Course Outcomes for ENGL 1101 and 1102

Course Outcomes for ENGL 1101

These learning outcomes are adapted from the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0).

Category Outcomes

Rhetorical Knowledge

Rhetorical knowledge focuses on the available means of persuasion, considering factors such as context, audience, purpose, genre, medium, and conventions.

 Explore and use with purpose key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of written texts. These concepts include:

  • Rhetorical situation: purpose, audience, context
  • Genre 
  • Argumentation: controlling purpose, evidence

Develop an understanding of the ways in which rhetorical concepts can be transferred to multimodal artifacts

Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes

Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure

Critical Thinking, Writing, and Composing

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze, synthesize, interpret, and evaluate ideas, information, situations, and texts.

Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts

Read a diverse range of written texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different audiences and situations

Use strategies—such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign—to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with those from appropriate sources

Processes

Writers use multiple strategies, or composing processes, to conceptualize, develop, finalize, and distribute projects. Composing processes are recursive and adaptable in relation to different rhetorical situations.

Understand that writing is a process

Develop a writing project through multiple stages

Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing

Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas

Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes   

Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress  

Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work

Knowledge of Conventions 

Conventions are the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres, and in so doing, shape readers’ and writers’ perceptions of correctness or appropriateness.

Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising

Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of written texts

Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions

Course Outcomes for ENGL 1102

Category
Outcomes by the USG Board of Regents
Outcomes by the
Council of Writing Program Administrators
Additional Expectations of the GTWCP
Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves understanding social and cultural texts and contexts in ways that support productive communication and interaction.
  • Analyze arguments.
  • Accommodate opposing points of view.
  • Interpret inferences and develop subtleties of symbolic and indirect discourse.
  • Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating.
  • Integrate ideas with those of others.
  • Understand relationships among language, knowledge, and power.
  • Recognize the constructedness of language and social forms.
  • Analyze and critique constructs such as race, gender, and sexuality as they appear in cultural texts.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric focuses on available means of persuasion, considering the synergy of factors such as context, audience, purpose, role, argument, organization, design, visuals, and conventions of language.
  • Adapt communication to circumstances and audience.
  • Produce communication that is stylistically appropriate and mature.
  • Communicate in standard English for academic and professional contexts.
  • Sustain a consistent purpose and point of view.
  • Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences.
  • Learn common formats for different kinds of texts.
  • Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics.
  • Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
  • Create artifacts that demonstrate the synergy of rhetorical elements.
  • Demonstrate adaptation of register, language, and conventions for specific contexts and audiences.
  • Apply strategies for communication in and across both academic disciplines and cultural contexts in the community and the workplace.

Process

Processes for communication—for example, creating, planning, drafting, designing, rehearsing, revising, presenting, publishing—are recursive, not linear. Learning productive processes is as important as creating products.

 [No USG BOR outcomes are specifically related to process.]
  • Find, evaluate, analyze, and synthesize appropriate primary and secondary sources.
  • Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.
  • Understand collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
  • Critique their own and others’ works.
  • Balance the advantages of relying on others with [personal] responsibility.
  • Construct and select information based on interpretation and critique of the accuracy, bias, credibility, authority, and appropriateness of sources.
  • Compose reflections that demonstrate understanding of the elements of iterative processes, both specific to and transferable across rhetorical situations.

Modes and Media

Activities and assignments should use a variety of modes and media—written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal (WOVEN)—singly and in combination. The context and culture of multimodality and multimedia are critical.
  • Interpret content of written materials on related topics from various disciplines.
  • Compose effective written materials for various academic and professional contexts.
  • Assimilate, analyze, and present a body of information in oral and written forms.
  • Communicate in various modes and media, using appropriate technology.
  • Use digital environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts.
  • Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official (e.g., federal) databases; and informal electronic networks and internet sources.
  • Exploit differences in rhetorical strategies and affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts.
  • Create WOVEN (written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal) artifacts that demonstrate interpretation, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and judgment.
  • Demonstrate strategies for effective translation, transformation, and transference of communication across modes and media.