College Writing (ENGLWRIT 112)

Curriculum and Syllabus

The goal of College Writing is to help students develop their writing abilities–both for university writing assignments and for writing effectively in their lives. In trying to realize this goal, we do not believe it would be possible or fruitful to try to give students practice writing in the multiple genres they will encounter in specific situations in college and beyond: e.g., a history term paper, an engineering lab report, a job application, or a résumé. These are the province of the Junior Year Writing Program.

Rather than structuring by essay type, then, College Writing is organized around units that are meant to build upon one another. Each unit grows gradually more complex in terms of context, audience, and source material drawn upon, and further offers different options for communication and genre. In some cases the genre requirements are more restrictive because of the intended goal, but in each the student is given a wide range of flexibility in terms of their purpose for writing and thus the decisions they might make about content, form, organization, and style. Each teacher of a given section may assign a slightly different essay for each unit, but all sections seek to meet the same goals in each unit. Finally, the curriculum also requires that students engage in a multiple draft process and read/respond to each others ’ work for each paper assigned.