Catalog Description
This introductory, freshman-level course teaches students how to read perceptively and write coherently in college courses. Students learn to comprehend, critique, and respond to college readings by writing analytical essays ranging from single-source papers to evaluations of the claims and evidence in a number of readings. Typical assignments include single-source critiques and multiple-source syntheses. The course emphasizes thoughtful and responsible use of sources.
Course Requirements
By the end of Academic Writing I (WRTG 10600), students will craft 4-6 writing projects, approximately 16-25 double-spaced pages (a minimum of 4000 words) of final revised prose. All Ithaca College students, including transfer students and students with AP credit, are required to upload to Taskstream a minimum of one writing artifact that makes and supports a claim; locates him or herself in an ongoing conversation in academic or public discourse; and interacts with two or more sources. In addition to this one artifact, students will upload a reflection (e.g., literacy narrative, reflection letter, reflection analysis, questionnaire). Guidelines for the reflection are provided by the instructor of the course.
Student Learning Outcomes
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Rhetorical Thinking: Students should be able to situate themselves within a particular discourse community, use the affordances of a particular genre, and frame their writing according to the practices of relevant audiences, contexts, and purposes;
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Organization and Structure: Students should be able to introduce and frame an academic conversation, develop an effective idea path, a line of reasoning that provides coherence to help the intended audience track the ideas, claims, evidence, and justifications throughout a text;
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Source Engagement: Students should be able to locate, evaluate, and contextualize primary and/or secondary research materials into their writing and analyze, synthesize, and engage fairly and accurately with source material and their own ideas;
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Knowledge of Conventions: Students should be able to use a range of linguistic structures (e.g., grammar, punctuation, word choice) and/or non-linguistic structures (e.g., multimodal composition) to meet the expectations, including documentation conventions and citation practices, of particular discourse communities; and
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Reflection: Students should be able to describe their writing process and articulate the extent to which the product of their writing is a result of the process they engaged in, and/or identify their role as writers within a particular historical, socio-cultural context.