Course Goals:
In general, English 101 should serve as a stimulating
and challenging introduction to and preparation for a liberal arts
education. More specifically, all students who successfully complete
English 101 should demonstrate competence in composition of expository
prose. Students should also recognize the intimate relationship
between good writing and good learning; they should be able to read
their own or others' writing critically and analytically, and thus
to use effective reading as a means to effective writing. Students
should also be able to adapt their expository prose to a variety
of audiences and purposes. Finally, students should recognize that
language is a powerful tool for developing, promoting, and redeeming
the creation.
To meet these large objectives students should
be able to do at least the following:
- Choose appropriate invention techniques (e.g.,
researching, free writing, journal writing, and outlining) for
discovering and developing significant content;
- Analyze their audience and develop form, content,
and style appropriate to that audience;
- Restrict topics and focus on an identifiable
central purpose, usually expressed in a thesis statement;
- Develop and support effective arguments;
- Organize parts of an essay in a rhetorically
effective pattern;
- Strike a balance between general and specific,
and between abstract and concrete items;
- Recognize and use a number of strategies for
developing paragraphs;
- Identify and use various strategies to achieve
coherence;
- Compose sentences which demonstrate choices
appropriate to specific purposes, choices which provide syntactic
variety through such techniques as parallelism and subordination;
- Use diction for clarity as well as style;
- Make rhetorical choices based on the ethical
dimensions of language, recognizing its potential for deceiving,
propagandizing, and disenfranchising, as well as for being honest,
forthright, and empowering;
- Revise their own writing at the global, paragraph,
and sentence levels;
- Edit sentences to remove errors in spelling,
punctuation, usage, and grammar;
- Use and document source material in their
writing
|
|
