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Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
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After completing the diagnostic essay, students will identify techniques of factual storytelling and descriptive writing, which will culminate in the writing of a personal narrative essay. By using each stage of the writing process, students will demonstrate a clear understanding of point of view, plot, transitions, characters, conflict, theme, and sensory details. These skills will enable students to retell significant events with appropriate levels of detail in both personal and professional settings.
To achieve these objectives:
Image: Swamp by Brian Ainsworth courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Students will learn and apply the first step in the writing process: invention. Invention includes prewriting strategies for generating topic ideas and gathering specific evidence. The emphasis is on content creation, not arranging ideas, drafting formal writing, revising, or editing. This chapter stresses the idea of writing as a multi-step process, whether the student is engaged in personal, academic, or professional writing.
Image: Et l'homme inventa la roue; et ce fut le début de sa fin... by Lou Gabian, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-NC-ND.
Adopt and employ a flexible, multi-step, and recursive writing process that includes prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading, while makine use of written and oral feedback.
Identify different rhetorical situations in order to respond with a clear purpose and with language appropriate for the intended audience and situation.
To achieve these objectives:
Students will learn to write a definition essay, which will accomplish: providing a clear, one-sentence definition, and provide details, specific examples and illustrations, narrative, and compare and contrast in order to flesh out that definition. Students will use both denotation and connotation when defining a term for an audience of their peers.
Image: Dictionary by www.quotecatalog.com courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY 2.0.Understand and apply the concepts of denotation and connotation to increase clarity of a term or concept's definition.
To achieve these objectives:
Students will write an essay using specific examples to illustrate their point. Students will differentiate between interesting, specific examples and general statements. The chapter emphasizes the importance of well-chosen evidence, whether from personal experience or through academic research, when proving a thesis.
To achieve these objectives:
Arrangement refers to the organization and structure of ideas in an essay. Choosing the right structure depends on the application of critical thinking to select the best fit for your purpose. Arrangement is an important step between Invention and Drafting where writers organize their ideas into a plan to use as a roadmap to guide the written draft.
Image by Lenore Edman courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
In the previous module, you learned how to evaluate a specific item, person, place, or phenomenon. And now we need to put that knowledge to further use--being able to evaluate something is the first step to evaluating similar or related things--and this skill is one you'll practice at work and in private. Life is full of choices--you'll have to compare and contrast them.
Image: Comparing... by ericaxel courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
Having practiced description and narrative, students will now begin learning and practicing how to evaluate activities/events, objects, people, places, etc. In thinking about evaluation, it is important to remember that we are always evaluating all sorts of things, and this unit will build on that existing knowledge. By seeing how opinions merge with evidence, students will learn to make well-informed judgements, which they will be asked to do in work environments and their personal lives.
Image: Scales by Dominic Melton, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
As much as writing is about producing an essay for us, it is just as important a question of process--how do we produce successive drafts and how do you improve on the first draft, revising it into the last? This chapter will explain some strategies for drafting and getting words on the page or screen. Revision comes next, as those drafts have to be reimagined, changed, and reorganized often to produce a good, final draft. Revision is literally about seeing again, and it's important to remember this isn't proofing or editing necessarily.
Image: NYC, 40 Bond, Gate, Draft Design by Detlef Schoberg, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-ND. 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
The cause and effect essay details the reasons for (causes) and the outcomes of (effects) an event, condition, or decision. The purpose of the cause and effect essay is to determine how various phenomena relate. The essay attempts to discover either the origins of something, the effects or results that can be properly attributed to it, or both. For example, a single cause can produce many different effects, or a single effect may have several causes. Understanding the significance and relationships among causes and the relationships, effects, or both are important elements of the cause and effect essay.
Image: Dominos by Phillip Taylor, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
Argumentation is a process of reasoning that asserts the reasonableness of a position, belief, or conclusion. An effective argumentative essay introduces a compelling, debatable topic to engage the reader. The purpose of the argument essay is to establish the writer's opinion or position on a topic and persuade others to share or at least acknowledge the validity of the writer's opinion in a fair, logical, and engaging process.
Image: Debate na UFMG by Eu Governo, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives:
Image: The Review, Part 2 by With Associates, courtesy of Flickr. CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Upon completion of this module, you will be able to:
To achieve these objectives: