About the Program

The First-Year Writing program, housed in the English Department, is a part of Elon’s First-Year Foundations program and works alongside the Center for Writing Excellence to promote writing excellence for all students.

English 1100 Writing: Argument and Inquiry is a requirement for all students, and it is one of the courses that compose the First Year Foundations in Elon’s Core Curriculum. Since it provides a foundation for writing students are expected to do in and beyond college, students take it in either the fall or spring semester of their first year.

English 1100 supports students’ ongoing development as flexible, reflective writers through extensive practice in process strategies, argumentation, and research. Students learn and apply rhetorical strategies to write effectively across multiple media for a variety of audiences. Though there is not a standardized syllabus for the course, all sections of ENG1100 share common outcomes.

Outcomes for English 1100 Writing: Argument and Inquiry

The following outcomes are shared among all ENG1100 Writing: Argument and Inquiry courses at Elon University. Our goal as a program is to help students come to know and do the following through sustained practice.

All students in ENG1100, Writing: Argument and Inquiry, will

Engage with Writing as a Complex Process.

  1. Practice writing as a flexible and recursive process that includes brainstorming, drafting, revising, designing, proofing, and polishing over time.
  2. Collaborate with others in the writing process by co-creating knowledge, which includes giving and receiving feedback and composing texts collaboratively.
  3. Engage with writing as a process of discovery and risk-taking where one’s questions, strategies, and arguments evolve.

Develop the Agility to Write across Genres, using Multiple Media, for Various Audiences and Contexts.

  1. Analyze the rhetorical situation, including the relationship of rhetor, audience, context, and purpose.
  2. Compose, design, and adapt texts in a variety of genres, media, and styles to communicate effectively given the audience and context, which could include various academic disciplines as well as civic, public, professional, and/or personal contexts.
  3. Design media purposefully by considering ways to maximize accessibility and communicate to diverse audiences inclusively.

Examine How Communication Practices are Socially Situated.

  1. Identify how one’s own experiences and relationship with writing, as well as one’s race, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, nationality, and/or language background, influence approaches to communication.
  2. Question and critique cultural language biases and dominant language ideology, and develop appreciation for the value of multiple literacies and Englishes.

Conduct Research to Inquire, Argue, and Expand One’s Knowledge and Understanding.

  1. Seek out, analyze, and evaluate various kinds of sources–such as personal testimony, data, internet sources, and peer-reviewed research–that represent a variety of communicative approaches and perspectives.
  2. Read sources with curiosity, skepticism, and a willingness to expand and complicate one’s understanding.
  3. Synthesize information and evidence to develop hypotheses and/or stake claims; practice ethical source use, which includes citing sources appropriately and attributing ideas to their respective sources.
  4. Recognize the socio-political nature of information, including the positionality and expertise of its creators, where it is located, and how it is controlled.

Appreciate the Capacity of Writing to Change Oneself and the World.

  1. Practice metacognitive reflection about one’s own choices as a writer, and evaluate one’s own writing and writing practices in order to improve.
  2. Use writing as a tool to make personal connections that are meaningful to the author and to expand one’s and others’ awareness of local and global issues.
  3. Explore ways to use writing for civic engagement within and beyond the university; recognize ways that writing can be used to define, examine, debate, and solve problems.

 

For questions related to the First-Year Writing Program at Elon, contact Heather Lindenman, the Coordinator of First-Year Writing.