First Year Core

By the end of ENC 1101, students will:

• Respond in writing to various rhetorical purposes and address the needs of various audiences;
• Develop their ideas through a recursive process of writing, revision, and editing;
• Display appropriate format, structure and stylistic choices to meet audience needs and to satisfy their rhetorical purpose;
• Develop an effective thesis and support it with reasons and evidence;
• Interact with complex texts, explore alternative perspectives, and articulate and support their own perspective in response;
• Incorporate sourced materials into their own work through effective use of quotation, summary, paraphrase and citation using MLA or other appropriate style manual;
• Exhibit appropriate syntax, punctuation, and spelling;
• Develop a rhetorical vocabulary for understanding and talking about writing.
• Major Writing Projects with Learning Outcomes
• Instructors should choose three major writing projects along with teaching a unit on writing under pressure. The final capstone project should stem from the Analyzing and Synthesizing
• Ideas chapter of the text.

The corresponding writing project would be a strong response or rhetorical analysis. Instructors are encouraged to spend more time with low-stakes writing projects during the first theoretical/introductory chapters of the text to ensure that students are grasping important rhetorical concepts.

At the end of the unit, students should:

• Demonstrate familiarity with/understanding of rhetorical concepts including rhetorical situation, rhetorical purpose/aim, audience, rhetorical appeals, genre, angle of vision; reading against the grain;
• Recognize the rhetorical strategies and stylistic choices made by experienced communicators;
• Read and summarize another writer's argument succinctly;
• Articulate a clear perspective on the way the assigned text works rhetorically;
• Purposefully incorporate quotations, summary, and paraphrase using attributive tags, quotation marks, and appropriate citation style;
• Employ revision and editing strategies appropriate to the audience and purpose.

At the end of the unit, students should:

• Produce a final written project that indicates a clear rhetorical purpose and that is appropriate for a diverse audience of peers;
• Use conventions of open-form prose;
• Show engagement with issues of language, literacy, rhetoric, or cultures;
• Apply knowledge of the following persuasive appeals and rhetorical concepts: ethos, pathos, logos, angle of vision;
• Use specific language (descriptive, figurative, with attention paid to word choice);
• Produce a final draft that shows evidence of a thoughtful writing process, including invention, revision, and proof-reading;
• Use syntax, punctuation, and spelling effectively in service of rhetorical purpose.

At the end of the unit, students should:

• Produce a clearly organized analysis that indicates understanding of the persuasive effects of images and that discusses angle of vision, compositional features, rhetorical choices, audience appeals, and cultural assumptions.
• Continue to show evidence of “reading with and against the grain”;
• Craft an introduction that hooks the reader;
• Revise and edit to achieve a clear rhetorical purpose and to meet audience needs.

The ENC 1101 capstone project focuses on analyzing and synthesizing ideas from at least two complex texts. At the end of the unit, students should:

• Interact with a group of texts, explore alternative perspectives, and present a new perspective of their own;
• Summarize multiple complex texts indicating understanding of the authors’ arguments and rhetorical strategies;
• Develop a focused thesis that indicates their analysis and synthesis of assigned readings to arrive at their own perspective;
• Use textual evidence effectively to support claims;
• Cite sources appropriately using MLA or other assigned style manual;
• Use syntax, punctuation, and spelling effectively in service of rhetorical purpose.

At the end of the unit, students should:

• Demonstrate their ability to adapt their writing processes to an abbreviated time frame;
• Analyze an essay exam question to understand what the question is looking for by recognizing cues and by interpreting and responding to key terms;
• Produce a written document, written under time constraint, that responds effectively to the prompt and that exhibits a clear thesis, coherent organization, and content appropriate to the question.

• Lunsford, Andrea. The Everyday Writer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Customized for Florida International University.
• Ramage, John, John Bean and June Johnson. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. New York: Pearson, 2012. Customized for Florida International University. Fifth Edition.

By the end of ENC 1102, students will:

• Write to achieve varying purposes and to engage different audiences;
• Understand the structure of closed-form arguments (including claim, reasons, evidence, counter-argument, and underlying assumptions);
• Employ effective persuasive appeals;
• Generate research questions that lead to meaningful inquiry;
• Show knowledge of conventions of academic research, including the ability to locate, evaluate, and document sources and to incorporate sources effectively into their work;
• Further their rhetorical vocabulary for understanding and talking about writing, becoming more adept at understanding and employing rhetorical concepts taught in ENC 1101 and learning new concepts related to research and argumentation.
• Understand the complexities of academic plagiarism.
• Major Writing Projects with Unit Learning Outcomes
• Instructors should choose three major writing projects along with a research proposal.

At the end of the unit, students should:

• Complete a writing project with the purpose of convincing their reader of the feasibility of their proposed research project;
• Define an area of interest appropriate for extended research;
• Define a problematic, significant and interesting question which will be explored and refined in the research;
• Demonstrate that adequate resources are available for the topic;
• Identify an audience or discipline appropriate for the topic;
• Develop a plan for effectively managing, organizing and conducting a research project.

Instructors assign either an exploratory narrative or an annotated bibliography with critical preface. At the end of the unit, students should:

• Show a promising start to their capstone extended writing project, engaging with sources related to their research question and illustrating a feasible approach to research;
• Pose a timely research question that is likely to engage a chosen audience;
• Conduct relevant research (taking detailed notes while rhetorically locating, evaluating and analyzing sources);
• Choose sources purposefully and reflectively, rather than randomly;
• Effectively summarize, analyze, and synthesize the ideas of others;
• Read sources with attention to their rhetorical context;
• Employ dialectic thinking using thesis, antithesis, and synthesis;
• Demonstrate engagement with sources and wrestling with ideas to explore the research question;
• Document the evolution of the writer’s thinking by recounting the research process and subsequent analysis;
• Employ editing strategies appropriate to the audience and purpose to cultivate a convincing scholarly ethos.

Instructors assign either an analysis of field research data or an informative essay. At the end of the unit, students should:

• Write with a primary rhetorical purpose to inform;
• Respond to the needs of chosen or assigned audience;
• Demonstrate engagement with focused and meaningful research questions;
• Demonstrate rhetorically-effective use of primary research (interview, observation, survey questionnaire, or a combination of the three);
• Cite primary sources correctly in appropriate citation style;
• Effectively incorporate research materials into the document;
• Produce a final draft that shows evidence of a thoughtful writing process, including invention, revision, and proof-reading;
• Use syntax, punctuation, and spelling effectively in service of rhetorical purpose.

Instructors assign a classical argument or a proposal to solve a problem. At the end of the unit, students should:

• Produce a thoughtful, logically structured, and well-researched argument;
• Show evidence of engagement with a timely topic and research question;
• Use secondary sources that are effective for the chosen audience and rhetorical purpose;
• Document secondary research (both in-text and in Works Cited) correctly according to a specified citation style;
• Use appropriately summary, paraphrase, and direct quotations to support and develop claims;
• Employ rhetorical appeals effectively;
• Produce a final draft that shows evidence of a thoughtful writing process, including invention, revision, and editing;
• Use syntax, punctuation, and spelling effectively in service of rhetorical purpose and to support the writer’s ethos.

Additionally, proposals should:

• Employ rhetorical appeals effectively to create presence for the problem;
• Describe the problem in ways that appeal to the interests and values of the audience;
• Write a well-designed argument justifying a workable solution to the problem;
• Address counterargument by discussing alternatives, rationale, and outcomes;
• Employ an effective document design using appropriate layout, clear headings, and visuals;
• Use conventions of the discipline and/or decision-making group your project addresses;
• Employ editing strategies appropriate to the audience and purpose.

• Lunsford, Andrea. The Everyday Writer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Customized for Florida International University.
• Ramage, John, John Bean and June Johnson. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. New York: Pearson, 2012. Customized for Florida International University. Fifth Edition.

By the end of ENC 1930, students will:

• Write with a particular purpose to develop a central idea with supporting details;
• Develop a rhetorical vocabulary and apply persuasive strategies appropriate for a specific purpose, audience, and genre;
• Read and compose in various genres to understand how genre conventions are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes;
• Begin developing the ability to adapt conventions such as format, structure, document design, and style for the chosen genre and rhetorical context;
• Understand writing as a means to discover and reconsider ideas;
• Develop flexible strategies for reading, composing, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, and editing;
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress;
• Reflect on your developing identity as a writer and your composing processes;
• Produce focused and logically organized paragraphs and writing projects;
• Use rhetorically effective college-level spelling, grammar, mechanics, and word choice for the target audience.

• Choices, A Writing Guide with Readings, 5th Edition. Mangelsdorf, Kate; Posey, Evelyn. Bedford/St. Martins, ISBN: 978-0-312-61140-8
• Everyday Writing, Glau, Gregory R.; De Duttagupta, Chitralekha. Pearson. ISBN: 978-0-205-73659-1
• Ideas & Aims, Taylor, Tim; Copeland, Linda. Pearson ISBN: 9780321956033

• Lunsford, Andrea. The Everyday Writer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Customized for Florida International University.