Composition 1 (ENGL 10103)

In this course, students learn to research, draft, and revise essays and arguments. To do this effectively, we discuss with students topics and strategies, including understanding audience, knowing the purpose of their writing, and using a variety of rhetorical stances and strategies. Students will also refine their writing skills by developing their knowledge of writing approaches and processes through exercises that work on invention, drafting, revision, and reflection.

Students complete four major assignments to develop their skills. First, in the summary assignment, students learn to critically read, identify, and capture another writer’s arguments. Following that, by performing a rhetorical analysis, students break down how a writer uses different rhetorical tools to effectively communicate an argument to their intended audience. Lastly, students create their own researched discussion of a topic in a synthesis paper, where they conduct research that explores what other writers have already argued. Finally, students curate their work – research, notes, drafts, revisions, etc. – to create a portfolio.

Composition 1 is followed by either Composition 2 or Technical Composition 2.

Course Materials

Individual Assignment Sheets
Thinking Rhetorically about Audiences, Cultures, and Experiences

Writers write for audiences, and those audiences are almost never made up of people who think in the exact same ways that they do. Part of being an effective writer is understanding who your audience is and what their expectations are. Therefore, we teach students to write write in a range of genres and for a number of different audiences. To help them learn how to do so effectively, we read and engage with texts written by authors with a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences.

We begin each major assignment with a reading that allows us to practice one or more of the skills we focus on in this course while also learning about the cultures and experiences of the author. For each of these texts, we ask students to consider how the writer’s own experiences and their audiences’ expectations shape the decisions they make as writers. These texts will center cultural perspectives that help students better understand how all writing is grounded in lived experiences of the cultures we all come from and how those things impact our ability to communicate with our readers.

Library Guides & Tutorials

Sample Student Papers

Assignment #1 Summary samples
Assignment #2 Rhetorical Analysis samples
Assignment #3 Synthesis samples
Assignment #4 Final Portfolio samples