English N60 Syllabus

Course Syllabus: English N60 - Spring 2018

Meet Your Instructor:  Bruce Swanlund 

Course Description: 

Regardless of your writing proficiency or your interest in composition, English N60 can be a very enjoyable course. English N60 is designed to help you write effectively and to read and think more critically. This means students will be able to read critically for literal meaning and identify the main idea of a reading and the author’s writing strategies. To do this, the class will emphasize the sentence, the writing process, the summary, the paragraph, and introduce you to the essay.

Students will use the writing process to write, in MLA format, well-organized, supported paragraphs or short essays using appropriately chosen details, sentence variety, and sufficiently correct grammar and punctuation. Sentence structure and paragraph writing including reading-based modeling and integrated study skills.

Because this course is based on the premise that reading, writing, and thinking are inseparable activities, the paragraphs will require that you respond to a variety of texts and to class discussion of these texts. Assignments will emphasize the skills and concepts central to expository writing: rhetoric, analysis, inference, critique, and argumentation, among others. This course will also emphasize the development of strong prewriting, revision, and editing skills

This course will introduce you to the practice of composition. Essentially, that means developing the skills you will need as a student to write coherently. You will discover ideas through prewriting, draft those ideas into a cohesive whole, and revise that draft into a final, polished work. You will also learn to give and receive feedback on written work. We will discuss the rudiments of style and how to proofread and edit your work for clarity and correctness.    

Throughout the course, you will also read published essays in order to understand how professional writers construct their writing. You will participate in classroom activities that will help you learn to think analytically about diverse subjects, including the writing process, culture, media, and the society in which we live.

Textbook Information:  

• Basic Grammar and Usage 8^th by Penelope Choy & Dorothy Clark. WAD Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-428211-55-1.

• Sterling Stories 2^nd by Yvonne Sisko. Allyn Publishing.

ISBN 978-0-205874-12-5.

Course Learning Objectives: 

The effects of communication exist everywhere in our society; it is our goal to become familiar with rules of written communication and to learn how to access and analyze our own ideas, as well as demonstrate those skills through a formal use of the English language. This means that when we shape our ideas for an audience, we need to find a common, or acceptable, means of representing those ideas in a formal academic fashion.

Ideally, in addition to learning how to organize, compose, and revise a college essay, students will learn how to read, write, speak more professionally as well as think more critically.

By its very nature, writing involves both individual and collaborative activity. Even when a piece of writing has only one author, that author employs a language system that is shared by others and draws upon ideas and values that are not his or hers alone. Indeed, one of the most important parts of becoming a writer within the academic community is learning how to balance the obligations of individuality and collaboration.

This means, as a college writer, you are expected to use writing to develop and assert your own ideas and beliefs – to think for yourself. But at the same time you are expected to engage with the thinking of others: to place your own writing within the context of academic discourse by using and criticizing arguments from that discourse. You must learn to think about your audience.

Student Learning Objectives: 

• Students will be able to read critically for literal meaning and identify the main idea of a reading and the author’s writing strategies.
• Students will use the writing process to write, in proper MLA format, well-organized, supported paragraphs or short essays using appropriately chosen details, sentence variety, and sufficiently correct grammar and punctuation.