Composition

Composition Awards Journal (pdf)
Composition Awards Journal Submission form (Word doc)

Our composition sequence-ENC 1101 and ENC 1102-stresses the process of writing in order to develop university level writing skills that assures a university-level product. Through an emphasis on audience and purpose, the composition courses enable students to engage a variety of writing strategies in order to develop the basic components of good writing: focus, unity, coherence, and development. In each course, students write at least 6,000 words of graded work in order to satisfy a portion of the Gordon Rule. This writing includes productive revision in order to reinforce the importance of the writing process.

The emphasis in the students' writing is on audience and purpose. For each writing assignment, students are expected to define an audience or narrowed group of people that they will be writing to (and perhaps even a magazine that such an essay could be submitted to, if appropriate) and a clear, narrowed purpose or effect that they want to achieve with that piece of writing. In order to achieve their stated purpose, students use a variety of relevant rhetorical strategies such as those that have been discussed in the readings for the course. In accord with the writing process, the students draft their essays to become more reader-based and less writer-based through their revisions and in fulfilling their purpose. ENC 1101 and 1102 emphasizes in each essay assignment the following specific steps in the writing process:

• prewriting (brainstorming, free writing, listing, cubing, clustering, etc.);
• drafting (pulling all of the prewriting together into a first, rough draft that begins to establish a thesis);
• revising (focusing the thesis and strengthening the development to write a second draft; this draft would then be revised again to strengthen topic sentences, coherence, and unity and to further focus the thesis and strengthen the development, etc.);
• editing (spelling, documentation of research, word choice, etc.).

In addition, essays must demonstrate the following basic components of good writing:

• Focus-the thesis statement or central idea of the essay is narrowed and specific so that the topic can be thoroughly developed in the essay;
• Unity-the examples and ideas developed in the essay relate directly to the thesis so that the essay does not stray from the central idea;
• Coherence-the essay flows from one idea to the next through the use of strong topic sentences, transitions between paragraphs and ideas, and repetition of key ideas, phrases, or images throughout the essay;
• Development-the body of the essay, through the use of research, reference to literary or other texts, and personal examples, fully and completely develops the thesis or central idea of the essay and relates to the audience and purpose;
• Mechanics-the essay must be free of grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.