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top At RWC, we value faculty autonomy, recognizing that individual teachers must be allowed to design their courses, assignments, and class activities in ways that best utilize their own strengths, teaching styles, and theoretical perspectives. At the same time, students have a right to comparable experiences and instruction in all sections of the required courses so that students who move to a different section and different instructor for subsequent courses in the sequence are prepared for that next course. The curriculum guide is designed to establish commonality in the curriculum and in the expectations we have for students, while allowing flexibility within the common goals and desired outcomes. ON THIS PAGE
Below are the basic outcomes for the three-quarter sequence. While they apply to all quarters, students are expected to develop a reasonable competency in the first quarter but continue to build on that in subsequent quarters, as they are confronted with increasingly challenging and varied writing reading, and thinking tasks. Writing
Critical Reading & Critical Thinking
Information Literacy and Source Management
The following set of outcome statements have not been approved by the RWC English faculty. They combine the RWC outcome statements with the WPA Outcome Statements (see WPA Outcomes Statement). Writing By the end of first year composition, students should be able to (Rhetorical Knowledge)
(Processes)
(Knowledge of Conventions)
Critical Reading, Writing, & Thinking
Information Literacy and Source Management
28-001-101 English Composition I. 3 ug. cr. An introductory college composition course focusing on critical reading and writing with an introduction to using library and electronic resources. Academic writing tasks include personal, expository, analytical, and persuasive essays. Readings are primarily essays and non-fiction. Prerequisite: College Placement Exam or successful completion of English 099. Co-requisite: Computer Awareness. Texts Ramage, John D. and John C. Bean, The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. 2nd ed. Boston:Allyn and Bacon, 1999. ISBN 0-205-31067-2 Or Ramage, John D. and John C. Bean, The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. Boston: Allyn andBacon, 1997. ISBN 0-02-398271-3 OR For those who have been using this text and do not wish to change. Axelrod, Rise B. and Charles Cooper. The St. Martin's Guide to Writing. 5th edition. New York:St. Martin's, 1997. ISBN 0-312-11634-9 General Description/Explanation: Given the general goals of the sequence, the first quarter course should introduce and/or review some basic concepts about writing and reading while moving students toward greater sophistication as they encounter more complex writing and reading tasks. The general movement of the course is from the familiar to the unfamiliar, allowing students to begin by writing essays that are about personal experience or use personal experience or what they already know to support their points but then move to writing essays that require students to interact with others' ideas, concepts, and texts. Although readings will be assigned from the beginning and all writing and thinking involves moving between what is known and new knowledge and ideas, as the quarter progresses major paper assignments should require more focus on other sources/texts. Students should be asked to write for several different audiences and purposes to give them practice in making appropriate choices for the rhetorical demands of the assignment/writing situation. Various organizational strategies, options for structuring the piece of writing, and stylistic options (phrasing, sentence structure and variety, word choice, tone, etc.) should be part of the writing instruction. While specific purposes may fall into the generic categories of exposition and persuasion, students should understand that various ways of developing ideas can be used to achieve their larger purpose. Preferably, assignments will be constructed as a spiral sequence, that is, building on skills gained in a previous assignment, repeating yet requiring additional or more complex skills. Some assignments should ask students to incorporate material from another text/source into his/her paper. A research component should be included in all sections. Students should be introduced to search strategies and should be able to locate and retrieve information from the library and the WWW. A short source paper, demonstrating the student can locate, select, incorporate, and document sources is required. This or another assignment may also include field research (observations, site visits, interviews, etc.) Readings and Reading Assignments: While reading assignments may include an occasional piece of short fiction (but the emphasis should not be on literary analysis), most readings should be non-fiction (autobiography/personal narrative, diary or journal, essays, articles). The readings and writing assignments need to go together, and if students are writing for several audiences and purposes, it follows that the readings should reflect that kind of variety. Readings can be used as models for student writing, to generate ideas for essays, to provide material for developing ideas, or, on a limited basis this term, as the subject of a student essay. (That is, the course is not "writing about non-fiction or fiction" but one essay could focus on analyzing or writing about another piece of writing.
Writing
Students will be able to proofread and edit (recognize and correct errors) to make the paper "audience ready." Their final products or presentation drafts should be polished, attractive, readable, and relatively free from such errors as, but not limited to, the following:I incorrect verb tense/ verb forms, subject & verb and pronoun agreement problems, sentence boundary problems (fragment, fused, run-on sentence errors), Faulty predication, misplaced modifiers, pronoun reference problems, Misused words, unidiomatic expressions, Spelling, punctuation, capitalization errors, etc. Students will understand the elements of the rhetorical situation and become more proficient in addressing the demands of a variety of writing situations. (This might serve as the general guideline for the course. ) Students will develop strategies for effective organization and a repertoire of stylistic options. Students will begin to manage sources/texts for use in their own essays. Reading & Critical Thinking
Not every reading should be subjected to a thorough analysis or to the same kind, but understanding main & supporting ideas, purpose and organization is necessary for comprehension, for summary, and for using ideas and specifics from a reading in their own essays. Students can explore how a piece of writing produces a particular effect, and experiment with similar strategies in their own writing. Some evaluation of sources is required for the source paper and any paper using material from another text will require that the writer read critically and make wise selections. [Additional Note: Students should be asked to think critically about the texts they read and understand the reciprocal acts of reading and writing. Again, the Allyn & Bacon Guide offers excellent strategies for getting students to read with and against the grain, to annotate, to question, to talk back to texts. Finally, "texts" may be more than just written articles or essays. For example, students can learn to "read" elements of popular culture, advertisements, photographs, webpages, etc. ] Information Literacy and Source Management
Since these skills will be required at a greater level of complexity in subsequent quarters, a foundation should be established at this stage, although students are not expected to acquire a high degree of sophistication by the end of the quarter. The library component of Computer Awareness offers a brief introduction to the library and electronic sources and tools. Students must complete this co-requisite by the fifth week of the term. However, most students will need more guidance and a review of the basics in your class.
Required: A short source paper requiring the student incorporate ideas and information from several texts/sources beyond readings in the class textbook. The following are possible kinds of writing assignments, given the basic description of the course. There is no set number of formal papers prescribed, but the general guideline is that instructors assign the equivalent of 4 (or 5) essays. For example, instructors may want to include various types of writing, such as journals, impromptu, major revision or recasting of a former paper, etc. and have only 3 formal papers, but the amount of writing done corresponds to that done in another class where 4 (or , at the most, 5) formal essays are written.
To meet the goals of summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting, a series of shorter writing tasks might be included prior to requiring students to demonstrate these skills in their formal papers. Since one of the goals of this quarter is to introduce students to a variety of types of writing and audiences, special care should be taken when constructing assignments to ensure that the concept of audience is part of both the assignment and the instruction. In addition, although the types of writing assignments are varied, students should be reminded of the ways in which each assignment builds upon what they have learned in a previous assignment, and whenever possible, assignments should be constructed and sequenced with a spiral progression in mind. 28-001-102 English Composition II. 3 ug.cr. A continuation of introductory college composition, focusing on more advanced assignments in critical reading and writing. Academic writing tasks include expository, analytical, and persuasive essays. Continued emphasis on developing proficiency in library and electronic research and management of sources. Readings are from various genres, including fiction and non-fiction. Prerequisite: English 101. Texts: 1. ***Required for all new faculty and "default" text. Bass, Randall. Border Texts: Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Please note: Instructors may also want to continue using The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing as a rhetoric to accompany this reader. 2. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. Especially the 2nd edition, which contains more readings, might be used by continuing faculty as the sole text for the course or might be supplemented with readings students find in their research or that the instructor supplies. 3. Continuing faculty who would like to pursue a single theme in the course may select the appropriate texts/readings. [Please note that usually novels or full-length plays are not appropriate for ENG 102 and should be reserved for ENG 103 where students receive more instruction in reading and writing about literature. This of course depends upon the "theme" of the course and the type of work selected.] General Description/Explanation: In this course, instructors may use mixed genres for readings: essays, articles, arguments, short stories, poems, or any number of historical, cultural, scientific, sociological, and literary essays, etc. The course uses thematic groupings to focus on issues, problems, themes. (Another alternative might be to pursue one theme, issue, problem throughout the term.) Students should analyze the texts, respond critically, practice summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and really learn how to synthesize ideas and information. The more advanced critical reading and thinking (described below) builds on that introduced in 101, as do the writing assignments, which ask students to engage in more sophisticated academic writing. While they are still negotiating between the familiar and unfamiliar, the personal and the public, the course calls for more sophisticated interaction with texts. The research project(s) might be a natural extension of one or several of the units, thus utilizing the basic search strategies and source management skills introduced in 101, but calling for real engagement in the issues, rather than the more mechanical manipulation of sources we might expect in 101. The types of thematic groupings will depend upon the textbooks selected and individual instructors' preferences. Below are a few examples to convey the general idea of thematic groupings:
[* As the college establishes service learning, we may want to consider ways the EC course can incorporate a service learning component (option). When the department approved the service learning option, the only place to include it was in 101. Now that our 102 curriculum can accommodate this, perhaps 102 might be the better place for an extended service learning project, after students have received a full quarter of writing instruction. Or possibly, sections with the service learning option could have their introduction to the project or a brief community-based assignment in 101 and a more extended one in 102. Even if the project is not service based, other kinds of community-based projects for research & experience could be incorporated into the 102 course, and I would like to encourage that. ]
Writing
Reading & Critical Thinking While not separate from writing since it is primarily text-based, critical reading skills become more advanced as the texts are more demanding. Students will continue to develop skills in the following:
In addition, more emphasis and new instruction should focus on the following goals:
Information Literacy and Source Management Goals Having been introduced to search strategies, finding sources in the library/electronic resources and on the WWW, and possibly doing some kind of field research in 101, students should build on this basic information to pose and solve research questions. They should be encouraged to use additional kinds of reference material (they cannot possibly have used any very thoroughly for the brief 101 assignment). Students should continue to do the following:
In addition, the following goals build on 101 instruction:
Required:
The following are possible kinds of writing assignments, given the basic description of the course. (Note that this list contains more than can be done in a quarter. This is NOT a list of required assignments.
28-001-103 English Composition III. 3 ug cr. A culmination of the introductory sequence focusing on reading, responding to, and writing about literary texts, with continued emphasis on critical thinking, analysis, synthesis, and text-based essay writing. Readings are primarily short fiction, poetry, and drama. Prerequisite: English 102. Texts: 1. *** Default Text Gillespie, Sheena, et. al. Literature Across Cultures. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1998. 2. There are a number of literature anthologies for first-year composition that can be used for the course. The department has decided not to restrict this choice for this year. General Description/Explanation: Our students need to have more exposure to and instruction in critical reading skills that are in some ways unique to imaginative literature, and that a concentrated focus on writing about imaginative literature is an appropriate conclusion to the year-long sequence. Although "it is not a literature course" in the sense that the primary goal is not to learn a body of literature, the readings should be primarily fiction, poetry, and drama. Although students will have read some literary works in the second quarter, here is the place to focus more on strategies for reading literary works, analyzing, responding, interpreting. Building on the skills developed in the first and second quarters, students should have refined their abilities to summarize, paraphrase, incorporate quotations, and have a repertoire of organizational strategies and stylistic options. They will have had some limited instruction in dealing with figurative language and interpreting a few selected literary texts, but the focus in 102 is not on literary study exclusively. Readings: Readings will be primarily fiction, poetry, drama, although non-fictional prose can be used to supplement the writing about literature focus. Again, the textbook selected and individual preferences will further define content. PLEASE NOTE: The department has not determined whether we need to stipulate that all genres be included equally or in any set proportion. We have thus far viewed this primarily as combining the current 102 and 103 courses, although the mixed genre approach allows us to organize readings thematically.
Writing
Reading & Critical Thinking
Information Literacy & Source Management
** Please note that there is no required formal writing assignment incorporating research. In the spirit of building on the information literacy and source management goals of the first two quarters, some kind of assignment or instruction in how students can locate sources/information about literary subjects is encouraged. One possibility is to make this an option for a writing assignment; another is to have some sort of mini-assignment, such as a collaborative activity, an oral presentation, etc. Of course, a paper requiring the use of secondary sources is listed in the possible assignments below. It is just not required that all sections include this. The following types of assignments are only possibilities to suggest the range. Obviously some of the possibilities overlap and could be combined into a single assignment.
{Some more specific assignments that dept. members suggested on the "wish list" & elsewhere are as follows. These are not mutually exclusive.
[* Additional Note: The different approaches to teaching reading and writing about literature held by department members should be evident from the above. No attempt has been made to establish theoretical consensus for this course. However, faculty are encouraged to consider the experiences students have had thus far in the sequence and to design the course in a way that makes this final term a continuation of these experiences.]
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An essay (or two) based upon writer's personal experience (either
about personal experience, such as a personal narrative, description
of someone or something familiar or an expository essay in which the
writer uses his/her own knowledge or experience for support and
development of ideas.)
