Objectives for English 110 Writing: Argument and Inquiry

English 110 Writing: Argument and Inquiry is a requirement for all students, and it is one of the courses that compose the First-Year Core. Since it is a cornerstone and prerequisite for most courses at Elon, students take it either in the fall or spring semesters of their first year.

The course helps students develop as writers through extensive practice in process strategies, argumentation, and research methods, and prepares them for writing across the disciplines and beyond the academy. The majority of the writing is argumentative and/or persuasive. Writing: Argument and Inquiry is taught with writing as content, not as a writing-intensive literature course or as a course that uses writing simply to learn some other content. Although there are no departmentalized syllabi for the multiple sections of Writing: Argument and Inquiry, each class shares common objectives and all students gain common experiences. 

Objectives

All sections of College Writing aim to develop the following:

• A more sophisticated writing process including invention, peer responding, revising and editing that results in a clear, effective, well edited public piece.
• A more sophisticated understanding of the relationship of purpose, audience, and voice, and an awareness that writing expectations and conventions vary within the academy and in professional and public discourse.
• An appreciation for the capacity of writing to change oneself and the world.

In order to achieve the above objectives, Writing: Argument and Inquiry will give students the following experiences:

• Writing to persuade by analyzing, interpreting, researching, synthesizing, and evaluating a wide variety of sources
• Writing to academic audiences, writing to non-academic audiences, and writing for one's own purposes
• Writing on the spot (determining the audience and purpose of given writing situations)
• Opportunities for oral presentation of their work/writing (i.e. in-class presentations)