Composition Outcomes

1. Read clearly and critically:

 1300/1301/1302:

• comprehend, evaluate, and synthesize ideas from academic texts

1301/1302:

• identify and understand a writer’s stance and major claims
• employ effective annotating strategies
• produce accurate summaries of readings

1302:

• use research as a tool of inquiry, for information, and as a means to build and support an argument
• demonstrate competence in navigating the research options available through a university library
• recognize the difference between primary and secondary sources
• evaluate sources as evidence in academic discourse

2. Manage their writing process:

 1300/1301/1302:

• practice flexible and recursive strategies such as invention, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading.

1301/1302:

• incorporate research into their writing process

3. Produce thesis-driven, text-based essays:

1300/1301/1302:

• write essays with multiple and well-developed, focused paragraphs in support of a guiding thesis
• articulate a clear and engaging thesis
• use evidence and appeals that are rhetorically appropriate to audience and purpose
• integrate ideas from one or two secondary sources and document appropriately
• demonstrate consistent competence with sentence boundaries
• edit for grammatical errors such as unmarked plurals and possessives, verb tense shifts, subject / verb disagreement, and pronoun / antecedent confusion
• understand and observe rules regarding intellectual property and plagiarism, including recognizing the boundaries between one’s own voice and ideas and those of others, and appreciating the consequences of violating the UHD Academic Honesty Policy
• under timed conditions, compose 500-to-600-word essays that exhibit the conventions of academic writing

1301/1302:

• accurately integrate and document source materials, with signal phrases, in service to the student’s thesis / purpose
• acknowledge multiple perspectives through a well-qualified thesis, counter-arguments, and sources that represent an adequate range of ideas
• compose concise and purposefully varied sentences
• edit for correct use of punctuation such as apostrophes and quotation marks
• observe academic conventions of formality, voice, and diction

• address a scholarly audience
• advance a rhetorically sophisticated argument employing a range of appeals and evidence, including counter-arguments