1. ENGL 102-07 1
College Writing and Rhetoric
Fall 2017, MWF 11:30-12:20, TLC 249
Instructor: Zachary Williamson
Email: zwilliamson@uidaho.edu
Office Hours: Brink 114, Monday & Wednesday 10:30-11:20, 1:30-2:30 *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 the course, a successful student should be able to:
1. Accurately assess and effectively respond to a wide variety of audiences and rhetorical
situations.
2. Comprehend college-level and professional prose and analyze how authors present their ideas
in view of their probable purposes, audiences, and occasions.
3. Present ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others (including the
ability to paraphrase, summarize, and correctly cite and document borrowed material).
4. Focus on, articulate, and sustain a purpose that meets the needs of specific writing situations.
5. Explicitly articulate why they are writing, who they are writing for, and what they are saying.
6. Write critical analyses and syntheses of college-level and professional prose.
7. Be able to make the connection between questions and problems in your life both within and
outside of college.
8. Gather and evaluate information and use it for a rhetorical purpose in writing a research paper.
9. Attend to and productively incorporate a variety of perspectives.
10. Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.
11. Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-
thinking to revise their work.
12. Give and receive constructive feedback from peers.
13. Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation and practice
appropriate means of documenting their work.
14. Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources,
including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government
databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources.
Of course, I expect that you are able to carry out some of these tasks already.
Required Materials
• Becoming Rhetorical by Jodie Nicotra (this text will be provided electronically by the instructor)
• Students will also need a notebook/journal designated for this class.
