NOTE: This document is presented over several pages. Click the page links at the bottom of each page. Be sure to read the whole thing.
Instructor Information
- Mike McGuire
- Office: D115
- Hours: MW 4:00-5:00, TR 2:00-3:00
- Mailbox: D108
- Office phone: 708.974.5770
- e-mail: teacher@writing101.net (used for my online courses)
- Personal Web page: writing101.net
- Course Web page: learning.writing101.net/com102
Course Identification
- Credit hours: 3 semester hours
- Total contact hours: 3 | Lecture: 3 | Lab: 0
- Course meets: online
- Prerequisite: COM 101 with a “C” or higher grade or appropriate placement score
- Corequisite: none
Textbooks/Materials
The following reading materials are required for this course:
- DeVillez, Eric, Thomas Dow, Michael McGuire, and Troy Swanson. Why White Rice?: Thinking through Writing. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 2010.
- Fister, Barbara. Working with Sources: Using MLA, Seventh Edition Style. [Boston]: Bedford, 2009. Print.
- supplemental core readings made available electronically through class and/or through the reserve service at the MVCC library
Course Goals
The major goal for this course is to better your ability to use writing as a means of thinking, learning, communicating, and attending to the important work of our world. You should strive to improve your skills in writing while at the same time becoming a more discerning reader of and a more forceful writer about the world around you. All this reading, thinking, and writing should also lead to action. See the course expected outcomes for student learning for some specific official objectives.
Expected Outcomes for Student Learning
By the end of the term the student should be able to:
- Employ the following techniques regarding critical reading and thinking:
- Create connections among texts discussed and other texts;
- Analyze a writer’s stylistic choices, such as the perspective or tone adopted for a particular audience.
- Employ the following techniques regarding source-based writing:
- Construct an argument based on a text or texts;
- Develop strategies for reaching more than one type of audience in a piece of writing;
- Select source material (library, print, digital, or fieldwork-based) appropriate to a writing project’s purpose and audience;
- Integrate research material from multiple sources into a piece of writing while maintaining one’s own voice;
- Demonstrate ethical awareness in writing by incorporating and documenting source material responsibly according to a guidelines system (e.g. MLA, APA);
- Correctly document sources through appropriate in-text citations and a Works Cited page;
- Move beyond managing correctness in writing and toward making deliberate choices about stylistic elements such as clarity, concision, cohesion, and emphasis;
- Demonstrate skill at the stylistic aspects of integrating sources, such as employing a variety of transitional effects or integrating a quote into the grammatical structure of a sentence.
