Content Outline & Competencies:

I. Students Will Do Research (Integrate the Research Process into the Writing Process) including: 
A. Use appropriate methods for discovering ideas and gathering materials appropriate to a range of purposes and subjects.
1. Demonstrate ability to read and formulate objectives of an assignment.
2. Locate supporting materials and evidence from field/library/on-line research, including professional journals.
3. Read, comprehend, and summarize appropriate sources.
B. Decide on a suitable controlling idea and arrangement for the supporting ideas.
1. Develop and express a controlling idea for papers that reflect the range of assignments and audiences for academic writing across the curriculum.
2. Select a pattern of organization appropriate to support a complex thesis.
3. Demonstrate ability to write explanatory, evaluative, and argumentative papers drawing on secondary sources.
C. Write essays that synthesize original positions with the ideas of others and develop the student's thesis with critically sound and interesting sources. 
1. Analyze, organize, introduce and interpret evidence that supports the essay's main idea.
2. Critically select and utilize evidence free of logical fallacies.
3. Develop arguments using principles of logic (syllogism, enthymemes, presuppositions, etc.).
4. Effectively integrate and correctly punctuate appropriate support into a text including quotations, examples, and statistics.
5. Account for other viewpoints, including the opinions of people who hold different political, religious, or cultural views.
6. Write introductions that effectively introduce a topic (including its vocabulary, importance, and appropriate historical background) to a specific audience and conclusions that reinforce the writer's point and brings closure to the text.
7. Paraphrase and summarize complex written sources effectively.
8. Document outside sources with appropriate in-text and parenthetical citations.
D. Collaborate: Make and assist others to make significant revisions in the organization and development of ideas using comments from the instructor and/or other students.
1. Revise organizational patterns to allow ideas to progress more smoothly and logically through coherent sentences, paragraphs, and major points of development.
2. Insert additional materials where needed for support and eliminate repetitive, irrelevant or ineffective and unreliable information.
3. Critique the work of peers to assist them in improving the focus, organization, support, clarity, correctness and effectiveness of their essay.
E. Find your voice (Develop a written style within the conventions of standard edited prose).
1. Select and correctly use vocabulary appropriate to the topic and audience.
2. Write sentences that grammatically convey clear and complex relationships.
3. Use figurative language appropriately to add clarity and interest.      
4. Edit prose into standard edited English.
 
II. Students Will Demonstrate Ability to Read and Think Critically About Texts
A. Profile texts and determine potential biases.
1. Identify approximate demographics for ideal audience of individual articles, journals, books, and student essays.
2. Determine biases or viewpoints appealed to through analysis of the vocabulary, support, and organization of a text.
B. Comprehend the content and intention of academic texts.
1. Summarize an article's content effectively.
2. Describe the author's intention or agenda.
C. Evaluate the biases and reliability of sources.
1. Identify language that reveals a bias.
2. Distinguish and identify arguments based in logos, pathos and ethos.
3. Locate logical fallacies in student and professional texts independently.      
4. Recognize personal and cultural biases that influence readers.