Goal 1: Rhetorical Awareness
Learn strategies for analyzing texts’ audiences, purposes, and contexts as a means of developing facility in reading and writing.
Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
- 1A. identify the purposes of, intended audiences for, and arguments in a text, as situated within particular cultural, economic, and political contexts.
- 1B. analyze the ways a text’s purposes, audiences, and contexts influence rhetorical options.
- 1C. analyze how genres shape reading and composing practices.
- 1D. read in ways that contribute to their rhetorical knowledge as writers.
- 1E. respond to a variety of writing contexts calling for purposeful shifts in structure, medium, design, level of formality, tone, and/or voice.
Goal 2: Critical Thinking and Composing
Use reading and writing for purposes of critical thinking, research, problem solving, action, and participation in conversations within and across different communities.
Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
- 2A. employ a variety of research methods, including primary and/or secondary research, for purposes of inquiry.
- 2B. evaluate the quality, appropriateness, and credibility of sources.
- 2C. incorporate evidence, such as through summaries, paraphrases, quotations, and visuals.
- 2D. synthesize research findings in development of an argument.
- 2E. support ideas or positions with compelling discussion of evidence from multiple sources.
- 2F. compose persuasive researched arguments for various audiences and purposes, and in multiple modalities.
Goal 3: Reflection and Revision
Understand composing processes as flexible and collaborative, drawing upon multiple strategies and informed by reflection.
Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
- 3A. adapt composing and revision processes for a variety of technologies and modalities.
- 3B. produce multiple revisions on global and local levels.
- 3C. suggest useful global and local revisions to other writers.
- 3D. identify the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
- 3E. evaluate and act on peer and instructor feedback to revise their texts.
- 3F. reflect on their progress as academic writers.
Goal 4: Conventions
Understand conventions as related to purpose, audience, and genre, including such areas as mechanics, usage, citation practices, as well as structure, style, graphics, and design.
Student Learning Outcomes: At the end of the First-Year Composition (FYC) sequence, students will be able to
- 4A. follow appropriate conventions for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising.
- 4B. reflect on why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary.
- 4C. identify and effectively use variations in genre conventions, including formats and/or design features.
- 4D. demonstrate familiarity with the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions.
- 4E. apply citation conventions systematically in their own work.