English 101: Composition I

COURSE DESCRIPTION

English 101: Composition teaches students that writing, similar to photography, requires an understanding of perspective. Throughout this course, students learn how to understand the perspectives of other writers so that they can apply their own perspective in their compositions. This course introduces students to some of the strategies, tools, and resources necessary to becoming successful communicators in a range of academic, professional, and public settings. English 101 students learn not only to think carefully through writing, but also to reflect critically about writing by engaging a variety of discursive forms, from the academic essay to opinion pieces, from essays to advertisements.

Focusing on the connections between place and identity, students will engage with a variety of texts, examining how writers use written language in print and digital media for self-expression and for social interaction.  Students will explore the self-reflective aspect of writing through memoir, expand their understanding of rhetorical strategies through rhetorical analysis, and writing their own arguments.

In the past, I have incorporated these texts into this course: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Linda Hogan’s The Woman Who Watches Over the World, Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/ La Frontera, Marjane Satrapi’s Persopolis, Jhumpa Lahiri’s “In Other Words,” Brent Staples “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space,” just to name a few.

The course culminates in a multi-modal project that brings together all of the rhetorical strategies the students learn over the course of the semester, and challenges the students with a revision of their work into a project that combines visual and audio elements.