What to Expect in ENG 1001: English Composition I

Types of Assignments

There are 4 formal essay assignments in the course that will make up the majority of a student’s final grade. All other assignments are considered informal and are developed to either support the planning for a formal writing assignment (called Writing Process Work), help students synthesize and reflect on course content, or provide low-stakes writing practice.

The Semester

The first half of the semester focuses on introducing and/or reviewing basic college-level essay writing expectations and MLA Style document formatting. This includes helping students navigate Brightspace and both Office 365 and Google Docs as word-processing options. There are 2 formal essays assigned during the first half of the semester. The first does not require citation and documentation and helps students build confidence with college-level structure and writing expectations. The second essay expects students to incorporate MLA Style direct quote citation and requires a formally prepared MLA Style Works Cited Page. 

The second half of the semester focuses on common rhetorical strategies and development of citation knowledge. Students practice tailoring an effective source-based argument to their intended audience and learn specific best practices for incorporating ideas from outside sources into their writing. In a total of 2 more formal essays, students choose topics about the fast fashion industry, pre- or post-consumer waste issues, consumer-driven economies, or greenwashing. 

My Teaching

I build and maintain my curriculum with a few key points in mind: 

1. Many students arrive in my classroom without a lot of confidence in their writing. 

2. A number of students have not written formal essays in some time (years, in many cases).

3. The college essay does not feel relevant to what most students need to learn in terms of communication in our fast-paced, social media driven world. 

This means that during the first half of the semester I'm introducing a lot of new concepts to some students while reviewing those same concepts for other students. I love-love-love teaching community college courses for that reason: we are so privileged to get a large array of interest and life experience in our classrooms each semester. Some students are traditional college-aged freshmen just out of high school, some are parents, some of working full-time, or still in high-school—you never know what you're going to get, which means, as a professor, I'm never going to assume a set of skills or knowledge.

By the second half of the semester, most of the course content is new and highly foundational for future academic writing. That said, I prepare course content in a way that allows students to take what they need academically and professionally; some students will be doing a lot of writing in the future and some will do more social media or verbal communication, and my instructional methods take that into consideration. 

Sample syllabus policy (subject to change)