Course Description, Goals, Requirements

Catalog Course Description

A Distance Education composition course emphasizing exposition, analysis, argument, and Internet research techniques. Extensive writing practice based upon reading culturally diverse short stories. Class meetings on campus. CSU; UC (CAN ENGL 2)

Overview/Prerequisites

This distance education course is designed to improve your skills in English Composition in preparation for ENG 102, 103, 104 or any course you will take that requires writing at the college level. To be ready for ENG 101 you should be at an advanced level of English; in other words, if English is not your primary language, you are likely to have difficulty with some of the concepts discussed in this class. You should have tested successfully into this class.

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Course Goals and Methods

Goals

This course will consist of reading, analyzing, discussing, and, ultimately, writing about the readings assigned for the class at a college level.

SLOs

• Demonstrate awareness of readings as a process by applying reading strategies for different purposes
• Apply reading and annotation strategies for reading comprehension
• Summarize main ideas and supporting details in expository texts and respond to written positions with ideas and examples from personal experience
• Demonstrate awareness of writing as a process by applying writing strategies for different purposes
• Apply prewriting, planning, and revision strategies for various writing purposes
• Apply proofreading strategies for clarity and coherence
• Evaluate source credibility and relevance during the research process
• Compose correctly structured simple, compound, and complex sentences
• Write a multiple-paragraph deductive essay in response to a reading with the following components at a minimum level: logic, focus, organization, unity, co-herence
• Write with adequate and pertinent textual support to defend an argumentative thesis
• Write in a mature tone with a sense of a college-level audience
• Write a research paper demonstrating knowledge of research methods and doc-umentation
• Write a minimum of 8,000 words in papers and other writing assignments
• Annotate, analyze, and evaluate reading selections of fiction and non-fiction prose and verse through the application of a variety of cognitive reading strategies. The fundamentals of the writing process will be stressed, but individual styles and tastes will not be discouraged. That means you will be responsible for understanding how an author gets his or her message across and how one analyzes literature. You will be required to substantiate your analysis clearly from text, but there is not necessarily one correct answer. The method by which you discuss these works will be the most important aspect of your grade. You will, of course, do a lot of writing in this class, including timed essays, in-class presentations, group projects, short research papers, and a final research paper. The most important goal for you as a student in this class is to become familiar with college writing at a competent level.
  Method
  Overview
  My job is to give you the tools to create pieces of writing that reflect your analysis and your research. We will be reading a series of short fiction and non-fiction pieces, as well as discussing various analytical approaches. If you are on-line, you must read (or even engage in) chat room discussions and pay attention to Canvas postings. We will use the MLA format for most papers, including the quoting of sources, as well as demonstrating your understanding of published analysis. Out-of-class essays are expected to be typed, double-spaced, as neat as possible, and on time. See Paper Format presentation for details.

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Required Text

• Dictionary of American English

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