Guidelines for Instructors of English 130/131
University of Detroit Mercy (Revised August 2006)

First-year composition courses treat writing as a negotiation between writers and readers; such writing is shaped by specific purposes, expectations, and situations. Students practice writing as a way of thinking, learning, and discovering knowledge, as well as a means of communicating it. Composition courses emphasize both the processes and the products of writing, including both personal and academic writing. Students develop their rhetorical abilities to assess situations in order to decide what kind of writing will work well in those contexts. Through rhetorical analyses of texts by professional and student writers, students learn to improve their writing and their reading skills. Composition courses are workshops in which students work through drafts and revisions with the help of their classmates and the teacher, in some cases publishing their writing for others.  Students should be encouraged to reflect on themselves as readers, writers, scholars, and members of society in contemporary America. Students should have an understanding of the influence of language upon how we engage with, interpret, and shape the world.

English 130 (College Writing) provides entering first-year students the opportunity to master the elements of college writing: focus, coherence, development, organization, and critical thinking in writing.  Students learn various planning and revising techniques as they write about their personal observations and experiences of cultures and differences in a short-essay format.  College Writing emphasizes the writing process--from invention strategies through development of claims.  Students work to acquire an understanding of audience and context for their writing. College Writing instructors support the connection between reading and writing.  Readings are employed to generate ideas and responses from students.  Assignments in English 130 should ask students to respond to readings; analyze readings as to author's purpose; identify and respond to the needs of their audience; and to master various rhetorical contexts.  Formal research and instruction in documentation are not appropriate at this level.

English 131 (Academic Writing) immerses students in college-level researched writing.  Students refine their writing process strategies by writing a variety of essays that require responses to texts, broadly defined, with a special emphasis on decoding the hidden assumptions underlying both written and visual texts.  At least one paper should require library and Internet research, and all students must demonstrate the ability to document sources according to the MLA style sheet in order to contextual ideas and address specific audiences. Practice in citing, integrating, and documenting sources should begin as early in the semester as possible to ensure that students master these skills and able to employ them in disciplines other than English.  In addition, students learn how to avoid plagiarism, intentional or otherwise.  Courses may address specific problems or issues and may be content driven. Students will learn various approaches to research, including field and library research.  While literature can be used within English 131, the goal of the course will focus on argument, the construction of arguments, and the analysis of various discourse communities as a means of responding to audience needs. 

In either class, students will write a minimum of three papers.  The length of each essay should depend on the total number assigned, but students should write between 5000 and 6000 words in the course. At midterm, all instructors are required to submit midterm grades.  During the week before finals (Dead Week), instructors should not schedule exams, quizzes, or major papers. Usually in First-Year Writing, the last week of classes is devoted to conferences or workshops on final papers or portfolios. Having students turn in papers during final exams is acceptable.