Composition Courses

CO192: First Year Seminar - Academic Writing

Prerequisite: CO150 Placement Examination

In this course, students practice processes appropriate for college reading and writing: identifying rhetorical contexts (audiences and purposes) common in academic discourse and writing about personal experience as well as academic readings. By writing and revising several essays, students refine their prewriting, drafting, and revising strategies to produce focused and detailed papers. This course fulfills the University Core requirement for a first-year seminar.

Course content: emphasizes writing process through both expressive and expository writing. The course will include the following concepts and writing assignments:

CONCEPTS

Writing processes and writing rituals
Prewriting strategies
Audience awareness
Focusing and developing ideas
Linking personal experience with academic context
Organizational strategies
Revising strategies
Reading and writing about thematic materials

ASSIGNMENTS
The course will draw on thematic readings (changed from year to year). For example, readings might emphasize the concept of home, community, cultural pluralism, or freedom vs. responsibility--topics that students can react to with personal experience but also reflect upon from more academic viewpoints. (Anthologies are currently available with thematic focus on multiculturalism, home, and community.) Throughout the semester, students will summarize readings, but they will also write about the theme through other expository approaches.

Evaluation: Students will prepare a final portfolio of three to five revised pieces. In addition, they will be required to complete a holistically scored final summary-and-response essay. Although the final essay will affect decisions to pass students into CO150, the portfolio will be more significant in determining readiness for CO150 because it will reflect writing processes stressed throughout the course.

Placement: Incoming freshmen and transfer students who have not completed the all-university writing requirements are required to take the Composition Placement Examination. Students are placed into the Writing Center Individual Tutorial, First Year Seminar - Academic Writing, or CO150 College Composition -- or are given credit for CO150 College Composition -- based on their performance on the examination. For more information on the placement examination, visit the Placement Examination page on the Writing Center Web site.

Course Syllabus: A sample weekly syllabus is available on this site.

Contact us: Through the mail at 1773 Campus Delivery, 359 Eddy Hall, Ft. Collins, CO 80523-1773. On the phone at (970) 491-6428. By email at english@lamar.colostate.edu.

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