WR 121Z Composition 1

1. Apply rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts.
2. Engage texts critically, ethically, and strategically to support writing goals.
3. Develop flexible composing, revising, and editing strategies for a variety of purposes, audiences, writing situations, and genres.
4. Reflect on knowledge and skills developed in this course and their potential applications in other writing contexts.

Statewide General Education Outcomes

1. Read actively, think critically, and write purposefully and capably for academic and, in some cases, professional audiences.
2. Locate, evaluate, and ethically utilize information to communicate effectively.

• Rhetorical Situation: genres, modalities, purposes, audiences, structures, conventions, content
• Discourse, rhetorical analysis, thesis, thesis statement, reader’s knowledge (assumptions, beliefs, values, attitudes, needs)
• Voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, structure, language, connotation
• Introduce credibility, logic, fallacies, evidence, reasons
• Introduce multimodal rhetorical concepts

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

• Reading Strategies
  • Demonstrate and explain strategies for reading that go beyond passively taking in what a text says and include an active effort to understand how and why it says it
• Prewriting, Textual Analysis, Reviewing, Revision
  • Using inquiry and critical reading as part of composing processes, in prewriting (learning about a topic), textual analysis, and in reviewing for revision
  • Employment of  basic composing structures, strategies, and tools and learn and practice elements of formal argumentation 
  • Introduction to how these structures, strategies, and elements of argument apply to different modalities 
• Research Strategies
  • Formulating questions based on information gaps or on reexamination of existing, possibly conflicting, information
  • Determining appropriate scope of investigation
  • Identifying interested parties, such as scholars, organizations, governments, and industries, who might produce information about a topic and then determine how to access that information 
• Engagement with class community and discourse communities of assigned material

Processes

• Composition process
  • Demonstrate understanding that composing and research processes are recursive and varied.
  • Choose and deploy different composing and research processes appropriate for different genres and modalities.
• Research Process
  • Generate and modify questions to guide research
  • Generate and modify search terms and recognize the impact of search terms on search results       
  • Use preliminary research to test and modify research topic
  • Practice using search techniques such as Boolean operators, phrase searching, and other useful search limiters
  • Choose more than one appropriate information finding tool including but not limited to library databases
  • Find, read, and evaluate sources
  • Differentiate between types of sources and the tools used to find them
  • Learn about at least two documentation styles while consistently formatting documents and following citation rules in either MLA or APA. The primary citation style in each course is determined by the instructor. 
  • Practice effective and consistent formatting and attribution for public genres and non-text-based compositions
• Inquiry
  • Develop and practice habits of mind that lead one to question assumptions/opinions, explore alternative/various perspectives, anticipate opposing arguments/ideas, compare experiences. 
  • Practice critical thinking that welcomes and seeks complexity both in and out of the classroom.  Resist binary thinking. 
• Genre, Modality, and Associated Conventions
  • Choose and utilize different technologies and modalities in composing to fulfill varied purposes and reach different audiences that may differ by genre. 
• Purpose, Audience, Technology, and Associated Conventions
  • Privacy
  • Access and audience
  • Distribution
  • User experience
• Draft Workshops and Feedback
  • Participate in draft workshops as a reviewer of other work and as a recipient of feedback.  
• Revision
  • Thoughtfully consider and apply peer and instructor feedback throughout the revision process.

Knowledge of Conventions

• Levels of Formality
  • Gauging different levels of formality of outside sources 
  • Employing voice, style, and tone choices appropriate to intended purpose
• Organization, Thesis, and Development
  • Paragraphing
  • Review of standard essay structure
  • Introduction to new compositional structures
  • Approaches to introductions, bodies, and conclusions 
• Unity and coherence: transitions and connections to thesis statement
• Thesis statements and topic sentences that establish content boundaries 
• Source Integration
  • Quoting, summarizing, paraphrasing, and use of attribution/signal phrase
  • Give credit to the authors of ideas through proper attribution and citation; use information ethically 
  • Documentation styles: MLA and/or APA

Metacognition and Transfer

• Consider and record how instruction and practice with composition, research, and participation in collaborative processes generate new ideas and transform existing understandings about composition and multiliteracy.
• Trace changes in one’s composing practices throughout the term addressing at least one aspect from each of the other four outcome areas.
• Explain how knowledge gained in WR 121 will help one succeed in both WR 122 or WR 227 and one other future college course. 
• Describe how to apply new insights about composing and research processes in future contexts involving one’s work, civic, and private lives. 
• Analyze how modal shifts changed one’s understanding of topics, arguments, and positions within at least one of the discourse communities (work, civic, personal) in which the text will circulate