Description of Course Content:

Continues ENGL 1301, but with an emphasis on advanced techniques of academic argument. Includes issue identification, independent library research, analysis and evaluation of sources, and synthesis of sources with students’ own claims, reasons, and evidence. Prerequisite: Grade of C or better in ENGL 1301.

Student Learning Outcomes:

In ENGL 1302, students build on the knowledge and information that they learned in ENGL 1301. By the end of ENGL 1302, students should be able to:

Rhetorical Knowledge

  • Identify and analyze the components and complexities of a rhetorical situation.
  • Use knowledge of audience, exigence, constraints, genre, tone, diction, syntax, and structure to produce situation-appropriate argumentative texts, including texts that move beyond formulaic structures.
  • Know and use special terminology for analyzing and producing arguments.
  • Practice and analyze informal logic as used in argumentative texts.

Critical Reading, Thinking, and Writing

  • Understand the interactions among critical thinking, critical reading, and writing.
  • Integrate personal experiences, values, and beliefs into larger social conversations and contexts.
  • Find, evaluate, and analyze primary and secondary sources for appropriateness, timeliness, and validity.
  • Produce situation-appropriate argumentative texts that synthesize sources with their own ideas and advance the conversation on an important issue.
  • Provide valid, reliable, and appropriate support for claims, and analyze evidentiary support in others’ texts.

Processes

  • Practice flexible strategies for generating, revising, and editing complex argumentative texts.
  • Engage in all stages of advanced, independent library research.
  • Practice writing as a recursive process that can lead to substantive changes in ideas, structure, and supporting evidence through multiple revisions.
  • Use the collaborative and social aspects of writing to critique their own and others’ arguments.

Conventions

  • Apply and develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics, and be aware of the field-specific nature of these conventions.
  • Summarize, paraphrase, and quote from sources using appropriate documentation style.
  • Revise for style and edit for features such as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Employ technologies to format texts according to appropriate stylistic conventions

 

Required Textbooks and Other Course Materials:

–Graff and Birkenstein, They Say/I Say, 3rd  or 4th edition [ISBN: 0393935841]

–Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, Everything’s An Argument: Custom UTA edition, 2017

 

Descriptions of major assignments and examinations:

–Issue Proposal (Due Sept 23rd): This semester you’ll be conducting research on an issue that you select. For this paper, you will take stock of what you already know about the issue you select, organize and develop your thoughts, and sketch a plan for your research.

–Annotated Bibliography (Due Oct 14th): For this assignment you will create a list of at least 10 relevant and appropriately chosen sources that represent multiple perspectives on your issue. You will include a summary of each source and a discussion of how you might use the source in your next essays.

–Mapping the Issue (Due Nov 4th): For this paper, you will map the controversy surrounding your issue by describing its history and summarizing at least three different positions on the issue—all from a completely neutral point of view.

–Researched Position Paper (Due Dec 4th): For this paper, you will advocate a position on your issue with a well-supported argument written for an audience that you select.

–Final Presentation (TBA): Every student will be required to complete a visual presentation on the work they have done for the Reasearched Position Paper.

Analytical Writings/Quizzes/Daily Work: More specific analytical writing prompts will also be provided.