English 101 Objectives

Students in English 101 will learn to:

1. Use writing to think, learn, and communicate.
2. Move through the processes of writing, including brainstorming, drafting, revising and editing.
3. Write in a variety of modes and genres.
4. Develop ideas and support points with details and relevant examples.
5. Organize ideas and content.
6. Recognize and write in various rhetorical contexts, with particular attention to audience, purpose, and the rhetorical conventions of different kinds of writing.
7. Develop, identify, and clarify a thesis statement when appropriate (not all kinds of writing require thesis statements).
8. Read and think critically about a variety of texts, and to write in relation to those texts.
9. Articulate, develop, and sustain an argument.
10. Respond to and critique their own papers and those of their peers.
11. Edit papers for grammar and usage.
12. Use computer and internet technology (word processing, web research, and e-mail) for writing, research, and critical thinking.
13. Use methods of library and internet research.
14. Evaluate web and library sources.
15. Cite sources, paraphrase, and use quotations.
16. Avoid plagiarism.

To obtain these objectives, students in English 101 will:

1. Write and revise five formal essays through the course of the semester. Included in these five may be a sustained meta-cognitive (or reflective) essay submitted by itself or with a portfolio of writing at the end of the semester (see third item below).
2. Write approximately five pages per week. These five pages will include drafts of the five required formal essays and other kinds of formal or informal writing, such as: responses to reading; responses to classmates' essays; brainstorming and invention exercises; writing that reflects on the students' learning and composing; in-class exercises designed to give students practice in various rhetorical skills; writing in response to instructor prompts, journal entries, etc. (Not all writing will necessarily be collected and graded by the instructor).
3. Reflect upon and analyze their own writing and their progress as writers, either at intervals throughout the semester, or in a final essay submitted at the end of the semester that analyzes and traces students' development as writers and researchers (see first item above).
4. Meet regularly in the computer facilities to write, research, and respond to each others writing.
read, discuss, and write about assigned essays and other texts.
5. Meet with their instructors in individual conferences at least twice a semester to discuss their writing.
6. Move beyond the five-paragraph essay model they may have used in high school; write longer formal essays that fully develop and support their ideas and arguments.