Fall 2005: ENC 1102: Argument & Persuasion: Invoking the Professional Voice
Rationale For Coursework
As students train within their respective disciplines, they should begin to enter the ongoing written "conversations" engaged in by professionals in their fields. To do so they must become familiar with the conventions for research and argumentative writing. ENC1102 helps acquaint students with this process through coursework that leads toward its culminating requirement that each student produce a fully researched and well-documented argumentative paper, typically related to his/her major or disciplinary field. Developing skills in research and argumentative writing aids students in their progression toward scholarly and professional goals.
Prerequisite Expectations
Writing forms an essential foundation for the research work. Students cannot effectively enter into disciplinary discourse without the mechanical, syntactical, and stylistic expertise to produce readable, conventionally formatted, and fully-researched scholarly documents. For this reason, ENC 1102 includes writing instruction with the aim of refining basic skills. Since ENC1102 represents the second of two first-year composition courses, however, students should enter the course with an understanding of and an ability to produce persuasive writing such as that expected at the completion level of ENC1101.
Course Objectives
ENC 1102 instructors work diversely from rhetorical and analytical foundations to challenge students toward the culminating requirement of a fully researched, well-written, and thoroughly-documented argumentative paper.
As part of this process, ENC1102 coursework includes work in the following areas:
- Development of broad critical analysis skills including recognition of such elements as audience, purpose, and genre in both scholarly and popular model texts, as well as in student writing.
- Examination of such issues as underlying assumptions, rhetorical methods, structure and forms of argumentation, persuasive appeals, and common fallacies. Refinement of writing (mechanical, grammatical, and stylistic) while producing, critiquing, and revising original work.
- Familiarity with library databases and other research sources.
- Location, evaluation and synthesis of multiple research sources.
- Knowledge and use of accepted documentation practices.
- Engagement in "independence" of thought-Development of individual ideas, informed by research. (That is, making the turn away from mimicry.)
- Sequenced assignments including summary, annotated bibliography, and synthesis leading to incorporation of research and evidence into argument.
- Practice of revision techniques to strengthen structure and style of written drafts.
- Production of the research paper. Each student must develop and expand an original argumentative thesis into a well-structured paper that demonstrates familiarity of the research and reflective awareness of the student's presumptions and responses, and which argues on the chosen subject from an informed, individual perspective.
Official University Writing Program Course Description
ENC 1102 focuses on the essential stylistics of writing clearly and efficiently within the framework of argumentative research writing. Students in ENC 1102 will learn how to formulate a coherent thesis and defend it logically with evidence drawn from research in their various fields. They will also learn how to work through the stages of planning, research, organizing, and revising their writing.
ENC 1102 introduces students to techniques and forms of argument in a broad range of disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences, business, and natural sciences. This course encourages students to investigate the relationship between writing and knowledge, and to discover how writing can create, rather than merely transmit, knowledge. Class lectures and discussions will reveal the complementary relationship between writing and research and demonstrate how persuasive techniques and genres vary from discipline to discipline. Students will learn how writing effectively and correctly in their fields will help to integrate them as professionals into their “knowledge communities.”
General Education Learning Outcomes
You must pass this course with a grade of C or better to receive 6,000-word Gordon Rule credit (E6). You must turn in all papers to receive credit for writing 6,000 words. A grade of D or better satisfies the University's General Education Composition (C) requirement. You must pass with a grade of C or better if this course is to satisfy the CLAS requirement of a second course in Composition (C). If you are not in CLAS, check the catalog or with your advisor to see if your college has other writing requirements.