ENG 111: College Composition I, Fall Semester 2008, 3 Credits

Pre-requisite: Successful completion of ENG 03 or Placement Testing Approval

Course Description: Introduces students to critical thinking and the fundamentals of academic writing. Through the writing process, students refine topics; develop and support ideas; investigate, evaluate, and incorporate appropriate resources; edit for effective style and usage; and determine appropriate approaches for a variety of contexts, audiences, and purposes.  Writing activities will include exposition and argumentation with at least one researched essay.

No onsite meetings will be scheduled. Blackboard is our virtual classroom.

Synchronous Chat Conferences: Students can schedule online conferences with the instructor in real-time either during her onsite and/or online office hours or at mutually-agreed dates/times. To access Blackboard (Bb) Chat, select Communication/Collaboration/Office Hours—Join.  

Phone Conferences: Students can schedule phone conferences with the instructor at mutually-agreed dates/times. 

Onsite Conferences: Students can schedule onsite meetings with the instructor at mutually-agreed dates/times. These conferences will be held at the Virginia Beach Campus in one of the study rooms located in the Bayside Bldg., Library, 2^nd Floor. 

• McWhorter, Kathleen T., Successful College Writing, 3rd edition, Bedford/St. Martin's, ISBN 0-312-44131-2.
  • Recommended means that students are not "required" to purchase the McWhorter text, but the instructor recommends it for this course. If you do not purchase this text, then you will need to read information about effective writing (expressive, expository, and persuasive) and documentation on Internet sites such as the Purdue's Online Writing Lab http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/index.html. The instructor will choose reading selections from the McWhorter text as well as from Internet sites to accommodate those who have purchased the McWorter text and those who have not purchased it.

Required English Handbook

• English Handbook: Any recent edition of a college handbook such as Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference, Boston: Bedford or Jane Aaron's The Little, Brown Handbook, New York: Longman.
  • Required means that students will definitely need to purchase an English Handbook. However, it does not need to be a new or an expensive one as long as it is current (not more than three-years-old).

Companion site (McWhorter Text) free access: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/successfulwriting3e/

Additional Resources

http://www.powa.org/

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/toc.shtml

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/writersref6e/Player/Pages/Main.aspx

ENG 111 will help students understand that writing is a process that develops through experience and varies among individuals.

• Students will engage in all phases of the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, sharing and reflecting.
• Students will incorporate reading and experience into their writing processes.

ENG 111 will develop students' ability to analyze and investigate ideas and to present them in well structured prose appropriate to the purpose and audience.

• Students will competently read, analyze, and respond to college-level texts—their own and others'—of varying lengths.
• Students will create unified, coherent, well-developed texts that demonstrate a self-critical awareness of rhetorical elements such as purpose, audience, and organization.
• Students will appropriately employ grammatical and mechanical conventions in the preparation of readable manuscripts.
• Students will learn how to use and evaluate outside sources of information, incorporate and document source material appropriately, and avoid plagiarism.
• Students will compose a variety of graded and un-graded assignments and will produce at least 3,500 words of finished, graded text.”

Course Content:

• Critical thinking
• Writing process
• Selecting/Refining topics
• Developing, organizing, and supporting ideas
• Investigating and evaluating resources
• Incorporating appropriate resources into text
• Considering context, audience, and purpose

modified by M. Marits, 07/31/08