First-Year Composition

Our first-year composition course is Writing & Rhetoric I (ENG 1510) and meets the BRICKS Written Communication: Foundations requirement. This course, known as You Are Here, uses the place of Athens County, Ohio, as a frame to help students recognize their writing strengths and what new college writing situations ask of them. From our syllabus:

You Are Here. This commonplace phrase is the frame that guides us through this semester. There are all kinds of meanings with the word “here.” Most importantly, it means that you were somewhere else before, but now you’re here. What is it about here that is new? Different? What is it about here that matters? We begin the course by considering where you’ve been as a writer. What kinds of writing have you done before and why? What do you already know about writing? But then we’ll also try to understand what it means to write here at Ohio University, as an academic writer, and in Athens County, Ohio.

ENG 1510 prepares students for college writing projects by teaching them to do three important kinds of written analysis—rhetorical analysis, genre analysis, and discourse community analysis. We help students leverage their existing writing knowledge for these new tasks by asking them to analyze one of their previous writing projects rhetorically, a genre that they’ve written before, and a discourse community where they belong. These assignments give students the tools to tackle new writing situations in college and beyond. This course also employs a workshop model that centers analysis of students’ writing and peer review.

ENG 1510 does important work to introduce students to college-level writing expectations; however, one course can never fully prepare someone for all the writing futures they’ll encounter or even all the writing situations at Ohio University. Students will continue their writing growth in their advanced writing courses and as they learn about the writing norms in their major field of study.

Learning Outcomes for ENG 1510

Students will be able to:

1. Identify the rhetorical context and purpose for writing in academic and other settings.
2. Use appropriate, relevant, and compelling concepts and terms from composition studies to illustrate their understanding of writing and shape their work.
3. Use formal and informal rules (such as genre or disciplinary conventions) that guide formatting, organization, and stylistic choices for specific audiences to analyze particular kinds of texts and/or media.
4. Find, evaluate, use, and source texts to extend, argue with, develop, define, or shape their own positions in writing.
5. Use conventions (for example, formatting, syntax, etc.) appropriate to the rhetorical context to communicate ideas.