Learning Objectives

English Composition I is a course in effective essay writing and basic research techniques, including the use of the library. A broad array of readings from diverse sources (periodicals, books, newspapers) are assigned as the basis for in-class discussion and for essay writing. CUNY certification in reading and writing is the prerequisite for this course. Through discussion, reading, writing in drafts, collaborating, revising, and presenting work, students will learn to:

• Read and listen critically and analytically, including identifying an argument’s major assumptions and assertions and evaluating its supporting evidence.
• Write clearly and coherently in varied, academic formats (such as formal essays, research papers, and reports) using standard English and appropriate technology to critique and improve one’s own and others’ texts.
• Demonstrate research skills using appropriate technology including gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing primary and secondary sources.
• Support a claim/thesis with well-reasoned arguments and communicate persuasively across a variety of contexts, purposes, audiences, and media.
• Draft, revise, and proofread essays that include various modes of writing, including narration, description, comparison, argumentation, analysis, and reflection.
• Use writing as a process of discovery and build habits of critical thinking, and foster and develop a personal writing style.
• Read actively, carefully, and thoroughly, looking both at details and at the piece as a whole. Formulate questions as you read in anticipation of class discussions.
• Demonstrate the ability to summarize, paraphrase, quote from, and argue with readings.
• Develop original ideas and relate them to the ideas of others by employing the conventions of ethical attribution and citation. Understand the relationship between context and audience.
• Gain familiarity with online tools such as blogs, collaborative documents, online writing centers, and library research tools.
• Communicate thoughtfully and professionally via email and other online media.

Course Objectives

The aim of this semester-long series is to examine writings about gender that also demonstrate effective ways of approaching college writing. Multiple types of writing, carried out in stages that build upon and inform each other, will help you to deepen your understanding of the complexities of reading and writing on the college level.

The English Department objectives for ENGL 1101 are:

• Draft and revise a range of formal and informal writing assignments and writing projects both inside the classroom and outside of class in a variety of genres and modes to meet appropriate rhetorical purposes related to academic inquiry, totaling, at minimum, 2500 words. […]
• Draft and revise a researched writing assignment or project that includes the incorporation of material from library resources and databases and includes the use of methods of citation and attribution appropriate to specific discipline.
• Read, analyze, and interpret essays and texts across a variety of genres, disciplines, and media for the purposes of academic inquiry, rhetorical and textual analysis, and understanding, improving, and critiquing writing processes and reading strategies.
• Submit drafts of work for instructor review and peer review [and] … be assessed on their ability to develop and revise formal writing assignments.
• Understand how to apply and use the basic structure and conventions of Standard Written English (SWE) and exhibit basic competency in SWE.
• Pass a departmental final exam.

Academic Integrity

Plagiarism—the use of someone else’s ideas without proper attribution—is a serious academic offense, and I have a zero tolerance policy. If you use someone’s work without quotation marks (for exact words) and without both in-text citation in MLA or Chicago style and Works Cited, you will automatically fail the assignment, and potentially the course.

City Tech’s official Policy on Academic Integrity reads as follows: “Students and all others who work with information, ideas, texts, images, music, inventions and other intellectual property owe their audience and sources accuracy and honesty in using, crediting, and citing sources. As a community of intellectual and professional workers, the College recognizes its responsibility for providing instruction in information literacy and academic integrity, offering models of good practice, and responding vigilantly and appropriately to infractions of academic integrity. Accordingly, academic dishonesty is prohibited in The City University of New York and at New York City College of Technology and is punishable by penalties, including failing grades, suspension, and expulsion.”