I.  TITLE: Composition and Research

II. CATALOG DESCRIPTION: Practice in advanced composition skills, with emphasis on techniques of research.

III. PURPOSE: The course is designed to help students improve their research and argumentation skills while further developing their writing processes, their critical thinking skills, their contextual awareness, and the organizational effectiveness of their writing. This course cultivates the following Characteristics of an MSU Graduate:
Characteristic 1: Engage in mature, independent thought and express that thought effectively in oral and written communication. ENG 102 helps students express their thoughts, developed in response to the thoughts of others, in clear prose and in class discussion.

Characteristic 2: Understand the critical and scientific methodologies academic disciplines employ to discover knowledge and ascertain its validity. ENG 102 helps students learn appropriate research methadologies and then actually conduct research using those methodologies. Characteristic 6: Understand the dynamics of cultural diversity, of competing economic and political systems, and of complex moral and ethical issues. ENG 102 engages students in the gathering of and writing about information concerning their world and social topics affecting them. Readings include argumentative texts designed to increase student awareness of the world.

IV. COURSE OBJECTIVES: The course goals include teaching students to
*refme the skills developed in ENG 101;
*understand academic and professional writing situations, audiences, and processes;
*gather research material from a variety of sources, including the library and electronic sources;
*analyze, summarize, paraphrase, quote and document sources;
*critically evaluate and synthesize material from multiple sources;
*skillfully produce source-based writing, including adequate support and logical development of arguments.

V. CONTENT OUTLINE: The course attempts to meet the above objectives by helping students do the following, arranged in order of minimum competence to full competence:
1. Know the appropriate process for assembling an academic essay.
2. Comprehend the necessity for considering audience, purpose, and production of the final text in writing an essay.
3. Apply the appropriate logical principles to their arguments.
4. Synthesize the multiple perspectives available regarding the topics which the students have chosen to write about.
5. Analyze the rhetorical strategies used by authors—both in published texts and on the Internet.
6. Evaluate the effectiveness of an argument and reflect that newfound knowledge in effective arguments written by the student.
7. Write assignments that move sequentially toward more sophisticated, rhetorically challenging requirements, including Reflective Argument, Research Report, Analysis/Refutation, and Source-Based Argument.

VI. INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES: Students will write a source-based argumentative paper 8-10 pages in length. Students will also write 3-4 additional papers, 12-16 pages total, for a course total of 20-26 pages. Topics for these additional papers are drawn from at least two of the first three blocks named above. Students should complete one or more preliminary drafts for each formal paper.
  This course will also involve conducting research which may use primary sources, secondary sources, computer sources such as the Internet and databases, and personal experience, reading, critical analyses of that reading, and discussion of the reading and of other students’ texts.

VII. FIELD AND CLINICAL EXPERIENCES: Not applicable.

VIII. RESOURCES: Computer labs, library. internet and database research tools.

IX. GRADING PROCEDURES: Instructors will devote the bulk of the course grading to student writing (80-95%), with some attention devoted to class participation and attendance (5-20%).
Within these limits, student writing will be evaluated on its adherence to assignment and on a demonstration of students’ writing ability in the following areas as reflected in their texts (presented in order from lower order to higher order concerns):
(10-20%): Knowledge of usage, mechanics, appropriate diction, voice, and style for a given audience and purpose; understanding of the process stages of writing (reflects revision). -

(20-30%): Comprehension of appropriate development, cohesion, coherence; understanding of idea development including appropriate evaluation, synthesis, and incorporation of external sources’ ideas.

(65-70%): Analysis of the topic by reflecting a mastery both of subject matter and of the assignment and by clearly presenting the purpose and controlling idea of their own writing and of cited authors’ ideas;
Application of the appropriate logical principles; avoidance of fallacies;
Synthesis of the multiple perspectives regarding their topics as evident in their citing of appropriate outside sources;
Analysis of effective rhetorical strategies as evident in the appropriate selection of quotations, details, and examples;
Evaluation of an argument’s overall effectiveness as reflected in the originality and sophistication of students’ ideas and approach to the topic.

X. ATTENDANCE POLICY: Regular class attendance is vital to academic success. Except in truly extraordinary circumstances, missing more than 10% of scheduled class sessions (generally 4 MV/F classes, 3 TTH classes) will result in a lowering of the course grade; missing more than 25% of scheduled class sessions (generally 10 MV/F, 7 TH) will result in automatic failure of the course.

XI. ACADEMIC HONESTY POLICY: See the attached policy from the Division of Humanistic Studies.

XII. TEXTS AND REFERENCES:
All students will be required to purchase the following handbook, which incorporates rhetorical instruction, as well as information for source citation and for stylistic and mechanical concerns:
Raimes, Ann. Keys for Writers: A Brief Handbook. Boston: Houghton Muffin Co., 1996.

Instructors will give multiple reading assignments from one text chosen from a departmentally approved list of readers; the current list follows. Students will then discuss those readings in class and/or will write papers based on those readings. These readers contain multi-disciplinary essays which can be used as examples and/or models for the rhetorical categories above (Reflective Argument, Research Report, Analysis/Refutation, and Source-Based Argument):

Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, Longman
Crossfire: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader, Longman
Current Issues and Enduring Questions, Bedford-St. Martin’s
Issues Across the Curriculum, Mayfleld

XIII. PREREQUISITES: ENG 101

Last updated February 14, 2000. Designed and maintained by Kyosung Koo