English+311+outcomes

ENGLISH 311 ADVANCED COMPOSITION

Students who complete ENGLISH 311 will demonstrate at the advanced level 1.) facility with writing processes, 2.) critical awareness when reading and writing professional-level texts, with “professional” indicating a level of competency that meets the discourse expectations of the workplace, whether that location is a school district, non-profit organization, industry, or corporation, and 3.) stylistic fluency and technical accuracy at the professional level. These goals may be achieved through the sub-goals listed below.

Here is what I suggest as the required goals for 311, which could stand as a template for the other AW courses.

1. Show facility with writing processes:
 * apply a repertoire of invention, arrangement, and composing strategies to a variety of communication contexts;
 * assess the need for revision in one's own work and in the work of others;
 * evaluate and apply appropriate technologies effectively to composing processes;

2. Critical awareness when reading and writing professional-level texts:
 * locate and identify issues in a range of sources appropriate within one's discipline;
 * synthesize information from a range of sources to produce a relevant stance in a given rhetorical situation;
 * identify and analyze audience, purpose and persuasive strategies in a text, printed or visual;
 * use appropriate genre, content, organization and diction for a given rhetorical situation;
 * apply appropriate ethical, logical and emotional persuasive appeals in a given rhetorical situation;

3. Stylistic fluency and technical accuracy at the professional level:
 * demonstrate enhanced fluency and distinctiveness in writing styles pertinent to students’ fields of specialization;
 * develop graphics using design principles to support message of a text (i.e., layout, headings, tables, charts, graphs, technical illustrations, and photograph layouts);

Older versions:

1. Show facility with writing processes:
 * (p) assess writing, identify requisite revisions, and implement necessary changes for effective discourses**;--I wonder if our "practice" suggestions should be more specific, like, "Assess the need for revision in one's own work and in other's through guided editing (i.e., peer evaluation sheets, revision checklists, oral presentations).**
 * I also wonder if our "practice" suggestions should go with specific required goals. This one could go with the next item.**
 * (r) apply a repertoire of invention, arrangement, composing, and revising/editing strategies to a variety of communication contexts; **--I shortened this one a bit.**
 * (r) apply appropriate technologies effectively to composing processes;
 * (p) make use of journaling to support the study and production of texts.

2. Demonstrate critical awareness when reading and writing professional-level texts:


 * (p) demonstrate critical thinking, reading, and writing skills through preparation of sustained, thoroughly supported, appropriately expressed, rhetorically situated documents; **--I think critical reading should be required. Maybe something like this: "Analyze audience, purpose and persuasive strategies in a text, printed or visual."**
 * (r) interpret and define rhetorical situations, and construct choices in regard to content, form, organization, purpose, audience, conventions, and language use when composing in these situations; **--I think the first action verb needs to be more measurable. How about this: "Use appropriate genre, content, organization and diction for a given rhetorical situation."**
 * (r) account for the history, purposes, structures, conventions, theories, and cultural situatedness of rhetoric; **--I don't think this is measurable.**
 * (p) critique rhetorical principles at work in real-world situations, in particular in everyday oral, written, and visual texts in the academy, the workplace, technology, home-life, and the media: evaluate how writing functions (and has functioned) both in students’ own lives and the world around them; **--I think this could go with the critical reading requirement.**
 * (p) apply the metadiscourse of rhetoric to analyses of both students' texts and those of other writers;
 * (r) demonstrate rhetorical sensitivity in relation to students’ disciplinary specializations; **--I don't think this is measurable.**
 * (p) identify and research an issue and synthesize information to resolve the issue; **--This should be required, I think.**
 * (r) identify the on-going impact of technology upon writing, in particular the possibilities for global communication, by reading and evaluating online writing venues (e.g., wikis, blogs, websites, etc.) that provide students global audiences with diverse needs--and choose appropriate online genres; **--I don't think this is measurable. This could be a practice to go with critical reading.**
 * (p) apply appropriate technologies to create and support texts; **--This is already covered in the process section, I think.**
 * (p) demonstrate effective collaborative writing strategies, including web-based collaboration, to model workplace practices**.--This is also covered in process, I think. Perhaps we could use this as a practice to go with composing.**

3. Exercise stylistic fluency and technical accuracy at the professional level:


 * (r) demonstrate enhanced fluency and distinctiveness in writing styles pertinent to students’ fields of specialization;
 * (r) identify and apply writing conventions specific to students’ professional writing contexts, and identify and apply those conventions that transfer across writing contexts; **--This is covered in the second item under critical awareness, I think.**
 * (r) use graphic and design principles to support purpose of a text (i.e., layout, headings, tables, charts, graphs, technical illustrations, and photograph layouts); **--I edited this one a bit.**
 * (r) demonstrate appropriate, effective strategies for revising and editing texts; **--This is covered in process section.**
 * (p) compose proficient texts suitable for circulation and/or publication in the workplace or for a public audience—a situated piece of civic discourse.