<< Back to Developmental Composition

ENGLISH 098: DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING

COURSE GUIDELINES

COURSE DESCRIPTION (UNIVERSITY CATALOG):
Intensive study of basic writing skills, focusing on the types of writing students will do in college. Frequent reading is also required.

PREREQUISITE:
A CSU English Placement Test score of T 142-150, or if a lower score is achieved on the EPT, a grade of “Credit” in 097. This pre-baccalaureate course is a prerequisite for English 155 for these students.

STUDENT POPULATION:
English 098 is required for students who score between T 142 and 150 on the English Placement Test (EPT) as part of their basic skills development in General Education.

GENERAL AIMS OF THE COURSE:

English 098 is a semester long pre-baccalaureate course for students who score 142-150 on the California State University English Placement Test Composition. While both developmental courses, English 097 and 098, stress reading and writing, English 098 is designed primarily to improve students’ abilities to write in the kinds of genres they will use in their academic careers and beyond. In this course, instructors do not use drill-and-practice methods covering discrete points of grammar, nor do they specifically focus on methods that will only help students to perform well on standard proficiency tests. The course should give students many opportunities to write in ways that challenge them; they should also have many opportunities to discuss their writing with peer groups, and with the class as a whole.

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR THIS COURSE:

• Students will demonstrate competence in the recursive writing process, using strategies for invention, drafting, and revision.

• Students will demonstrate their understanding that writing in an academic context means exploring a subject, distinguishing their own ideas from the ideas of others, and organizing information around a central focus.

• Students will demonstrate developing facility in various genres of writing, including timed writing, personal writing, journal writing, text-based writing, and argument, developing rhetorical strategies appropriate to audience and purpose.

• Students will demonstrate their knowledge of critical reading strategies and apply them to both print and visual texts.

• Students will demonstrate developing competency in organizational patterns, sentence structure, and the basic usage and mechanical practices of Edited American English.

• Students will demonstrate their developing understanding of how to use writing and reading as a means of participating in the world around them.

WRITING REQUIREMENTS:

During the semester, students will write three (3) substantive essays of 3-4 pages, developed through multiple drafts, revisions, in-class essays, and journal entries. Students should also engage in other forms of writing, including shorter free-writes, journal entries, or responses to readings. They will also practice timed writing in class. Writing assignments should grow out of reading assignments and class discussions. Assignments will be reasonably challenging, aimed at developing the intellectual maturity of students by encouraging a critical awareness of themselves, their values, and their multicultural environment. Students should expect to revise their written work. Although all work in the course will be reviewed, not every assignment will be formally evaluated. A portfolio assessment occurs at the end of each semester.

READING REQUIREMENTS:

In developing their abilities to read college level texts critically, students will read widely in fiction and non-fiction forms. Most of the readings should be discussed in class focusing on the author’s ideas and purpose, organization, diction, and other rhetorical strategies. Some instructors may require reading journals or analysis of websites or other visual texts. New Voices, a collection of English 097 and 098 student essays published each year, is required for the course.

ADDITIONAL GOALS:

By the end of the semester, students will be aware of how the writing process – inventing, drafting, revising, editing – becomes actualized in their own writing. Instructors will introduce invention strategies such as brainstorming, clustering, freewriting, as well as small group and full class discussions. Students will understand the needs of their readers by producing essays which provide clear introductions and sufficient detail to accomplish their writing purposes. Instructors will strive to build a writing community by introducing peer collaboration in the reading and writing processes, by encouraging peer response to student writing, by requiring conferences between tutor and student and by providing conferences between instructor and student.