What is this course about?

English 110 is the foundational writing class at Queens College and fulfills the English Composition 1 Pathways requirement.

English 110 introduces students to the rhetorical strategies, methods of inquiry, and revision practices of academic writing. In this course, we will learn the expectations, strategies, methods, and practices of academic writing through a semester-long inquiry into the formation of cultural identity. We will think and write about how our cultural identities are influenced by the languages we use, the media we consume, and the cultural backgrounds, histories, and groups that surround us. The writers and critics we will read in this course put forth multiple ways of understanding cultural identity through lenses of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and more. Several of the theoretical texts we will encounter will demonstrate the multiplicity of identity and make arguments about its political potential. These readings encourage you to think critically about cultural identity and serve as models for your own writing.

As we will learn in this class, language and how we use it (which scholars refer to “language practices”) are an essential part of the formation of cultural identity. With this as our class topic, you will learn the language practices of being an academic writer, which include a dependable, manageable and reproducible writing process that allows you to find and develop your own strong ideas and also express them clearly and persuasively. Over the course of the semester, you will read and discuss texts from a number of fields, complete regular informal reading and writing exercises, and write three formal essays: two in which you analyze the formation of cultural identity and one that critically reflects on your own writing development.

In this class, we will explore and practice writing as a process that includes close reading, brainstorming, developing questions, outlining, and researching.

You should expect to work independently, with a partner, and with a small group of classmates to read, investigate, review, and share the findings of your research and writing pieces. My hope is that you will learn to see writing as a means of discovery, a process of continual refinement of ideas and their expression. Rather than approaching writing as an innate talent, we will understand writing as a skill that anyone can learn and improve through hard work.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, students will:

1. Produce writing that responds appropriately to a variety of rhetorical situations with a particular focus on academic argumentation.
2. Learn reading strategies to summarize, synthesize, analyze, and critique other people’s arguments and ideas fairly.
3. Learn research practices that will help strengthen their writing and thinking.
4. Produce writing that shows how writers may navigate the diverse processes of composing including revision and collaboration.
5. Understand Open Access sources and get introduced to analyzing research publications
6. Produce writing that strategically employs appropriate language conventions in different writing situations.
7. Take ownership of their work and gain an understanding of their own voice, style, and strengths.
8. Utilize authoritative theories about language use and its relationship to cultural identity in their own analytical projects.