Course Overview:

Contrary to the stereotypical image of the isolated writer dependent on inspiration, most writing is a social activity and most writers are hard workers, not conduits awaiting the bolt of inspiration. Writing, as Andrea Lunsford and John Ruszkiewicz assert in The Presence of Others, "reflects the assumption that critical thinking and writing always occur in relation to other people’s thoughts and words." For the duration of one semester, your ENGL 4000 class will form a community of writers reading and responding to the thoughts and words of one another and to the thoughts and words of the professional writers who speak to us through the pages of a variety of texts. Success in this course depends upon your being an active, contributing member of this community

You will write, rewrite, revise, edit, and assess your own writing process and product. You will write individually, and you will write collaboratively. You will write in class and out of class. You will write to inform, to persuade, to critique, and to reflect. You will write for yourself, for your peers, for your teacher, and for larger audiences beyond the classroom. Your grade for the course will be determined by the quality of your writing and by the level of commitment you make to writing and revising.

Because writing and reading are inextricably connected, class members will discuss readings and respond to them as readers. We will also examine reading assignments as writers. Class time will also be devoted to workshopping (discussing and peer evaluating) the writing of class members. Further, since much of the fine tuning of accomplished writing requires a unique and readable style, a style appropriate to a variety of audiences, we will spend time in class working on stylistic examples and exercises from Joe Glaser's Understanding Style: Practical Ways to Improve Your Writing.

Course Objectives:

Advanced Composition shares general objectives with the freshman composition course:

1. To develop students’ ability to write effectively for the general academic community and the educated public.

2. To develop students’ ability to read, interpret, and evaluate written texts, with the focus on exposition and argument.

3. To develop students’ ability to think critically--about their own ideas and those of others, about what they write and what they read, about different writing situations and types of discourse, about language.

However, ENGL 4000 differs from freshman composition both in seeking to accomplish these general objectives on a higher cognitive level and in extending the range and complexity of the specific course objectives. The specific course objectives for Advanced Composition include the following:

                               1. To develop students’ awareness of themselves
                          as writers.
                                2. To help students improve their writing processes,
                          with special attention to techniques of invention,
                          planning, drafting, revision, publishing, and with the
                          goal of students becoming perceptive readers of
                          their own writing.
                               3. To give students experience in collaboration as
                          learners, writers, and editors.
                               4. To develop students’ ability to write persuasively
                          for the general academic community and the
                          educated public, particularly in situations which
                          involve extended writing.
                               5. To develop students’ awareness of the
                          expectations and needs of various audiences and of
                          how these expectations and needs affect the
                          content, organization, style, and format of the
                          writing.
                               6. To develop students’ ability to evaluate what
                          information and evidence constitute reasonable
                          support for a position in a specific rhetorical
                          situation.
                               7. To improve students’ ability to write in accord with
                          the conventions of edited American English and to
                          handle the special conventions associated with
                          different types of writing.

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