Guidelines for ENC1101

All ENC1101 assignments and activities should be directed toward fulfilling the following Course Objectives.

• Students will engage in invention, discovery, drafting, and revision as a deliberate writing process.
• Students will learn a range of available choices to produce effective writing for specific audiences.
• Students will develop critical reading and thinking skills.
• Students will gain confidence and control as writers.

ENC1101 assigns four major writing projects.

Core 1-Exploring Oneself: a memoir
A memoir is a personal essay that recreates a past event, person, and/or place and connects that memory to the present, self-aware writer. The reader is able to both comprehend the significance of the memory and understand the writer's experience. Memoirs often place this intimate experience in a larger historical or cultural context. The writer can either be the observer of events or an active participant. Memoirs are very much like scrapbooks that immortalize rich, insightful moments.

Students should be able to:

• Identify a specific audience
• Write in a personal voice
• Select and order events into a narrative
• Construct and convey the meaning of a clearly significant moment

ASSIGNMENT
Write an essay in a personal voice that recreates a particular experience. Incorporate narrative techniques and sensory detail as well as dialogue, characterization, thought passages, and flashbacks.

Core 2-Exploring Problems: a political or social commentary
A political or social commentary is a subjective essay that uses analysis and interpretation to find patterns of meaning in political or social events, trends, and ideas. The writer engages the readers as co-thinkers, helping them make sense out of conflicting issues and differences that divide people or bring them together. The writer takes on a distinct and personal narrative voice to present a convincing and reasoned position.

Students should be able to:

• Explore the context of an event, trend, or idea
• Synthesize its range of viewpoints
• Identify the problem for a specific audience
• Analyze its patterns of meaning

ASSIGNMENT
Write an essay that analyzes patterns of meaning in a social or political text that explores a contemporary event, trend, or idea. The writer's relationship to the subject should be clear and the essay should engage its readers in the issue, but not necessarily offer a solution.

Core 3-Evaluating our Culture: a review
"Reviews are a genre of writing people turn to when they are called on to make evaluations. Of course, reviewers normally describe and analyze whatever they are reviewing-whether a movie, a CD, an employee's performance, or a government program. Still as readers are aware, reviewers provide this background information and analysis as evidence for the evaluation they are making. In some cases, reviewers also offer recommendations . . . but what is invariably present is the evaluation itself." John Trimbur, The Call to Write

Students should be able to:

• Provide a persuasive thesis
• Describe a text
• Establish relevant criteria
• Evaluate a text for a specific audience

ASSIGNMENT
Write an essay that evaluates a cultural text* by establishing and justifying criteria relevant to the text.

• *printed text
• film
• CD
• program
• performance
• event

Core 4-Entering a Public Forum: an argument
Public arguments voice the opinions of individuals or groups that share a common concern. Like commentary, public arguments analyze issues and take a position. However, public arguments go beyond commentary by recommending a course of action or offering a solution.

Students should be able to:

• Develop a thesis that argues for public action
• Research, integrate and document credible sources
• Assume a public voice
• Persuade a specific audience

ASSIGNMENT
Write an essay that's a position on a public issue. Use secondary sources to support a thesis, offering an audience a strategy for changing the status quo.

ENC1101 faculty will design activities to address

• using a reference handbook
• revising, editing, and proofreading
• organizing a writing process
• soliciting and assessing feedback from readers (e.g., peer workshops, UWC)
• developing a thesis
• understanding how parts of a writing project function ( e.g., what an introduction does, how transitions work)
• accessing, retrieving and evaluating primary and secondary sources
• integrating primary and secondary sources
• choosing effective appeals to persuade an audience
• establishing a voice appropriate to the writing project
• recognizing the conventions of different genres
• documenting sources in MLA format