English Composition I

English Composition I offers students the opportunity to gain the rhetorical foundations that prepare them for the demands of academic and professional writing. In this course, students will learn and practice the strategies and processes essential to successful writing. Successful writing encompasses comprehension, instruction, persuasion, entertainment, problem-resolution, evaluation, investigation, explanation and refutation – all various ends at which writing is aimed. This course will ensure students are properly prepared for academic communication and also understand how to use writing for both professional and personal purposes. Class presentation and reading materials will address the function of writing and the composing processes in a variety of contexts, focusing on the reader/audience and altering style and diction depending on the audience. Students will learn to critically and constructively evaluate their own work as well as others and also learn to properly apply constructive criticism to improve the overall quality of their own work.

This course develops written communication skills with an emphasis on understanding the writing process, analyzing readings, and practicing writing for personal and professional applications. Students will have the opportunity to really break down the writing process and see how it is useful in constructing and finally writing their own work. Students will discover various styles and sentence structures that can alter the meaning and impact of their writing and ensure they have the tools necessary to convey the meaning they intend, communicate their thoughts effectively and clearly and ensure their writing is presented professionally in terms of grammar, spelling and other issues that can otherwise inhibit successful writing.

Upon completion of the course, the student will be able to:

• Apply the steps of the writing process
• Identify essay components
• Write effective and grammatically correct paragraphs
• Analyze the role of reading and writing in your academic and professional career
• Write effective and grammatically correct essays
• Apply strategies to achieve clarity and effective style in writing
• Differentiate between the writing pattern types
• Identify sentence types, parts of a sentence, and patterns
• Discriminate between proper and improper use of punctuation in writing
• Apply the proper use of punctuation in writing
• Apply the proper use of spelling in writing
• Examine strategies and guidelines for writing an effective research paper
• Write an effective and grammatically correct research paper