This document is the syllabus for an introductory college composition course called English 102. The course aims to improve students' skills in persuasive and expository writing that will be useful in other college courses and jobs. By the end of the course, students should be able to demonstrate an awareness of rhetorical strategies in writing, think critically, understand writing as a process, and compose college-level academic arguments. Students are required to purchase two textbooks - Becoming Rhetorical and Educated: A Memoir - and have a notebook for the class.

1. ENGL 102-28 SYLLABUS Page 1 of 2
College Writing and Rhetoric
Fall 2018, TR 3:30-4:45, TLC 247
Instructor: Zachary Williamson
Email: zwilliamson@uidaho.edu
Office: Brink Hall 127
Hours: M&W 10:30-12:30; Tuesday 1:00-2:30; or by appointment*
Course Goals and Learning Outcomes
English 102 is an introductory composition course designed to improve your skills in persuasive
and expository writing; the sort you will be doing in other courses in college and in many jobs.
Sometimes this kind of writing is called transactional writing; it is used to transact something—
persuade and inform a reasonably well-educated audience, conduct business, evaluate, review, or
explain a complex process, procedure, or event.
By the end of this course, a student should be able to:
1. Demonstrate awareness and application of rhetorical strategies in the writing produced by
others and yourself:
• How writers use rhetoric:
o Comprehend college-level and professional prose and analyze how authors
present their ideas in view of their probable purposes, audiences, genres,
modalities.
• Use rhetoric yourself:
o Accurately assess and effectively respond to a wide variety of audiences and
rhetorical situations and articulate your rhetorical purpose for writing, who
you are writing for, what you are saying, and how you’ve decided to present it
(genre and modality).
o Use evidence for a rhetorical purpose in writing a research paper.
2. Demonstrate critical thinking:
• Productively incorporate a variety of perspectives when considering or composing an
argument.
• Present ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others.
• Write critical analyses and syntheses of college-level and professional prose.
3. Demonstrate your understanding that writing is a process.
• Apply a variety of strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.
• Revise your writing using additional invention and re-thinking after initial draft is
produced.
• Give and receive constructive feedback from peers.
4. Compose arguments that meet college-level expectations for academic compositions.
• Compose a focused claim supported with logical and clear reasons and evidence.
• Synthesize arguments made by other rhetors to develop and support your own claim.
• Apply current citation rules in situations like paraphrasing, summarizing, citing and
documenting borrowed material.

2. ENGL 102-28 SYLLABUS Page 2 of 2
Required Materials
• Becoming Rhetorical, by Jodie Nicotra. Cengage, 2019. (available in the Vandal bookstore)
• Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover. Random House, 2018. (also available in the
bookstore)
• Students will also need a notebook/journal designated for this class.