Learning Goals and Guidelines for First-Year Writing

(ENG 101, ENG 102, ENG 110, ENG 111)

In First-Year Writing courses, students learn to read and write critically. Students work with a range of texts and genres and other media (expository essays, scholarly articles, journalism, fiction [including poetry], graphic novels, film, blogs and other examples of multi-modal media), thus focusing on the real basics of �compositions�: voice, metaphor and other figures, argument, organization, selection, tone, and point of view.

Students learn, through a series of sequenced assignments, to read texts of some complexity and intellectual weight; to make the critical interpretation of these texts the occasion for their own writing; to write expository prose that makes use of a variety of rhetorical strategies; and to conduct library research when appropriate.

Students practice strategies of critical thinking through rereading and rewriting. Students are given multiple opportunities to reflect on, reconsider, and rework their writing. Students also refine their documentation skills and gain an appreciation of the role of documentation in academic writing. In addition, students consider the expectations of an academic audience by editing and polishing final drafts.

Students gain familiarity with the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes in a workshop setting. Students learn to critique their own and each others� work, and, in the process, learn to balance the advantages of collaborating with others with the responsibility of doing their own work.

First-Year Writing courses require that students write multiple drafts; by doing so, writing courses focus on the process of writing as well as on the quality of the finished product. Students produce four essays of five-to-seven pages (or approximately 6000-7000 words of revised final-draft writing), and keep an inclusive portfolio of all work.