Saint Mary’s College Composition Program

English 4, Composition

This course introduces students to college-level writing. It is designed to help them do well in college courses that require writing, to prepare them for writing in Collegiate Seminar, and to prepare them for the more advanced writing required in English 5, Argument and Research.

In order to ensure coherence and continuity in the English Composition Program and to ensure that all Saint Mary’s first year students are held to appropriate college-level standards in their writing courses, the Program has implemented a common syllabus for English 4. While it does not dictate what topics students write about, the common syllabus calls for all sections of English 4 to assign 4 to 5 essays, for a minimum of 5000 words (approx. 20 pages) of graded formal writing, plus an additional 2500 words of writing practice (e.g. freewriting, drafts, written daily assignments).

In addition, the Program has adopted a common writing guide, John R. Trimble’s Writing with Style, shared with the Collegiate Seminar Program. (Please incorporate chapters 1-5 at some point in your syllabus, as instructors for Seminar 1 will likewise be drawing on this same material for teaching writing in Seminar.)

On the whole, the common syllabus is designed to help students build their skills in written communication and critical thinking, and to give students repeated practice in developing a sound, complex thesis and supporting it with reasons and evidence. In order to assess student learning, the Composition Director may collect essays or writing instructions from instructors that demonstrate students’ ability to do the following. Please make sure your writing assignments cover each of the following skills listed below (depending on the prompt, one essay may cover one or more of the following). Possible essay formats/rhetorical modes are given as examples of assignments that might fulfill each set of learning outcomes.

1)Examine assumptions (examples: an evaluation or critique; compare/contrast essay)

Understanding that competing viewpoints are possible, students will be able to come to originate a plausible thesis after identifying and reflecting upon their own assumptions about a particular topic. [CT 2b]

2)Engage in intellectual discovery through the writing process (examples: compare/contrast essay; exploratory essay; freewriting exercises)

Through the formulation and pursuit of meaningful questions, the student demonstrates their pathway to intellectual discovery as they unravel complexities of a topic or object of study. Students are encouraged to take intellectual risks. [CT 2b; WC 4]

3)Engage in systematic analysis (examples: cause/effect essay; evaluation or critique; compare/contrast essay)

Given a thesis topic or exploratory question (or arriving at one of their own), students will provide appropriate support for their argument, incorporating logic, careful observation, reflection and personal experience. Part of that support will include use of confirming and opposing evidence relevant to the topic. After gathering valid evidence, students will be asked to evaluate and synthesize that evidence as the basis for their own valid conclusions on the topic or question. [CT 2a and CT 2b; WC 3]

4)Investigate a topic (example: investigative essay)

Students will consider the relationship between their own thinking and writing and the larger community, situating their own arguments vis-à-vis a specific context and to address their writing to a specific audience. [WC 2].

Building on the skills used in the previous essays, students will be asked to

  • show an awareness that there are multiple, competing viewpoints by analyzing the arguments of others and reflecting on the assumptions of other writers and how those assumptions relate to the student’s own assumptions on the topic, [CT 2b &2c]
  • seek and identify confirming and opposing evidence relevant to their own hypothesis, [CT 2a]
  • use the resulting thesis to structure a well-reasoned and well-supported essay, characterized by clear and careful organization, coherent paragraphs and well-constructed sentences that employ the conventions of Standard Written English and appropriate diction. [WC 1 & WC 3]

This assignment will also serve as preliminary introduction to information evaluation and research; to that end, the writing process should include a library session and a brief introduction to proper citation of outside sources.

5) Analyze a text through close reading (example: literary essay)

This assignment, which should come toward the end of the semester, introduces students to the Seminar method of shared inquiry by asking them to advance probing questions about a common text (the text may or may not be fiction, but it should be a challenging written text). Students’ essays should demonstrate a comprehension of the text and an ability to engage in thoughtful analysis of relevant details of the text. In addition to other issues that might be explored by students in this essay, the essay should exhibit a clear understanding of the author’s thesis, style/genre and structure. [CT 1; connection to Seminar]

March 2012