SEARCH
Students working in library

First Year Writing Program: ENGC 101

First Year Writing Program | First Year Writing Program: ENGC 101
First Year Writing Program: ENGC 102 | First Year Writing Program: Links

Exposition
ENGC 101 and ENGC 101L
Skill Sets

In ENGC 101 and Eng 101L, the instructor introduces students to the following skills and plans essay assignments designed to help students master them:

Audience Awareness Skills

  • Familiarity with informal, semiformal, and formal diction;
  • Ability to analyze audience and anticipate biases, objections and questions;
  • Flexibility of writing style--changing organization, development, sentence structure, word choice, mechanics, and usage as the audience changes;
  • Ability to adopt an appropriate tone and language for the audience;
  • Ability to adopt an appropriate tone and language for the topic;
  • Consistency in point of view and author voice.

Organization Skills

  • Ability to focus a topic to a suitable scope;
  • Formulation of a clear, focused thesis;
  • Ability to use several essay organization methods;
  • Ability to relate the main points of an essay to the thesis;
  • Control over paragraph coherence and development;
  • Inclusion of adequate transitional devices;
  • Inclusion of an appropriate introduction and conclusion

       Development Skills

  • Effectively compose an essay through various strategies of development:
    • narration
    • definition
    • exemplification
    • comparison/contrast
    • cause/effect
  • Demonstration of several invention methods (e.g. clustering, listing, using heuristics, etc.);
  • Ability to develop the appropriate content for the specific length of an essay;
  • Ability to develop the main idea of a paragraph by using description, illustration, and/or reasoning;
  • Ability to present ideas without unnecessary repetition;
  • Invention of introductory paragraphs--writing various types and choosing the appropriate kind of introduction;
  • Invention of concluding paragraphs--writing various types and choosing the appropriate kind of conclusion;
  • Acknowledgment of any sources that may have been used to support an essay's ideas.

Sentence Structure Skills

  • Familiarity with sentence structures which conform to conventional English;
  • Ability to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate sentence fragments ;
  • Recognition of run-on sentences and comma splices;
  • Production of clear, well-formed sentences;
  • Control over sentence variety by effectively combining sentences;
  • Control over sentence complexity by effectively using coordination and subordination      

Word Choice Skills

  • Ability to distinguish between precise and vague words;
  • Ability to create lively expressions rather than using clichés and redundancy;
  • Familiarity with the appropriate use of idiomatic expressions.

Grammar/Usage/Mechanics Skills

  • Ability to use appropriate verb and auxiliary forms, noun and pronoun forms, adjective and adverb forms;
  • Consistency in subject/verb forms;
  • Consistency in pronoun/antecedent forms;
  • Correct use of punctuation;
  • Correct spelling;
  • Control over standard manuscript conventions;
  • Ability to use a dictionary and handbook effectively