ENG 099 - Introduction to Academic Writing and Reading

Credits: 4
Instructional Contact Hours: 4

Provides students with the opportunity to improve their reading and writing skills in an interactive and collaborative setting before moving on in the composition sequence (English 111A, English 112A, etc.). Practices personal and academic writing with special attention given to individual needs, which may include organization, sentence structure and variety, correct usage, and vocabulary development. Practices active reading strategies to understand, interpret, and apply information from reading. This class does not earn credit towards graduation.

Prerequisite(s): NA
Corequisite(s): NA
Lecture Hours: 60 Lab Hours: 0
Meets MTA Requirement: None
Pass/NoCredit: Yes

Outcomes and Objectives

Develop a writing process for pre-college essays.
1. Plan and brainstorm ideas for an essay before beginning to write.
2. Produce drafts of an essay and show an understanding of revision.
3. Participate effectively in writing groups and conferences.
4. Demonstrate an ability to work with written comments.
5. Produce edited, properly formatted essays.
Develop abilities with the basic structures of an essay.
1. Use introductions, conclusions, and paragraphs.
2. Write essays that demonstrate a sense of organization.
3. Use topic sentences.
4. Use transitions between sentences and paragraphs.
5. Write at least two essays with a clear thesis.
Develop abilities with the more complex aspects of an essay.
1. Demonstrate ability to develop significant ideas and use supportive, specific examples.
2. Write essays that exhibit clarity of thought.
3. Write essays that demonstrate an awareness of audience.
4. Reduce number of errors in grammar and punctuation.
Demonstrate ability to use reading process necessary for active, purposeful reading of a variety of texts mostly through 9th grade readability.
1. Use specific strategies before, during, and after reading, including previewing, predicting, accessing prior knowledge, questioning, and summarizing.
2. Demonstrate ability to retain general information from a piece of reading and reproduce same on an objective quiz/test.
3. Check comprehension by identifying topic, thesis/focus and supporting details and locating explicit information, in a passage, that answers "who, what, when, why, and how."
4. Use study strategies, including SQ3R, annotation of text, outlining, mapping, and sequential summarizing, particularly with textbook materials.
5. Demonstrate ability, both orally and in writing, to make personal connections to the ideas in a piece of reading.
6. Demonstrate an ability to negotiate unfamiliar vocabulary, as well as make new words a part of one's own vocabulary.
7. Demonstrate introductory skills for information literacy, including accessing dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, and the Internet.