Goals, Outcomes and Requirements for the Course
First Year Composition Mission Statement
First-Year Composition courses at FSU teach writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising. Writing is both personal and social, and students should learn how to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Since writing is a process of making meaning as well as communicating, FYC teachers respond to the content of students’ writing as well as to surface errors. Students should expect frequent written and oral response on the content of their writing from both teacher and peers. Classes rely heavily on a workshop format. Instruction emphasizes the connection between writing, reading, and critical thinking; students should give thoughtful, reasoned responses to the readings. Both reading and writing are the subjects of class discussions and workshops, and students are expected to be active participants of the classroom community. Learning from each other will be a large part of the classroom experience.
If you would like further information regarding the First-Year Composition Program, feel free to contact the program director, Dr. Deborah Coxwell Teague ([email protected]).
Course Goals
This course aims to help you improve your writing and research skills in all areas: discovering what you have to say, organizing your thoughts for a variety of audiences, and improving fluency and rhetorical sophistication. You will write and revise three papers, write sustained exploratory journals, devise your own purposes and structures for those papers, work directly with the audience of your peers to practice critical reading and response, and choose one Multi-modal final project—a radical revision of one of your three papers. Throughout the semester, you will learn to think and write critically about yourself, your community and the world, and you will engage with rhetoric in many different forms. You will explore social and cultural issues through documentary films, short stories, personal essays, feature articles, music, poetry, visual art and other mediums.
Course Outcomes
In ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 students work to develop their own thinking through writing. The First-Year Composition Program sees the aims–goals and objectives–of the courses as outcomes for students, and we share the position adopted by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) regarding “‘outcomes,’ or types of results, and not ‘standards,’ or precise levels of achievement . . . [that] we expect to find at the end of first-year composition” (from the WPA Outcomes Statement). The aims lie in several areas:
Rhetorical Knowledge
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Focus on a purpose
- Respond to the needs of different audiences
- Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
- Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
- Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality
- Understand how genres shape reading and writing
- Write in several genres
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
- Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
- Integrate their own ideas with those of others
- Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power
Processes
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
- Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading
- Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
- Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
- Learn to critique their own and others’ works
- Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part
- Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences
Knowledge of Conventions
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
- Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics
- Practice appropriate means of documenting their work
- Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Composing in Electronic Environments
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts
- Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources
- Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts.
Required Textbooks and Materials
- The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers, 2012 FSU Custom Edition by Bruce Ballenger (Pearson).
- Beyond Words: Cultural Texts for Reading and Writing, 2012 Custom Edition for FSU by Ruszkiewicz, Anderson and Friend (Pearson).
- The McGraw Hill Handbook, 2010 FSU edition by Maimon, Peritz and Yancey.
- We will be watching eight documentaries as a class this semester. I will try to have copies on reserve at Strozier, but there will only be one copy of each film if they are available. I recommend either group viewings that you organize, signing up for a Netflix account, or purchasing the films on Amazon or Ebay (used copies are cheap.) Some are also available on YouTube. However you decide to do it, you will be responsible for watching every film on time for class discussion. Plan ahead.
- Access to a Computer (the university provides a number of computer labs)
- $30 on your FSU card (for printing/copying in the library)
- That you check your email every day, preferably multiple times a day
Requirements of Course
All of the formal written assignments below must be turned in to me in order to pass the course.
- Three papers, edited and polished
- Multiple drafts and revisions of each of the three formal papers
- Ten journal comments
- Two individual conferences—scheduled by you and your instructor, in lieu of class time, to work one-on-one on a draft, writing strategy, etc.
- Making a presentation and leading class discussion on one assigned day
- Thoughtful, active, and responsible participation and citizenship, including discussion, preparation for class, in-class informal writing
First-Year Composition courses at FSU teach writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising. Writing is both personal and social, and students should learn how to write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Since writing is a process of making meaning as well as communicating, FYC teachers respond to the content of students’ writing as well as to surface errors. Students should expect frequent written and oral response on the content of their writing from both teacher and peers. Classes rely heavily on a workshop format. Instruction emphasizes the connection between writing, reading, and critical thinking; students should give thoughtful, reasoned responses to the readings. Both reading and writing are the subjects of class discussions and workshops, and students are expected to be active participants of the classroom community. Learning from each other will be a large part of the classroom experience.
If you would like further information regarding the First-Year Composition Program, feel free to contact the program director, Dr. Deborah Coxwell Teague ([email protected]).
Course Goals
This course aims to help you improve your writing and research skills in all areas: discovering what you have to say, organizing your thoughts for a variety of audiences, and improving fluency and rhetorical sophistication. You will write and revise three papers, write sustained exploratory journals, devise your own purposes and structures for those papers, work directly with the audience of your peers to practice critical reading and response, and choose one Multi-modal final project—a radical revision of one of your three papers. Throughout the semester, you will learn to think and write critically about yourself, your community and the world, and you will engage with rhetoric in many different forms. You will explore social and cultural issues through documentary films, short stories, personal essays, feature articles, music, poetry, visual art and other mediums.
Course Outcomes
In ENC 1101 and ENC 1102 students work to develop their own thinking through writing. The First-Year Composition Program sees the aims–goals and objectives–of the courses as outcomes for students, and we share the position adopted by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) regarding “‘outcomes,’ or types of results, and not ‘standards,’ or precise levels of achievement . . . [that] we expect to find at the end of first-year composition” (from the WPA Outcomes Statement). The aims lie in several areas:
Rhetorical Knowledge
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Focus on a purpose
- Respond to the needs of different audiences
- Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
- Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
- Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality
- Understand how genres shape reading and writing
- Write in several genres
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
- Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
- Integrate their own ideas with those of others
- Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power
Processes
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
- Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading
- Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
- Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
- Learn to critique their own and others’ works
- Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part
- Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences
Knowledge of Conventions
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
- Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics
- Practice appropriate means of documenting their work
- Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Composing in Electronic Environments
By the end of first-year composition, students should:
- Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts
- Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources
- Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts.
Required Textbooks and Materials
- The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers, 2012 FSU Custom Edition by Bruce Ballenger (Pearson).
- Beyond Words: Cultural Texts for Reading and Writing, 2012 Custom Edition for FSU by Ruszkiewicz, Anderson and Friend (Pearson).
- The McGraw Hill Handbook, 2010 FSU edition by Maimon, Peritz and Yancey.
- We will be watching eight documentaries as a class this semester. I will try to have copies on reserve at Strozier, but there will only be one copy of each film if they are available. I recommend either group viewings that you organize, signing up for a Netflix account, or purchasing the films on Amazon or Ebay (used copies are cheap.) Some are also available on YouTube. However you decide to do it, you will be responsible for watching every film on time for class discussion. Plan ahead.
- Access to a Computer (the university provides a number of computer labs)
- $30 on your FSU card (for printing/copying in the library)
- That you check your email every day, preferably multiple times a day
Requirements of Course
All of the formal written assignments below must be turned in to me in order to pass the course.
- Three papers, edited and polished
- Multiple drafts and revisions of each of the three formal papers
- Ten journal comments
- Two individual conferences—scheduled by you and your instructor, in lieu of class time, to work one-on-one on a draft, writing strategy, etc.
- Making a presentation and leading class discussion on one assigned day
- Thoughtful, active, and responsible participation and citizenship, including discussion, preparation for class, in-class informal writing