WRTG 1150 First-Year Writing and Rhetoric

Instructor Contact:

Michael Warren Cook, MA, GPTI

Email: Michael.w.cook@colorado.edu

About the Course:

This course is designed to help you write academically by teaching you to read, write, research, and speak from a rhetorical perspective. Our rhetorical reflection will consider the purpose, content, design, and cultural values that shape the contemporary US imagination in a diverse array of multimodal texts. You will (1) cultivate a working vocabulary of terms and concepts to understand rhetoric, writing, and argumentation; (2) close read texts for class; and (3) respond to texts and each other with clear questions, interpretations, and claims backed by specific evidence.

Course Prerequisites: No prerequisites.

Objectives:

This course should help you to:

1. develop rhetorical knowledge (analyzing and making informed choices about purposes, audiences, and contexts as you read and compose texts).

2. analyze texts in a variety of genres (understanding how content, style, structure, and format vary across a range of reading and writing situations).

3. refine and reflect on your writing process (using multiple strategies to generate ideas draft, revise, and edit your writing across a variety of genres)
   

4. develop information literacy (making critical choices as you identify a specific research need, locate and evaluate information and sources, and draw connections among your own and others’ ideas in your writing).
   

5. construct effective and ethical arguments (using appropriate reasons and evidence to support your positions while responding to multiple points of view).

6. understand and apply language conventions rhetorically (including grammar, spelling, punctuation and format).

Required Texts:

Knowing Words. (Fifteenth ed). Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR). Southlake, TX: Fountainhead.

Grading (out of n points):

(1000 points possible)

940 A

900 A-

880 B+

840 B

800 B-

780 C+

740 C

700 C-

680 D+

640 D

600 D-

599 F