English 101

Introduction

For my community college students, English 101 is normally their first writing-intensive college course.  When I teach, I focus on helping students learn to conduct research, cite their sources, and share their thoughts on what they've found.  My primary goal is to help every student feel comfortable sharing their writing.

Components and Major Assignments

The Four Parts of English 101

• Part 1: Commuties of Discourse introduces key concepts of rhetoric and multimodality, and then applies these concepts to communication in our modern digital world.  This unit also introduces the early assignments of Project 1.

• Part 2: Composing Research Genres develops skills in finding sources and citing our sources of information in order to be responsible writers.  This unit includes the two extended articles of Project 1.

• Part 3: Researching Social Perspectives builds on research skills by exploring multiple perspectives regarding a variety of societal issues.  This unit includes the research portion of Project 2.

• Part 4: Drafting Your Findings guides the composition process by showing how to organize materials, draft sections, and then arrange materials into a coherent whole.  This unit builds to the workshop drafts of Project 2.

• The Final Portfolio: Formalizing Your Message is the conclusion of the course.  This focuses on the final draft of the research paper, including revisions.

The Three Main Projects

While the four main units highlight the overarching concepts of the course, the three projects develop skills for composing extended research.  These projects are spread across the four units in order to better show how all the skills and concepts come together to shape a single project.

• Project 1 Genre Articles help you practice rhetorical strategies, explore multiple genres of writing, and use research sources to develop written messages.

• Project 2 Research Paper applies these writing skills to researching and composing an extended research paper.

• Project 3 Multimodal Presentations introduce ways of communication beyond text with two presentations, one for Project 1 and another for Project 2.