English 101: First-Year Composition--HYBRID Glendale Community ...

Course Description: Emphasis on rhetoric and composition with a focus on expository writing
and understanding writing as a process. Establishing effective college-level writing strategies
through four or more writing projects comprising at least 3,000 words in total.
Prerequisites: Appropriate English placement test score or grade of C or better in ENG091/
ESL097.
Course Competencies:
1. Analyze specific rhetorical contexts, including circumstance, purpose, topic, audience,
and writer, as well as the writing’s ethical, political, and cultural implications.
2. Organize writing to support a central idea through unity, coherence, and logical
development appropriate to a specific writing context.
3. Use appropriate conventions in writing, including consistent voice, tone, diction,
grammar, and mechanics.
4. Summarize, paraphrase, and quote from sources to maintain academic integrity and to
develop and support one’s own ideas.
5. Use feedback obtained through peer review, instructor comments, and/or other sources to
revise writing.
6. Assess one’s own writing strengths and identify strategies for improvement through
instructor conference, portfolio review, written evaluation, and/or other methods.
7. Generate, format, and edit writing using appropriate technologies.
In order to meet these competencies, you should be prepared to write. We will be exploring
how to use writing as a tool for thinking and discovering. Therefore, I will be looking at what
you write on the way to completed papers along with the finished product. This course will also
require you to do a lot of reading, because writing well is connected to reading. We will talk
about the writing process and explore techniques for getting started, finding topics, drafting,
researching, organizing, revising, responding to other writers’ work in progress, and editing.
This course will not only help you become a more proficient writer, it will also enable you
to develop your critical reading and analytical skills. We will practice different methods of
responding to texts, using writing as a means for deepening comprehension. Be prepared to
mark in your book (you bought it—it is yours—so you can write in it without consequence).
Public Work: This semester, you will complete three (3) major writing projects, plus informal
writing assignments, in-class and online work, and a blog. Please keep in mind that all of your
writing will be considered ‘public.’ Thus, you will share your work, including drafts, with
classmates and the instructor who will provide helpful feedback. For this reason, it will be
important for you to choose topics that you are comfortable sharing with others.
The Public Nature of Class Writing and Discussions: This class relies not only on writing
but on discussion as well. Part of becoming a good writer is learning to appreciate the ideas
and criticisms of others. In this class, our purpose is to come together as a community of
writers. Avoid writing about things that you may not be prepared to subject to public scrutiny
or that you feel so strongly about that you are unwilling to listen to perspectives other than your
own. This does not mean that you are not entitled to an opinion, but that you adopt positions
responsibly and contemplate the possible effect on others. Please be aware that some course
content may be considered sensitive; please be prepared to discuss all topics that arise with open-
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