Effective: 2022-03-31

Course Description

The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.

General Course Purpose

ENG 112 further develops students' ability to write in academic and professional contexts. Students will apply critical thinking and reading techniques, demonstrate knowledge of rhetorical strategies, and conduct independent research to produce a range of academic and multimodal texts that effectively analyze, synthesize, and argue, culminating in a fully documented research paper.

Course Prerequisites/Corequisites

Prerequisite: ENG 111

Course Objectives

• Writing Processes: Successful writers use multiple composing processes to conceptualize, develop, and finalize projects. Composing processes are both recursive and flexible, adapted to different contexts and occasions to meet purpose and audience.
• Demonstrate the ability to apply a recursive writing process to create a variety of academic texts, including at least one fully documented, original research paper, producing a total of at least 4500-6000 words (approximately 15-20 pages) of polished, graded writing.
• Independently apply the writing process, including planning, drafting, revising, editing, reflecting, and sharing compositions.
• Examine and analyze their experiences and readings as sources of material for writing and engage with complex ideas, which they incorporate in well-structured prose that considers the purpose, audience, and genre
• Effectively apply organizational strategies to open and close their texts and to move the reader between and within ideas, paragraphs, and sentences.
• Reflect on the rhetorical situation of their compositions and revise to improve.
• Revise and edit to improve clarity and correctness of writing.
• Rhetorical Knowledge and Application: Rhetorical knowledge is the ability to analyze writing, reading, and speaking occasions and make strategic choices to navigate the rhetorical situation. Rhetorical knowledge includes the ability to demonstrate command of purpose, audience, and context.
• Apply rhetorical principles (i.e. purpose, audience, stance, genre, context) in order to improve the quality of the texts they create.
• Apply their rhetorical knowledge (e.g. audience, purpose, context, genre, and design) to reading texts in a variety of genres and media (e.g. print and digital).
• Apply knowledge of rhetorical context to guide their choices of evidence, language, organization, and rhetorical and persuasive strategies in texts they create.
• Demonstrate their understanding of the impact of genre, audience, context, and media on the stance, tone, design, and content of the texts they compose.
• Critical Thinking and Argumentation: Critical thinking refers to the ability to investigate ideas and solve problems through analyzing, interpreting and evaluating information, situations, and texts. Critical reading is the practice of making connections between and among texts to develop complexity and discern implications of ideas.
• Analyze and investigate ideas from multiple perspectives and to apply sound reasoning to arguments, their own and others'.
• Develop and apply strategies for critical thinking, reading, and writing processes, including inductive and deductive reasoning.
• Read, comprehend, summarize/paraphrase, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate college-level, cultural texts in a variety of genres.
• Examine subjects from multiple perspectives and recognize their own biases to formulate and express their own perspective.
• Recognize, gather, and test factual and inferential evidence and avoid logical fallacies in their own writing.
• Identify different parts of an argument including concession, counter argument/refutation, and confirmation.
• Research and Information Literacy: Research is the process of promoting inquiry by asking questions, finding appropriate resources, evaluating their value, incorporating them successfully into a text, and developing an understanding of documentation to produce complex, effective texts grounded in evidence. Information literacy encompasses the know-how to use print and digital media to find, select, evaluate, and incorporate sources relevant to personal, scholarly, and professional pursuits.
• Engage independently in extended, formal research processes.
• Apply research processes to select a topic, develop effective research questions, identify relevant information, and locate sources, using print and digital media/networks.
• Discern between scholarly and popular sources and evaluate their merit and reliability.
• Select sources appropriate to rhetorical situation, including genre, purpose, audience, and context.
• Synthesize and incorporate information and ideas from sources into compositions using correct summary, paraphrase, and direct quotation, documenting sources to avoid plagiarism and in order to support analytical and/or argumentative purposes.
• Demonstrate knowledge of intellectual property and fair use in applying correct documentation of sources using instructor-specified formats and style guides (e.g. MLA, APA).
• Knowledge of Discourse Conventions: Conventions are the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres; they govern such concepts as mechanics, usage, spelling, and citation practices. Writing in academic and professional contexts demands adherence to various conventions of discourse communities that shape readers' and writers' perceptions of correctness and appropriateness.
• Implement conventions of academic discourse to produce texts with effective approaches, style, and formats
• Demonstrate understanding that conventions differ across communities, disciplines, and genres.
• Use Edited American English in texts they compose.
• Demonstrate contextually appropriate usage and linguistic structures (e.g. syntax, mechanics) in texts they compose.
• Select and apply conventions, including multimodal techniques/strategies, to choices for design, style, structure, paragraphing, tone, diction, and vocabulary.
• Use correct documentation and design systematically in their own work using instructor-specified formats and style guides (e.g. MLA, APA).

Major Topics to be Included

• Writing Processes
• Rhetorical Knowledge and Application
• Critical Thinking and Argumentation
• Research and Information Literacy
• Knowledge of Discourse Conventions