ENG 100: Introduction to College Writing

ENG 100 Students, in this course you will discuss writing as a process.  And you may ask, what does this statement mean?  The truth is, no one just sits down and instantly produces a perfect piece of writing.  There are many steps a writer goes through when producing a text, including pre-writing (or gathering and organizing ideas and thoughts), writing, revising and editing, and we will discuss these steps in this course. By breaking down these steps, hopefully, the writing process will seem less difficult. In discovering writing as a process, you will discover the reading and writing strategies and processes that work best for you. The emphasis here is on you and your attention to the topics. You will not survive in this course if you come to class unprepared, if you do not revise your writing, if you do not ask questions, if you do not solicit help from your instructor and peers, if you wait until the last minute to draft an essay or build a portfolio. You probably will succeed if you become someone who connects reading and writing to your life, to your experiences, and who reflects on the impact of these connections. Becoming a critical and thoughtful writer is essential for success in college and for life after college.

 The goals of ENG 100 are to help you learn how to:

• Shape the academic paper with introduction, focused body paragraphs and conclusion
• State a clear, insightful thesis and strong topic sentences
• Reflect meaningfully on your own experiences and offer your personal experience as evidence in support of your thesis
• Critically read and understand written (and other) texts
• Connect your experiences and opinions to others’ (written texts, interviews, etc.) and blend/integrate those into your text-based essays/papers
• Grapple with and reflect upon the significance of your topic and claim
• Gain a greater awareness of the present (current events, social and political issues, etc.) through an understanding and reading of past events, biographies and historical periods
• Develop a unique voice, style and tone
• Introduce, explain and cite borrowed information
• Control conventions of correctness (punctuation, spelling, sentence construction)

This course will not only help you to become a successful student but also a successful citizen of the larger world.  Text-based writing, or academic writing, is at the heart of all college-level work; you will find this type of writing in most of your college courses and across fields and disciplines.  As a result, this course focuses on the inextricable link between reading and writing.  You will respond to your readings in various ways; you will form personal responses, summarize, analyze and evaluate.  You will discover the more you read, the better writer you will become.  You will learn to make both personal and public/social connections to what you read in order to better understand yourself and the world around you.  Through reading and writing assignments, you will be introduced to new voices and viewpoints and learn how to integrate them into your own.  You will discover the power of language and the impact not only of others’ stories but the impact of your own stories.  Writing can be cathartic for you and constructive for your audience. Critical thinking, reading and writing dominate the world outside of college as well.  The ever-changing and challenging workplace requires you to effectively solve problems and respond to a multitude of situations and information.  The digital world, where you are relentlessly bombarded with information in various modes and media, requires you to analyze and evaluate that information in order to make informed decisions about your life and the lives of those who matter most to you.  At the end of this semester, you will not only have grown as a student and be prepared for the challenges in your college courses, but you will have grown as an individual.  The person who you are right now, on the first day of class, will be different from the person who you are on the last day of class.  Through critical thinking, discovery, questioning, writing and reflection, you will discover the same things that past students have discovered:  during your first semesters in college you are discovering yourself, realizing you are part of many communities, including this academic community, and defining yourself as an individual, student, scholar and citizen.

Sample Syllabus

• Jump drive/flash drive
• Portfolio folders
• Computer and printer/computer and printer access
• Supplemental book (refer to your syllabus and the campus bookstore for specific instructor’s requirement)

For textbook information and purchasing, go to:
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