Spring 2001:: ENC 1101: Composition
Introduction
Course Objective
ENC 1101 is a course in which students study how texts work and employ similar conventions in their own academic and public writing. While each section of the course will approach such study differently, all will provide opportunities for students to learn how to introduce a topic or issue, articulate a thesis, support and develop a thesis and subordinate claims, work with secondary sources, and organize an argument.
Course Description
This course is designed to help you improve your skills in reading and writing at the college level. You will learn to express your ideas as clearly, concisely, and as grammatically correct as possible in written assignments both in and outside of class. In addition, you will learn to use library research to help support ideas you advance in your own writing.
The primary way in which you will be asked to express your opinions at the university level will most likely take the form of argumentation. We will spend much of the class exploring questions such as:
We will also discuss intertextuality (the idea that all texts are influenced by other texts), and that our own voices are highly influential in our writing. Some questions along these lines include:
In exploring these issues, you will be reading and engaging texts in analysis, interpretation, and various other modes of critical thinking. You will be using what you learn from these texts as models for your own writing. By the end of the course, you should be able to write papers that are clear, thoughtful, and well-organized.
This particular course will be taught in the Networked Writing Environment (NWE). The computers in the classroom are notmeant to be word processors only; we will use these facilities for exercises such as e-mail responses and on-line discussions. We may also make use of the NWE's text-based virtual reality environment, MOOville to help us think about different ways to write. We will also be looking at how rhetoric operates in an online environment as opposed to a paper based environment.
You are not required to have computer skills prior to taking the class, though you will be expected to learn and apply some basic skills for the class.