1181 or ENGL 1210, you can choose from the following classes:
ENGL 1190 focuses on inquiry-based research writing. The concepts in this class are widely transferable to the type of research writing that students are asked to do in many fields and programs. If you take this class, you can expect to learn academic research and research writing skills, such as source evaluation and documentation, the conventions and expectations of academic research writing, developing an appropriate academic tone and style, and how to incorporate research in your writing.
ENGL 1220 focuses on literature-based research writing. In this class, you will read and analyze literature, learn how to conduct research in literary studies, and learn how to write a formal research paper on literature. This class will help you gain deep analytical and critical thinking skills, along with an introduction to research writing.
For students who are English Language Learners, Macomb offers a sequence of classes called English for Academic Purposes (also known as EAPP). If you want or need additional English language support, these classes are available to you. If you need help registering or determining which class is right for you, contact a Macomb Community College counselor.
Additional multilingual learning support is also available through Student Access Services.
"College Writing" by Sarah Karlis and Molli Spalter includes adapted material from A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.