English 90: Course Requirements

CLSOs

  1. Read actively and demonstrate critical thinking skills through the ability to summarize, analyze, evaluate and synthesize assigned readings. (PSLO 1,2,3)
  2. Write, edit and revise expository essays which synthesize course readings and are clearly focused, fully developed, and logically organized. Compose essays with sentences which display a developing syntactical maturity and whose meaning is not impaired by excessive grammar, usage and proofreading errors. (PSLO 1,4)
  3. Demonstrate the ability to use strategies for academic success, including use of college resources and ability to monitor and evaluate one’s own learning. (PSLO 1,5)

Organization of Course:

·  Organization of the course should be largely theme-based (not based primarily on rhetorical modes).

·  The whole semester, then, may consist of 3-4 theme-based units (3, 4, or 5-weeks long) and the essay and writing assignments for that unit will also be about that theme. Some instructors devise one theme for the whole semester.

Required Content of Course:

Readings will consist of:

·  One or two full-length works (fiction or non-fiction - from the dept’s Approved Books list)

·  Short nonfiction articles (article length will usually be 3-6 pages).

Writing assignments will consist of:

·  The major focus will be thesis-driven, academic essays.

·  All sources for essays are provided by the teacher or found within the course reader.

·  Students write a total of at least 3 typewritten essays, all of which should require students to use synthesis: using multiple sources to provide evidence for their argument.

·  Students will also write at least one 3-4 page (double-spaced) in-class essay. (Often this essay is the Final Exam, an in-class essay.)

·  Length should go from 3-4 pages at the beginning of the semester to at least 4–6 pages by the end. Essays should require more difficult critical thinking as semester progresses.

·  Either the in-class essay or one of the typed, take home essays will be about the full-length work.

·  At least one of the major essays will be the persuasive/argumentative essay, a carefully reasoned, well-supported argument on a debatable subject which summarizes and responds to alternative views, and persuades the reader to move toward or adopt the writer’s claim.

How do you do this? Some instructors may do the following:

Essay 1: Thesis-driven essay on articles (Theme #1)

Essay 2: Thesis-driven essay based on the articles (Theme #2)

Essay 3: Persuasive/argumentative essay based on articles. (Theme #3)

Final: In-class essay (or the in-class essay may be used for the full-length work)

See samples of assignments in the full Course Outline of Record, posted in the P drive in the folder “Course Outlines-Current.”