ENGL 081 - Fundamentals of Written Communication

Credits: 5
A writing course that focuses on the skills designed to prepare students for ENGL 099  or professional/technical degrees. Introduces students to the writing process so they can write well-organized and developed paragraphs and short essays. Students study grammar, basic sentence structure, mechanics, punctuation, and improve vocabulary and spelling. Students also read works that include various rhetorical structures and themes in order to improve critical reading and writing skills.

Prerequisite: Appropriate Reading placement score. Note: Some students from certain school districts are eligible for the transcript placement option.

Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

1. Use the writing process in order to write clear, well-organized paragraphs and build to short essays.
2. Focus a topic for both a paragraph and a short essay, develop ideas, organize ideas, write an introduction and conclusion, and maintain unity (and coherence) in their writing.
3. Review sentence structure, mechanics, punctuation, and spelling in order to write sentences that are clear in meaning.
4. Improve vocabulary.
5. Improve skills in critical reading and writing by examining a variety of texts that illustrate different writing structures and themes.

1. Produce effective written communication, which demonstrates critical thinking; writing and research processes; and knowledge of genres for workplace, expository, or research writing.
2. Demonstrate college-level reading skills by summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and evaluating college texts; and develop an awareness of the approaches writers use for different audiences, genres, and rhetorical situations.

 

College-wide Outcomes

• Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.
• Responsibility - Responsibility encompasses those behaviors and dispositions necessary for students to be effective members of a community. This outcome is designed to help students recognize the value of a commitment to those responsibilities which will enable them to work successfully individually and with others.