Welcome to Writing I in the English Department!
Course Description: Writing I is a college-level introductory course dedicated to academic writing. In this course, you’ll develop confidence in your ability to write for academic purposes. Throughout the term, you’ll complete three major assignments: narrative, analysis, and argumentative writing.
Please note that the course is systematically structured and each major assignment has a similar setup that builds the Writing Process into the assignment. The Writing Process is arguably the single most important discovery of scholars of first-year writing. Thus, the process is built into the course curriculum at the inter- and intra-assignment levels. You are asked to regularly consult the Course Schedule and Deadlines to help you follow the course structure. You’ll be able to find an explanation of the structure below:
For each major assignment, you’ll have two or three Planning days to learn about your assignment requirements and the concepts you need to complete it. You’ll have a First Draft Review day, when your instructor and peers will help you understand how to improve the content and organization aspects of your writing. After that, you’ll have a Second Draft Review day, when you’ll learn how to revise your writing for clarity, appropriate vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. Finally, you’ll have small Group Conferences after each First Draft Review day to go over content and organization, and Individual Conferences after each Second Draft Review day with your instructor to go over language-level issues and citation conventions (i.e., clarity, appropriate vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure). Peer review is scheduled regularly during each draft review day and the peer review handouts provided during these days highlight the assignment components that you will be graded on. This means that the quality of your writing depends largely on your engagement with the revision process. Google Docs is used regularly throughout the drafting and revision process, which are highly emphasized in this course. Conferences are also essential, providing you with the opportunity to ask your own questions.
Course Outcomes: Required for all undergraduate degrees granted by Baruch College, Writing I is an intensive course introducing students to the conventions of academic writing and to writing as a means of discovery. The primary purpose of this course is to enhance students’ writing skills and rhetorical sophistication, particularly with regard to argumentative prose. Students practice and share their written articulation of ideas as a community of writers and read a variety of intellectually challenging and thematically coherent texts in a range of genres. Throughout, the emphasis is on writing and communication skills as processes involving multiple steps, including drafting, discussion, revision, and re-thinking. The work of the class is conducted in class, in small groups and in one-on-one sessions. After completing ENG 2100 you should be able to:
- Critically analyze texts in a variety of genres: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, tropes, genre, audience and purpose.
- Compose within academic writing contexts: Apply rhetorical knowledge in your own composing using conventions appropriate for academic writing contexts.
- Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing: Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your own writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.
- Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.
- Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.
Required Course Sites
| Function |
Platform Link |
| Virtual Classroom & Office: | Zoom |
| Class Syllabus & Content: | Blogs@Baruch |
| Required Readings | Join the Conversation Textbook |
| Document Submission: | Google Drive |
| Grades: | Brightspace |
Note: While we will cover in class use of these platforms, if needed, I urge you to email the professor immediately to set up a one-on-one to elaborate on how to engage with the class using these five platforms.
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays 4:45 pm-5:45 pm, and by appointment; Email: [email protected]; Office: VC 7-278; Phone: (646) 312-3908;
Acknowledgments: This website is available thanks to support from CUNY’s Baruch College Center for Teaching and Learning, English Department, and Student Academic Consulting Center. Further thanks to course materials’ developers and writing fellows who have developed and updated content, and maintained the website. Finally, thanks to Purdue University and The University of Toledo for inspiring materials on the site.
