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CO130: Course Description

Prerequisite: Composition Challenge Examination

Course content:  In this course, students practice processes appropriate for college reading and writing: identifying rhetorical contexts (audiences and purposes) common in academic discourse and writing about personal experience as well as academic readings. By writing and revising several essays, students refine their prewriting, drafting, and revising strategies to produce focused and detailed papers.

CO130 emphasizes writing process through both expressive and expository writing. The course will include the following concepts and writing assignments:

Concepts

• Writing processes and writing rituals
• Prewriting strategies
• Audience awareness
• Focusing and developing ideas
• Linking personal experience with academic context
• Organizational strategies
• Revising strategies
• Reading and writing about thematic materials

• The course will draw on thematic readings (changed from year to year). For example, readings might emphasize the concept of home, community, cultural pluralism, or freedom vs. responsibility--topics that students can react to with personal experience but also reflect upon from more academic viewpoints. (Anthologies are currently available with thematic focus on multiculturalism, home, and community.) Throughout the semester, students will summarize readings, but they will also write about the theme through other expository approaches.

Evaluation: Students will prepare a final portfolio of three to five revised pieces. In addition, they will be required to complete a holistically scored final summary-and-response essay. Although the final essay will affect decisions to pass students into CO150, the portfolio will be more significant in determining readiness for CO150 because it will reflect writing processes stressed throughout the course.

Placement: Students who score 500 or higher on the SAT verbal or 20 or higher on the ACT English section of the exam are placed into CO150. Students who score lower than 500 on the SAT verbal or lower than 20 on the ACT English must take the Composition Challenge Examination to be placed in a composition course. Students are placed into the Writing Center Individual Tutorial, CO130 - Academic Writing, or CO150 College Composition -- or are given credit for CO150 College Composition -- based on their performance on the examination. For more information on the Composition Challenge Examination, visit the Composition Challenge Examination page.

Course Syllabus: A sample weekly syllabus is available on this site. Please note that this online syllabus serves as a general model that can be adapted by CO130 instructors. Specific sections of CO130 may use a syllabus that varies from the sample weekly syllabus.