Course Description

This course reviews the principles of composition, including rhetoric, grammar and usage, and emphasizes the writing of analytical essays and the study of principles underlying critical thinking.  Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

Demonstrate effective writing strategies after reading and assessing a variety of texts.
Write assignments that consider various writing situations in terms of audience, purpose, tone, organization, format, style, point of view, and diction.
Generate ideas, limit a topic, and formulate a thesis, utilizing prewriting techniques.
Provide specific, concrete details to support the thesis.
Organize essays using appropriate types of development such as description, narration, definition, comparison/contrast, causal relationship, classification, example, process analysis, and argumentation.
Compose an original, unified, multi-paragraph essay with introduction, conclusion, and transitions.
Revise, edit, and proofread writing to produce final drafts with a minimum of errors in grammar, mechanics, and diction.
Access and evaluate source material using current information literacy techniques.
Summarize, paraphrase, and quote source material using MLA documentation.
Prepare a documented essay free of plagiarism.