Improve your writing ability in this introductory course by learning how to read actively and apply the core components of effective writing.
Effective writing skills are necessary for success in college and in your future career. This course is designed to improve your writing ability. Pre-College English coursework focuses on basic writing skills, emphasizing four keys to good writing: unity, support, coherence, and sentence-level skills. You will also learn about the importance of writing and some considerations to keep in mind when approaching a writing task.
In Unit 1, you will learn why writing is important and how it differs from speech. You will learn how to identify purpose and audience and some important features of effective writing, including the four keys to good writing. You will also learn about prewriting strategies that can help you plan out a writing task. Unit 2 will go into greater depth about the first two keys of good writing: unity and support. You will learn how to write an effective topic sentence and support it with evidence. You will also learn about anticipating reader questions and using specific detail and description to make your writing come to life. Unit 3 will focus on the third key to good writing: coherence. You will learn about how to organize and connect ideas in ways that are logical and easy for readers to follow. In Unit 4, you will learn about the fourth key to good writing: sentence-level skills. This will include learning about sentence structure and avoiding common errors, punctuation, consistency, and word choice. In Unit 5, you will learn how to write a multi-paragraph essay. This will include learning how to write effective introductions and conclusions, write a thesis statement, and apply the keys to good writing on a larger scale.
You should keep a writing notebook (or have a designated place to save your work on your computer) and use it throughout the course to write your responses to prompts and practice activities. This course will help prepare you for ENGL001: English Composition I. This course assumes you have a strong command of the English language. If you do not, you should consider taking our English as a Second Language (ESL) courses first.
- Unit 1: The Importance of Writing and Getting Started
- Unit 2: Unity and Support
- Unit 3: Coherence
- Unit 4: Using Sentence-Level Skills to Proofread and Polish a Piece of Writing
- Unit 5: Writing a Multi-Paragraph Piece of Writing
- Explain the many purposes and value of writing;
- Identify key features of effective writing;
- Consider audience when writing;
- Plan and compose effective paragraphs and multi-paragraph essays;
- Demonstrate how to support ideas with evidence and specific details;
- Describe how to organize and show relationships between ideas; and
- Apply sentence level skills such as correct sentence structure, word choice, and punctuation to improve a piece of writing.
Learn how to write clear, grammatically-sound expository and persuasive prose pieces in this introductory English composition course.
No matter what career you pursue, you must be able to communicate effectively and clearly if you want to be successful. This course will enhance your ability to do so by sharpening your critical thinking and writing skills. We will begin with a unit designed to change the way that you think about writing. First, you will learn to think of writing not as a solitary act but as a conversation between yourself and an audience. In this light, writing becomes a dynamic, interactive, and creative practice rather than a rote one. You will also begin to value writing as a process – an admittedly difficult one – rather than a product. You will come to see that writing is an act of discovery rather than a recitation of prefabricated ideas. Because this course is designed specifically for students in a university setting, the second unit will focus on academic writing. We will learn how to respond to an assignment or test question by using the "PWR-Writing" or "Power-Writing" Method (PWR: prewrite, write, revise) while learning the ins and outs of building a solid thesis and supporting that thesis with evidence. The remaining units will focus on good writing practices, from style to proper citation.
- Unit 1: What is College-Level Writing?
- Unit 2: What Makes Academic Writing Unique?
- Unit 3: How Do I Use Sources?
- Unit 4: Finishing Touches
- Select the appropriate technical communications style for a given audience;
- Describe communication goals to readers in the workplace;
- Apply strategies for writing clear English;
- Utilize effective page layout and design;
- Explain how visuals aid understanding;
- Integrate effective planning and revision into technical communications; and
- Differentiate among models for instruction, description, definition, and summary.
Learn basic research concepts and techniques by using them to conduct academic research and develop effective writing processes.
The ability to research topics and incorporate information from your sources into your work is an important skill both in college and on the job. This course will reinforce the concepts you practiced in ENGL001 by introducing you to basic research concepts and techniques. It will also give you a chance to put these new concepts and techniques to work as you develop a final research paper. We will begin by looking at how to build research into an effective writing process. First, you will learn to think of researching not as a requirement for getting a good grade on a paper but as a valuable tool that can make your writing more powerful and convincing. You will learn how to build research into your writing process so that you can add persuasive power to your finished work. Through the rigorous practice of the fundamental techniques, you will come to see that, like writing itself, research is an act of discovery rather than a search for prefabricated ideas. The intent of this course is to teach you how to prepare research for any discipline or subject. We will carefully explore and practice general research techniques and processes that you should apply to many academic disciplines and in your job.
In Unit 1, you will select a topic that intrigues you, conduct preliminary research to focus your topic, and develop a thesis statement and a set of questions to help guide the remainder of your research. In Unit 2, you will learn strategies for conducting your research and taking careful notes. We will look carefully at researching on the Internet, but we will also make a point of honing the skills necessary to research topics in a physical library. We will explore some of the techniques that scholars use to record and organize the information that they plan to include in their work, so you can make the most of your resources when you start to write. By the end of the unit, you will have completed detailed notes for your own research project. In Unit 3, you will learn how to evaluate and understand the sources you located in the previous units. You will learn why it is important to put significant effort into reading and evaluating Internet sources, and how to identify and what you need to consider when you use primary and secondary sources. You will also get plenty of practice in determining how and when to use sources to help make your point. By the end of this unit, you will start to understand how to determine whether any source is authoritative, accurate, and current. You will also have an annotated bibliography that will guide you through the writing process. In Unit 4, you will develop your argument and create a detailed outline for your research paper. We will take some time to reinforce and expand upon the rhetorical concepts we introduced in Composition I. Like the prerequisite course, this unit focuses on putting your research to work to strengthen your academic writing. We will study how to use the results of your research and analysis to bolster written arguments and support rhetorical strategies. Unit 5 focuses on how to use style standards and citation methodology correctly. This unit will help you clearly understand why it is important to document and cite your sources and do so consistently and correctly. We will closely examine the issue of plagiarism, noting the situations that can cause writers to misuse source materials, either consciously or accidentally. After completing this unit, you will write a complete draft of your research paper. Unit 6 prepares you for revising and polishing your paper. We will provide you with detailed editorial exercises focusing on specific elements of sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, and mechanics, which will help you achieve your goal of writing clear, grammatically sound expository and persuasive prose. We will use the Modern Language Association (MLA) standards for citation and formatting.
- Unit 1: Research and the Writing Process
- Unit 2: Researching: How, What, When, Where, and Why
- Unit 3: Reviewing and Analyzing Your Sources
- Unit 4: Putting Your Source Material to Work
- Unit 5: Writing Your Research Paper and Acknowledging Your Sources
- Unit 6: Polishing Your Research Paper
- Define the relationship between research techniques and academic work in various disciplines;
- Refine research within a writing process, identifying and using rhetorical strategies as well as practicing critical thinking and reading;
- Identify the various kinds of research used to produce written work in academic disciplines;
- Identify and use tools for conducting Internet-based and library research;
- Demonstrate critical and analytical thinking in locating, evaluating, and using research;
- Use quotes, paraphrases, and summaries accurately and appropriately to strengthen written arguments and to avoid plagiarism;
- Demonstrate skills in source summarization and in synthesis skills;
- Cite and document information sources in accordance with MLA style requirements;
- Use information from resources as structural elements in an academic paper; and
- Review and practice the grammatical and rhetorical skills necessary for successful writing.
Get a detailed introduction to technical writing in a workplace context. Topics include audience analysis, memo writing and internal communications, form letters, presentations and the use of visuals, process documentation, proposals, and writing for the internet.
In every career, you must be able to communicate effectively and clearly if you want to be successful. This course will provide you with a background in the practical, technical writing skills necessary for today's workplace. This course covers internal workplace communications, external business-to-business and business-to-consumer writing skills, presentations and how to use visuals effectively, writing clear instructions and process documents, and using social media effectively. Because the goal of this course is to improve your ability to write clear, comprehensible examples of technical writing, most subunits include short writing activities that will give you hands-on experience in many different writing tasks. Each unit also includes a series of writing self-assessments that will allow you to evaluate your own writing based on specific criteria and provide examples and commentary on how to write successfully. This practical focus on specific writing skills will help you learn the writing skills you will need in the workplace. By the end of the course, you will feel comfortable tackling a wide variety of workplace communications.
- Unit 1: Audience Analysis
- Unit 2: Internal Communications: Writing Memos and Emails
- Unit 3: External Communications: Formal Letters
- Unit 4: Using Visuals to Convey Information
- Unit 5: Process Documentation
- Unit 6: Writing Proposals
- Unit 7: Communicating on the Internet
- Select the appropriate technical communications style for a given audience;
- Describe communication goals to readers in the workplace;
- Apply strategies for writing clear English;
- Utilize effective page layout and design;
- Explain how visuals aid understanding;
- Integrate effective planning and revision into technical communications; and
- Differentiate among models for instruction, description, definition, and summary.
Explore American literature published between the 1830s and 1860s, focusing on the socio-cultural contexts that led to the dramatic outburst of literary creativity in this era.
As most famously defined by F. O. Matthiessen in his groundbreaking book, The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941), the term "American Renaissance" demarcates a period of tremendous literary activity between the 1830s and 1860s that marked the cultivation, for the first time, of a distinctively American literature. For Matthiessen and many other critics, its key figures – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville – sought to define and explore a new American identity, carving out inventive modes of expression and self-identification. In the years since Matthiessen's important work and especially in the past several decades, this characterization of the literary period has been challenged on several fronts, especially for overstating the innovations of these few authors; for the exclusion of women, people of color, and more popular authors from its account of the United States during a period of social and cultural upheaval and transition; and for its acceptance of the myth of American exceptionalism or superiority.
We begin this course by looking at context: What was it in American culture and society that led to the dramatic outburst of literary creativity in this era? Each unit starts with a broad overview of the literary period and different ways of framing it before moving on to examine the economic, political, and social changes that were transforming the United States and making a profound impact on the literary production of the era: industrialization and urbanization, the development of mass politics, the debate over slavery, and Western expansion. Following that context, you will explore some of the period's most famous works, approaching them by genre category and important literary contributions (Units 2–4). Because of the varied ways that authors in this course invoke literary tropes and techniques like myth, symbolism, imagery, simile, metaphor, narrative structure, allusions, apostrophe, and others in their works, what we find during this period is indeed an American Renaissance of texts that respond to societal changes and upheavals. Overall, we attempt to define the emerging American identity represented in this literature and think about the larger implications of this robust textual output (Units 5–7).
- Unit 1: The American Renaissance in Context
- Unit 2: Continuity and Change in Poetic Form
- Unit 3: The Invention of the Short Story
- Unit 4: The Development of the Novel and its Various Forms
- Unit 5: Nature and Technology: Creating and Challenging American Identity
- Unit 6: The Question of Women's Place in Society
- Unit 7: The Slavery Controversy and Abolitionist Literature
- Discriminate among the key economic, technological, educational, social, cultural, and religious transformations underpinning the American Renaissance;
- Define the transformations in American Protestantism exemplified by the Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism;
- List the key tenets of Transcendentalism and relate them to Romanticism more broadly and to social and cultural developments in the antebellum United States;
- Analyze Emerson's place in defining Transcendentalism and his key differences from other Transcendentalists like Thoreau, Fuller, and Sophia and George Ripley;
- Delineate competing conceptualizations of poetry and its construction and purpose, with particular attention to Poe, Emerson, and Whitman;
- Examine Dickinson's place as a woman in the nineteenth century and define the formal innovations and particular content of her poetic works in light of this context;
- Describe the emergence of the short story, the Gothic, and crime fiction as forms, with reference to specific stories by Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville;
- Distinguish among forms of the novel, with reference to specific works by Hawthorne, Lippard and Thompson, and Fern;
- Elucidate the ways that writers such as Melville, Brownson, Davis, and Thoreau saw industrialization and capitalism as a threat to US society;
- Develop the relationship between Thoreau's interest in nature and his political commitments and compare and contrast his thinking with Emerson and other transcendentalists;
- Articulate the conventional gender roles of women during this time and think about how those roles were beginning to change because of the ways in which women fought for equality in both the public and private spheres;
- Analyze the different ways that sentimentalism constrained and empowered women writers to critique gender conventions and spurred the Women's Civil Rights Movement, with reference to specific works by writers such as Fern, Anthony, Fuller, Alcott, and Stowe; and
- Define and evaluate the ways that the slavery question influenced major writers and literature during this period.
