English 095/101/102
Welcome!
We — those responsible for bringing composition courses to you — believe that writing is both a serious, powerful activity and a highly pleasurable one. Writing can be powerful because the writing you do matters: it affects people. It is pleasurable because putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to shape sentences, paragraphs and essays engages one with the tones, rhythms, and textures of language. It is also pleasurable to communicate successfully something that matters to others.
We also approach writing as a social, even ethical, activity because, when we write, we have to think carefully about the relations we already have with one another and about the ways the choices we make in our writing may bring about new or different relationships. Sometimes when we write, we write to figure out what we want to say: we write to learn or to discover, without thinking of the writing as communication. But mostly when we write, we write to other people because we want or need to do something that only writing can enable us to do.
We hope, then, that in your writing classes you both take writing seriously and have some fun with it. Continue to play with words and sentences as you have been doing since you first began to speak (and later write).
Finally, we make a request of you: please remember that these are classes about writing and communication, so please communicate throughout the semester with each other in class and with us. Let us know what you think about your composition classes and what you think about the writing you are doing here at UWM.
Goals for First-Year Writers
While each composition course has a set of specific goals and practices that are particular to its place in the sequence of courses, all composition classes share a common set of goals:
Critical Reading/Critical Writing Connections: Writers will use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating.
Writing Process Strategies: Writers will use their writing as a means of developing a critical perspective on their reading.
Shaping and Communicating Meaning: Writers will develop purposeful essays that provide adequate context for readers.
Knowledge of Academic Writing Practices: Writers will develop knowledge of academic writing conventions.
Critical Reflective Practice: Writers will reflect critically on, evaluate, and revise their own reading and writing practices in light of academic and other reading and writing practices and course goals.
Sequence of First-Year Writing Courses
English 095: Fundamentals of Composition (3 credits, 0 graduation credits)
English 095 builds on students' previous reading and writing practices by asking them to complete a sequence of critically reflective reading and writing assignments. Through this sequence, students develop multiple ways of interpreting texts, critically connect ideas from texts and students' own experiences, shape meaning to meet readers' expectations, and enhance fluency with academic writing conventions. Students also reflect on how their reading and writing practices shape the kinds of interpretations they develop.
English 101: Introduction to College Writing (3 credits, 3 graduation credits)
English 101 introduces students to college reading and writing practices through a sequence of writing assignments that integrates critical reading, writing, and reflection. Thus, the course is intended not only to build on but also to complicate students' knowledge of texts and reading and writing practices.
English 102: College Writing and Research (3 credits, 3 graduation credits)
English 102 introduces students to academic research writing through a sequence of assignments in which students pose and investigate questions in response to their reading of course texts. The course builds on and complicates students' understanding of the purposes and practices of research writing by asking students to investigate and engage in academic inquiry and presents academic inquiry as a process of positioning and developing one's ideas in relation to others. Additionally, the course asks students to critically reflect on their reading, writing, and research strategies and those of their peers.
English 105: Editing College Writing (1 credit, 1 graduation credit)
English 105 is a workshop on strategies for writing for English 101. Students will prepare for and participate in ongoing discussions of different approaches to the work of English 101. Alongside and in addition to students' work for English 101, English 105 will focus on multiple ways of reading, note-taking, drafting, reflecting, and revising, as well as proofreading and editing.
ESL 118: Advanced College Writing in English as a Second Language (3 credits, 3 graduation credits)
ESL 118 is equivalent to English 101 and taught by instructors who are experienced working with writers whose first language is not English. Instruction is designed to help students strengthen their reading and writing in English.
Virginia Burke Writing Contest
The Virginia Burke Writing Contest honors first-year writers whose essays are judged the best of the year. It is named in honor of the late Professor Virginia Burke, an outstanding professor of English Composition who was devoted to undergraduate writing instruction at UWM. At the annual awards ceremony, first-place winners read their essays aloud; a reception follows the awards ceremony. Both events bring students, teachers, administrators, family, and friends together to celebrate the academic achievements of UWM students.
Copies of the contest rules are available in Curtin 433.
Annotated Bibliography Contest
Each semester the Research and Instructional Support Department of the UWM libraries sponsors an Annotated Bibliography and Research Award to English 102 students to recognize outstanding research work for the course.
Copies of the contest rules are available in the Research and Instructional Support Department of the Golda Meir Library.
Writing Program Administrators
Dennis Lynch, Director
Sandy Brusin, Assistant Director
Shereen Inayatulla and Michael MacDonald, 095/105 Co-coordinators
Jennifer Kontny, 101 Coordinator and Mentor
John Raucci, Mentor
John Couture, Mentor
Mary Brehm, 102 Coordinator
Cara Ogburn, Mentor
Andy Buchenot, Online Coordinator
Contact
First-Year Composition Program
Dennis Lynch
Office: Curtin 414
Phone: (414) 229-5911
Email: lynchd@uwm.edu
UWM Writing Center
Margaret Mika, DirectorOffice: 382 Curtin Hall
Phone: (414) 229-4339
Email: mmika@uwm.edu
Website: http://www4.uwm.edu/writingcenter/