📚 ENGL2089 Intermediate Composition

Course Description: Have you ever noticed that the way you communicate on Snapchat is different from the way you communicate on LinkedIn? Or have you ever noticed that when you play video games you use a specific jargon to communicate with alike gamers? Or have you ever noticed you behave and speak differently in one friend group as opposed to another? These are just a few examples of the many ways you and others have developed literacies, or fluency in certain disciplines or discourses. This course will examine the ways that specific social contexts—like social media, the world of gaming, a class lecture, etc.—forms us into discourse communities and affects the way we write, read, speak, and communicate with each other.

Intermediate Composition is a writing-centered course that builds on what students learn in first-year composition and focuses students’ attention on theoretical underpinning of how meaning is made, understood, and communicated within and across various discourse communities and genres. The course emphasizes critical reading and writing, advanced research and analysis skills, and rhetorical sensitivity to differences in academic, professional, and public composing. This course challenges students to engage in substantive projects drawing on primary research and source analysis methods and asks students to document, communicate, and reflect on their research. 

This is very much a process-based class. This is not a lecture-based class. To successfully navigate

such a class, we will be building on ideas from one assignment to the next. In addition, we will be

working together to gain a deeper understanding of our own writing process by giving and receiving feedback from each other. Please understand this means that others will be reading your work. I understand that writing can be very personal. Please keep this rule of thumb in mind: If you don’t want to share it with classmates, please don’t write it. Further, in a process-based class, showing up and engaging is just as important as the process itself. Let’s make the most of this by being present in all forms of that word.