18 Course Objectives & Curriculum Summary

ENGL1010: EXPOSITORY WRITING

Expository Writing focuses on writing as a genre and on learning to adapt composing processes to a variety of expository and analytical writing assignments. More broadly, students are invited to understand how literacy functions in their own lives, in the lives of others, and in communities. By becoming more reflective, flexible writers attendant to the constructed, rhetorical nature of discourse, students build genre awareness key for writing success across the curriculum and in their lives.

Course Objectives

Examine multimodal literacies across contexts, cultures, and communities, including academic disciplines and public audiences (Reading processes)

Reflect on literacy in student lives and across learning experiences (Integrative Thinking)

Compose writing tasks that demonstrate understanding of the rhetorical situation (Rhetorical Knowledge)

Revise writing assignments based on iterative feedback and make appropriate decisions about content, form, and presentation (Composing Processes)

Demonstrate understanding of ethical primary research practices (Genre Conventions)

Practice genre analysis of various types of text—print, digital, and audio (Information Literacy)

The textbook for ENGL 1010 is MTSU’s Custom Everyone’s An Author, available in D2L shells through First-Day Access. Other recommended supplementary sources include the MTSU GEM (award-winning student writing), The Muse: Misunderstandings and Their Remedies, the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives, Writing Spaces, Bad Ideas About Writing, and Try This: Research Methods For Writers.

In what follows, we offer a description of the purpose of each writing project (the exigency), the primary learning objectives for the project (derived from course objectives), genre opportunities for the project (delivery), course reading suggestions (content), and scaffolding assignments (invention).

Project 1 Exigency: Consider your own literacy

The purpose of this assignment is to draw students’ attention to themselves as literate individuals, writers and rhetors who have made many informed decisions about composition throughout their lives. Through building metacognitive awareness, this project introduces students to each other, to you, and writing at the university level. It also helps them begin to see discourse as constructed and rhetorical, key components of the course and later success as flexible, strategic writers.

Because this assignment asks students to draw on their past experiences, they must also use “I” – an experience that some students feel uncomfortable about initially, though many find it liberating and enjoyable. This is also a great tone-setting assignment in which you can encourage students to experiment, challenge themselves, and find joy in writing.

Objectives Emphasized:

• Compose writing tasks that demonstrate understanding of the rhetorical situation (Rhetorical Knowledge)
• Reflect on literacy in student lives and across learning experiences (Integrative Thinking)

Deliverable Variations:

• Literacy Narrative
• Multimodal/Digital Literacy Narrative
• Word Focus/Goal Essay

Project 2 Exigency: Consider the literacy practices of others

In this project students begin to look outside themselves, bringing their burgeoning rhetorical awareness and literacy understanding to primary research opportunities. Adopting primary research methods such as interviews, surveys, and observations, students draw on their findings to craft a window into someone else’s literacy experiences.

Objectives Emphasized:

• Demonstrate understanding of ethical primary research practices (Genre Conventions)

Deliverable Variations:

• Literacy Profile
• Observation Essay

Project 3 Exigency: Consider how literacy functions in communities

In this project, students draw on their literacy learning in Projects 1 and 2 to guide their exploration of how literacy functions more broadly, in communities. In particular, they examine genres rhetorically, considering how community literacies are expressed through genre. Genres function like cultural artifacts, demonstrating their needs, values, and expectations through discourse. Students might focus on one genre in particular, or they might examine myriad genres of a particular community, such as that of a particular university community, major, or discipline.

Objectives Emphasized:

• Examine multimodal literacies across contexts, cultures, and communities, including academic disciplines and public audiences (Reading processes)
• Practice genre analysis of various types of text—print, digital, and audio (Information Literacy)
• Examine multimodal literacies across contexts, cultures, and communities, including academic disciplines and public audiences (Reading processes)

Deliverable Variations:

• Genre Analysis
• Genre Development

Project 4 Exigency: Reflect on literacy across the semester

In this project, students are asked to thoughtfully and mindfully reflect on their work from across the semester and develop an attendant reflection on their learning. In addition to giving students the opportunity to articulate their understandings of course material, the presentational aspect of the project invites students to share their learning with each other, prime their work for ENGL1020, and integrate lessons learned across their coursework.

Objectives Emphasized:

• Compose writing tasks that demonstrate understanding of the rhetorical situation (Rhetorical Knowledge)
• Reflect on literacy in student lives and across learning experiences (Integrative Thinking)

Deliverable Variations:

• E-Portfolio and Reflection
• Presentation of theory of writing