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Overview of English 1110 and the First-Year Writing Program

First-Year Writing at Ohio State is designed to introduce students to college level writing through original research projects. Students will produce academic writing in response to a variety of primary and secondary sources. They will then reframe their research claims for a public audience, developing their capacities for rhetorical analysis and understanding of audience. Each section of English 1110.01 has a unique and engaging theme: from representations of race and gender in popular culture to the rhetoric of corporate greenwashing to persistence of monsters in contemporary U.S. culture. In addition to writing essays, students conduct research, work with peers, and compose in multiple modalities, including videos, podcasts, and websites.

GE and Transfer Module Information

English 1110 meets students’ requirements for the GE first writing course

Writing and Communication GE Category

Goals: Students are skilled in written communication and expression, reading, critical thinking, oral expression and visual expression.

Level One (1110) Expected Learning Outcomes:

  1. Students communicate using the conventions of academic discourse.

  2. Students can read critically and analytically.

Ohio Transfer Module Information and Goals

The goals of the First-Year Writing Program align with those of the State of Ohio Department of Higher Education’s guidelines for the Ohio Transfer Module:

Throughout the first course, students should practice reading and writing in several genres. By the end of their first writing course, students should:

  • Understand how genre conventions shaped the texts they read and should shape the texts they compose
  • Understand the possibilities of electronic media/technologies for composing and publishing texts for a variety of audiences
  • Compose texts that:
    • Have a clear purpose
    • Respond to the needs of intended audiences
    • Assume an appropriate stance
    • Adopt an appropriate voice, tone, style and level of formality
    • Use appropriate conventions of format and structure

By the end of their first writing course, students should be able to:

  • Use reading and writing for inquiry, learning, thinking and communicating
  • Locate and evaluate secondary research materials, including visual texts such as photographs, videos or other materials
  • Analyze relationships among writer, text and audience in various kinds of texts
  • Use various critical thinking strategies to analyze texts

By the end of their first writing course, students should be able to:

  • Recognize that writing is a flexible, recursive process that typically involves a series of activities, including generating ideas and text, drafting, revising and editing
  • Understand that writing is often collaborative and social. To demonstrate that understanding, students should be able to:
    • Work with others to improve their own and others' texts
    • Balance the advantages of relying on others with taking responsibility for their own work
    • Apply this understanding and recognition to produce successive drafts of increasing quality
    • Use electronic environments to support writing tasks such as drafting, reviewing, revising, editing and sharing texts

By the end of their first writing course, students should be able to:

  • Recognize genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone and mechanics employed in a variety of popular forms
  • Learn to control syntax, grammar, punctuation and spelling through practice in composing and revising
  • Select and employ appropriate conventions for structure, paragraphing, mechanics and format in their own writing
  • Acknowledge the work of others when appropriate
  • Use standard documentation format as needed

By the end of their first writing course, students will have written:

  • A variety of texts with opportunities for response and revision
  • A minimum of 5,000 total words of formal, edited text
  • Frequent "low stakes" assignments, such as journals, reading responses and in-class efforts

Program Assessment

In the summer of 2018, the FYWP completed a program assessment process initiated by the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee. The report of that assessment and accompanying documentation can be found here: 

 

First-Year Writing Program Staff

For questions about First-Year Writing courses, curriculum, assessment, placement, and teaching, please contact a member of the FYWP Team: