Course Introduction

If you don’t already feel comfortable with writing or referring to yourself as a writer, I hope you will after this class. Through reading, writing, critical thinking and collaboration, this class is designed to be a gateway for a more successful college experience. In class and through assignments, we will examine how rhetoric shapes our world view and how to challenge rhetorical ideas that may not reflect our place in the world. We will do this through analyzing effective methods used by savvy writers who grab our attention and attempt to sway our opinion. It is my goal for you, in addition to the college’s goals bulleted below, that you’ll feel confident, engaged and relaxed when approaching the many writing situations you’ll encounter as a student at City College and beyond.

Course Description 

First-Year Composition Mission Statement

First-year composition courses at CCNY 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 different purposes and audiences. Since writing is a process of making meaning and communicating, FYC teachers respond mainly to the content of students’ writing as well as to recurring surface errors. Students should expect frequent written and oral responses on the content of their writing from their teachers 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 in the classroom community. Learning from each other will be a large part of the classroom experience.

Course Learning Outcomes 

• Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.
• Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.
• Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.
• Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
• Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.
• Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.
• Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.
• Practice systematic application of citation conventions.

 

Required Text

This is a Zero Textbook Cost course. There are links to reading assignments that live online, and I have uploaded assigned articles in portable document format (.pdf).