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Advanced Composition Goals Department of English, UW Oshkosh |
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COURSES 302: Writing about the Humanities 307: Advanced Composition for Secondary Education 309: Advanced Composition for Business 310: Honors Advanced Composition for Business 316: Writing about the Social Sciences 317: Technical Writing 318: Writing about the Sciences 321: Advanced Composition for Elementary Education |
Advanced Composition will help students become effective, persuasive, and ethical writers. Not only will they study the forms of discourse that are used by writers to describe knowledge and theories in various disciplines (including expressive, informational, scientific, literary, and persuasive forms of written prose), they will be aware of the consequences of using those forms for an audience (the ethics of discourse). Process and revision are essential components of every section; students will incorporate feedback from their instructors and peers in order to produce final papers from earlier drafts. Essays should achieve a level of sophistication, creativity, and audience awareness well beyond that of first-year writers enrolled in WBIS. Rhetorical Awareness Advanced Composition teaches students to approach the writing situation from the perspective of audience, purpose, and style. Students will learn to vary and adapt their language to meet the rhetorical and ethical demands of diverse situations, perspectives, and audiences. Analytical Reading Readings from a variety of genres and disciplines (professional journals, research papers, articles, essays, etc.) enable students to analyze, evaluate, and respond to another writer’s arguments or ideas. Synthesis and Judgment Students will take a position on a given issue and advance that position into a coherent written product. Students will synthesize and organize ideas and information from various sources into new, more complex interpretations and relationships. They will judge the value of information, arguments, and methods. They will learn to craft a thesis that positions the writer’s point of view within previous work on a topic. They will understand that arguments entail evaluating evidence and reasoning and analyzing the relationships between an essay and its intended audience. Study of Craft Students should understand that the writing process includes an understanding of grammar and mechanics and an ability to manipulate prose styles for the writing situation. They should recognize that their position as a writer further depends on adhering to professional standards of documentation and the ethical use of information (such as familiarity with MLA or APA formats). Research Students will identify a significant issue to research; analyze a variety of print, electronic, visual, and/or oral materials that enable them to answer questions and solve problems; and present their findings in at least one research-based paper. Advanced Composition endorses the goals of the ALA’s Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which state that “an information literate individual is able to:
Adopted by the Department of English, December 7, 2006
07/03/2007 |