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Writing Program
Unified Writing Curriculum -
FASN Writing Program
Detailed Course
Description and Learning Outcomes
English
Curriculum Review Committee and Writing Program Faculty June,
2004
Revised
by Writing Program Curriculum Committees 2006
Contents
Introduction
Welcome to this overview of writing courses
at Rutgers-Newark. The seriousness with which Rutgers faculty regard
their students’ writing can be seen in the number of required
writing courses, the kinds of support accompanying them, and the
care with which they are sequenced to provide appropriate and
manageable challenges at each level.
Writing courses at Rutgers-Newark are
designed to give students guidance and experience in the writing
that will be asked of them throughout their college careers. That
writing is largely based on academic reading. All Rutgers-Newark
writing courses engage students in the difficult and important work
of writing accurately, analytically, and argumentatively about
readings.
First-year students may be placed in
Communication Skills 098, Communication Skills 099, or English
Composition 101. Placement is determined by a combination of
factors, including Verbal SAT score, and the "Reading
Comprehension," "Sentence Sense," and "Write-placer" portions of the
Accuplacer online placement exam. Students beginning with
Communication Skills 098 usually proceed to Communication Skills
099, and students placed in Communication Skills 099 to English 101.
All students must take English 101 and 102, or their
equivalents.
Students successfully completing English 102
satisfy their composition requirement. But their writing requirement
continues. All students must also complete a
Writing-Across-the-Curriculum requirement by taking two upper-level
courses identified as writing-intensive. At least one of these
writing intensive courses must be taken with a student’s major field
of study.
Transfer Students must also complete the
Writing-Across-the-Curriculum requirement by taking two
writing-intensive courses. In addition, transfer students may be
held for one or more writing courses prior to their
writing-intensive courses. Students who have not received grades of
“B” or better in two college composition courses must take a
placement exam, and on the basis of that exam, they may be exempted
from further composition, or they may be required to take either one
or two writing classes: Expository Writing 121 and Expository
Writing 122.
All Rutgers writing courses are designed to
help students build competence in five broad areas: critical
thinking, close reading, writing strategically, grammatical control,
and research ability. Specific competencies in each of these general
areas are detailed in the course descriptions that follow.
All Rutgers-Newark 100-level writing courses
include both midterm and final exams. Each final exam asks students
to write an essay in response to a focused question about a
representative reading. A student’s final exam essay may not
represent that student’s finest writing of the semester, but it
should embody a realistically high minimum achievement. Writing
teachers recognize that a single, timed writing exam does not
provide the fullest indication of what students can do as writers:
in fact their courses are designed to encourage students to work on
writing projects over time, with opportunities for rethinking, for
getting advice, and for editing. Nevertheless, writers also need to
show they can deliver competent performances under time constraints.
Thus writing courses at Rutgers-Newark give students experience both
in writing over time and writing under pressure.
The final exams in all courses are used, in
combination with the recommendations of the course instructor, to
adjust the student's placement in the next course. In some cases,
students with marginal performance on the final exam may be
permitted to move on to the next course with additional required
support (workshop or tutoring). For example, students who require
more work on English 101 level skills may enroll in a "Transition
workshop" while they take English 102 at the same time, or students
who need to work on Communication Skills 099 skills may enroll in
English 100 while co-enrolled in English 101. Students will receive
a temporary D grade in the lower course until they have successfully
completed the support requirement, both by attending regularly and
by making satisfactory progress in addressing the key learning
outcomes for that course.
Communication Skills
098: Basic Writing and Reading Strategies
Course Descriptions
This course calls for intensive work in
basic reading and writing, correctly and effectively managing
sentences, evaluating word choices, effectively developing
paragraphs, maintaining coherence, recognizing main ideas, drawing
upon sources informatively, and reading with accuracy. The course
emphasizes writing and revising as means of understanding and of
expressing complex thinking.
Course Goals
In Communication Skills 098 students will
be expected to demonstrate the following competencies:
A. Critical Thinking
Understand and apply ideas presented in
class;
Recognize and elaborate differing points of
view;
Connect course material to personal
experience;
Articulate both receptivity and resistance
to arguments;
Respond constructively to peers.
B. Reading
Demonstrate the ability to read a short
passage and to identify the author’s thesis or argument and explain
how the parts contribute to the whole:
Identify and define unfamiliar words in a
text, including familiar words used in unfamiliar ways;
Use a dictionary effectively;
Monitor reactions as readers, noting how
particular words alter general expectations;
Explain how a writer keeps a text coherent,
paying special attention to signal words;
Recognize and comment upon the implications
of particular word choices;
Test generalizations about a text by close
examination of that text;
Find connections between current reading and
personal experience, including previous reading experience;
Distinguish narratives and exposition from
arguments and recognize when narratives and exposition are being
used in service of argument;
Skim daily newspapers, choosing pieces to
summarize.
C. Writing
Develop coherent paragraphs that signal a
main idea and support it with effective details and reasoning;
Use appropriate transitions to effectively
link sentences and paragraphs cohesively;
Develop an awareness of audience, making
word choices accordingly;
Use effective sentence structures, including
forms of parallelism and subordination;
Develop a repertoire of revising
strategies;
Begin to develop a working vocabulary for
analyzing writing (e.g., argument, summary, quotation, refutation,
qualifiers, assumptions, implications, thesis, support)
Begin to find a comfortable voice for
expressing complex ideas;
Conduct, by mid-semester, a portfolio
analysis (of the writing for the course to date)
D. Grammar
Be able to use a handbook, grammar-check, or
other resources to help edit writing;
Develop a working vocabulary for analyzing
writing grammatically (e.g., subject, verb, phrase, clause,
modifier, noun, preposition, possessive)
Demonstrate a full range of verb structures,
including progressive and perfect tenses, passive voice,
auxiliaries, infinitives, participles, and irregular verb forms;
Show a recognition of subject/verb agreement
errors, including the errors frequently associated with the –s form
of subjects and verbs;
Show an ability to correctly handle
possessive forms;
Develop a repertoire of editorial skills,
practice that editing upon others’ writing as well as one’s own;
Demonstrate an editorial awareness of
conspicuous usage errors, including homophone mistakes (it’s/its,
then/than, their/there);
Develop an awareness of how the initial
words of a sentence forecast and limit the structure of what can
follow, showing how grammar shapes readers’ expectations;
Conduct a portfolio analysis of the course’s
writing that includes particular attention to grammatical
issues.
E. Research
Review techniques for the presentation of
information, including summaries, paraphrases, and quotations;
Evaluate how course readings demonstrate the
research that stands behind them;
Show where course readings show the need for
further research;
Consider the interview as a research
form;
Show a general awareness of how to use the
Rutgers Library system;
Be ready to speak about the strengths and
weaknesses of the Internet in research.
Communication Skills 099: Academic Reading
and Writing
Course Descriptions
This course provides introductory work in the forms academic reading and writing
that will be required in other college courses. The course calls for expository
writing based on non-fiction readings. It emphasizes the development of critical
reading skills and the ability to present complex ideas and information to a
defined audience in precise language. The course is designed to provide strong
preparation for the work that will be expected of students in English 101.
Course Goals
In Communication Skills 099 students will be
expected to demonstrate the following competencies:
A. Critical
Thinking
Demonstrate the ability to explain abstract
ideas;
Extract generalizations, assumptions, and
implications from a reading;
Formulate reasoned responses to
questions;
Recognize “loaded language,” word choices
that are meant to slant the understanding of an issue;
Show how the awareness of a particular
audience—or the lack of such awareness—influences a
presentation;
On a given issue, imagine alternative points
of view.
B. Reading
Demonstrate the ability to effectively read
a passage of moderate length;
Explain how sections of a text contribute to
a central purpose;
Identify the thesis of a reading or where an
explicit thesis is lacking, state the reading’s implicit thesis;
Identify unfamiliar words and attempt to
define what they mean in context;
Tentatively identify a text’s key words,
modifying your choices upon re-reading;
Evaluate the coherence of a text, pointing
out connections and gaps;
Monitor readers’ expectations in moving
through a reading;
Comment upon a text’s implied audience;
Note the strategies by which a writer seeks
to establish credibility with readers;
Skim daily newspapers with an eye toward
summarizing them and commenting on the perspectives from which they
were written.
C. Writing
Establish a clear thought pattern that a
reader can follow without difficulty both from sentence to sentence
and throughout an essay;
Provide effective transitions between and
within paragraphs;
Find a specific focus within a general
topic;
Choose accurate and specific vocabulary;
Show a writer’s awareness of specific
audiences;
Effectively employ sentence patterns of
parallelism and subordination;
Effective edit for clarity and
conciseness;
Employ summary, paraphrase, and
quotation;
Experiment with a variety of strategies for
opening and closing essays;
Move persuasively between generalizations
and support for those generalizations;
Develop a good, working vocabulary for
speaking about writing;
Develop an effective set of editorial skills
for working with the writing of peers;
Develop a comfortable and appropriate
academic voice;
Conduct an analysis of a portfolio of
writing.
D. Grammar
Use a handbook, grammar-check, and other
resources in editing writing;
Develop and use an effective vocabulary for
speaking about grammatical issues;
Employ a full range of verb structures,
including progressive and perfect tenses, passive forms,
auxiliaries, participles, infinitives, and irregular verb forms;
Demonstrate control of subject/verb
agreement;
Demonstrate control of pronoun reference and
of possessive forms;
Demonstrate a systematic understanding of
the use of commas and semicolons;
Show an awareness of representative usage
confusions in academic writing (e.g., affect/effect, imply/infer,
compliment/complement, illusion/allusion, effect/affect);
Conduct a review of grammatical issues
within the context of a portfolio analysis.
E. Research
Write essays that blend the discussion of a
primary source with a properly documented secondary source;
Evaluate, or discuss the difficulty of
evaluating, the research that stands behind readings;
Demonstrate effective uses of summary,
paraphrase, and quotation within arguments;
Show how to acknowledge the work of others
and how to manage citations;
Show an awareness of variations in
documentation styles (the contrast between MLA and APA styles, for
example);
Show familiarity with the Rutgers Library
system;
Show an awareness of the advantages and
disadvantages of Internet research.
English Composition 101: Analysis and Arguement
Course Description
This course calls for analytical writing
based on non-fiction readings. Students are expected to develop a
critical understanding of argument, both in the recognition of the
strategies of other writers and in the effective management of their
own. Students must demonstrate the ability to write accurately,
coherently, and thoughtfully about representative academic readings.
The course also emphasizes strategies of revision and editing.
Course Goals
In English Composition 101 students will be
expected to demonstrate the following competencies:
A. Critical
Thinking
Recognize explicit and implicit
arguments;
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of
arguments;
Recognize the persuasive appeals, such as
appeals to emotion and the appeals to authority;
Address underlying assumptions;
Evaluate relationships between claims and
support for claims;
Understand the use of qualifiers;
Learn to effectively manage the terminology
of critical thinking, including, for example, the words used above:
“implicit,” “appeal,” “assumption,” “claim,” “support,” and
“qualifiers.”
B. Reading
Demonstrate an ability to read texts of both
moderate and extended length;
Make claims about a text and support those
claims with textual evidence;
Evaluate the coherence of a text;
Use dictionaries in service of critical
reading;
Monitor reader responses, the expectations a
reader develops in the process of reading;
Take into account the audience for which a
text seems to be written;
Identify strengths and weaknesses in the
writing of peers;
Recognize how a writer’s word choices
contribute to his or her argument;
Recognize the operation of logical,
emotional, and ethical appeals;
Show an awareness of how non-verbal
elements, such as pictures and graphs, contribute to the argument of
a text and require close reading;
Differentiate facts from opinions, but also
show an awareness of how facts are almost always selectively
presented and seldom neutral;
Show an awareness of how to critically read
statistics, alert to what they say and don’t say;
Make judgments about writers’ tones of voice
and how their tones contribute to their arguments;
Demonstrate the ability to read the same
text in different ways, commenting on why both readings are
plausible if not equally persuasive;
Recognize and comment upon a writer’s use of
the passive voice;
Show a critical awareness of writers’ uses
of comparisons and analogies;
Show the abilities to skim, summarize, and speak about newspaper articles written
at the level of The New York Times;
Develop the editorial ability to re-read
writing with the needs of readers in mind.
C. Writing
Produce essays that make clear and
continuous arguments, with appropriate assertions, transitions, and
support;
Employ a well-developed vocabulary for
analyzing writing;
Observe the conventions of academic
writing;
Demonstrate the effective use of summary,
paraphrase, and quotation without letting any of these elements
submerge a writer’s own controlling voice;
Avoid all forms of plagiarism;
Show an understanding of the ethical and
rhetorical issues of plagiarism;
Demonstrate, through the careful use of
textual evidence, the ability to support, refute, or modify another
reader’s claim about a reading;
Bring one text effectively to bear upon
another, using the one to frame or illustrate or complicate the
other;
Demonstrate the ability to subordinate
narration and exposition to argument;
Develop a clear and comfortable academic
voice;
Show the ability to offer editorial help to
other writers;
Be able to conduct an analysis of a
portfolio of one’s own writing.
D. Grammar
Be able to use a handbook, grammar-check,
and other resources in effectively editing writing;
Develop a useful, working vocabulary for
speaking about grammatical issues;
Review one’s own writing in relation to
grammatical issues;
Effectively employ a full range of verb
structures, including progressive and perfect tenses, auxiliaries,
infinitives, participles, and irregular verb forms;
Show control of subject/verb agreement;
Show control of pronoun reference and of
possessive forms;
Effectively manage compound and complex
sentence structures, including parallelism and subordination;
Demonstrate a systematic understanding of
punctuation, including commas, semicolons, and colons;
Show a solid sense of sentence boundaries,
being able to avoid run-on sentences, comma splices, and
fragments;
Show an understanding of the grammatical
conventions of quotation, including quotations embedded in one’s own
sentences;
Demonstrate an awareness of how to handle
citations within a text;
Show an ability to transform passive voice
to active voice and, where appropriate, active to passive;
Gradually learn to employ a wider vocabulary
in the service of precision and persuasiveness.
E. Research
Write essays that analyze a primary source
while drawing upon one or more secondary sources;
Demonstrate the use of effective paraphrase,
summary, and quotation in the use of outside sources;
Learn to use a handbook as a tool for
research questions;
Demonstrate an ability to critically
evaluate sources;
Evaluate the usefulness, authority, and
limitations of sources
Show a reader’s awareness of how a writer
has used the research of others and of where such research seems
lacking.
English Composition 102: Interpretation,
Synthesis, and Research
Course Description
This course calls for extensive analytical
writing based on literary texts, including drama, poetry, and
especially fiction. Students are expected to continue gaining
confidence as independent and critical thinkers, sustaining and
further developing the competencies stressed in English 101.
Students are also asked to produce writing that draws effectively
upon research.
Course Goals
In English Composition 102 students will be expected to demonstrate the following
competencies.
A. Critical Thinking
Demonstrate the critical thinking skills
called upon in English 101;
Propose and effectively sustain a unified
argument;
Recognize ineffective arguments, including
arguments that oversimplify readings;
Evaluate conflicting interpretations of a
reading;
Demonstrate the effective use of textual
evidence in support of claims;
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in the
arguments of peers;
Address the implications of particular word
choices and of word choices used systematically;
Offer independently developed analytical
arguments about a reading;
Raise questions about a text, and
distinguish the questions that may lead to fuller exploration of
that text;
Evaluate the usefulness of secondary
sources;
Learn to make the historical biographical
context of a reading bear upon, without over-determining, the
interpretation of that reading;
Synthesize a number of secondary sources in
support of an argument.
B. Reading
Demonstrate the reading competencies called
upon in English 101;
Read thematically, not so much extracting
the theme from a reading as being able to work systematically with a
theme, while noticing the analytical implications of highlighting
one theme over others;
Show stylistic awareness of a writer’s word
choices, sentence structures, and tone of voice;
Read multiple texts in relation to one
another, alert to opportunities for comparison and synthesis,
looking for ways how one text may frame, illustrate, or complicate
another;
Conduct research as critical
readers—skimming, evaluating, discarding, selecting—so as to focus
on a relatively few sources appropriate to a particular research
project;
Learn to evaluate Internet resources
receptively but skeptically, alert to issues of responsibility,
authority, and documentation;
Demonstrate effective reading as an editor
of one’s own writing and the writing of peers;
Show an ability to re-read one’s own writing
with attention to the interaction of a primary text, scholarly
voice, and the writer’s own controlling voice.
C. Writing
Demonstrate the writing competencies called
upon in English 101;
Recognize and avoid plagiarism;
Distinguish interpretation and analysis from
summary;
Develop sustained and unified
interpretations of single readings;
Write interpretive essays that work with
more than one text;
Effectively support claims with textual
evidence;
Show awareness that interpretations of a
reading need to take into account the reading as a whole;
Draw upon secondary sources in service of a
central argument;
Appropriately employ summary, paraphrase,
quotation, and citation;
Show an awareness of multiple
interpretations and the possibilities of negotiating among them;
Revise essays stylistically.
D. Grammar
Demonstrate the grammatical competencies
called upon in English 101;
Use and extend the vocabulary for speaking
about grammatical issues;
Extend the repertoire of available sentence
structures, making more deliberate use of structures like apposition
and parallelism;
Demonstrate control of the grammar of
quotations;
Recognize the rhetorical use of
ungrammatical elements in readings;
Learn to think of grammar analytically
stylistically, that is, in terms of understanding and marshalling
the power of sentence structures rather than merely avoiding
grammatical errors.
E. Research
Demonstrate the research competencies called
upon in English 101;
Participate in a librarian’s tour of the
Rutgers Library system, and produce at least one piece of writing
that draws upon Rutgers Library resources;
Learn how to avoid all forms of
plagiarism;
Consider both the ethical and rhetorical
dimensions of plagiarism;
Write essays that coordinate the analysis of
a primary source with the synthesis of several secondary
sources;
Show awareness of the ways in which readings
have used and not used research;
Show an awareness of the relevance of
historical and biographical research in the interpretation of
literary texts;
Show an awareness of the variations in
research formats among disciplines;
Learn to critically evaluate Internet
resources.
Honors
Composition: English 103 and English 104
English 103 and English 104 are writing
courses offered by the Honors Program and open primarily to students
who are enrolled in that program. English 103, like English 101,
focuses upon the analysis of non-fiction texts. English 104, like
English 102, focuses upon the interpretation of literary texts and
calls for some library research. Where space is available, English
103 is also open to students who have scored 650 or higher on their
Verbal SAT’s. For information on the Honors Program, contact Dr.
Kinna Perry (X-5866).
Writing Across the Curriculum
After completing
English Composition, students are required to take at least two
further writing courses. These courses are to be chosen from an
array of writing-intensive courses that are offered throughout the
undergraduate program. Students must take at least one of these two
writing-intensives within their major. These courses are usually
designated as “section 66” or “section 67” in the Schedule of
Classes. In addition to taking writing-intensives in their major,
students should be alert to ways in which they can take a
writing-intensive course that simultaneously satisfies one of their
other requirements, such as the literature or interdisciplinary
requirement. For more on the Writing Across the Curriculum program,
go to wac.newark.rutgers.edu.
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