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Our First Year Writing program consists of two courses: ENGL 1310 and ENGL 1320. Students with missing TSI requirements take a developmental version of ENGL 1310 (in addition to a corequisite course, TSIW 1300). Here's the cirriculum for each course.

ENGL 1310

The ENGL 1310 course serves as an entry point into the environment of academic inquiry and argument. Instruction in ENGL 1310 begins with an emphasis on cultivating writing through personal discovery, exploration, and reflection. Students learn about writing processes, explore genre conventions, and gain rhetorical knowledge while writing through their experiences and memories. With these more personal contexts as background, students are guided over the course of the semester towards becoming more comfortable with the conventions and habits of academic argument. The goals of ENGL 1310 include developing a working knowledge of writing processes, recognizing and using written genre conventions, and learning rhetoric for the purposes of analyzing and composing effective written texts. Students in ENGL 1310 fulfill these goals while engaging with nonfiction readings emphasizing narrative and description and focusing on issues of cultural significance.

Major Assignments

Students will complete four formal written assignments in ENGL 1310, in addition to other informal and unassessed writing:

  • Personal or Literacy Narrative
  • Critical Observation of a Place or Person
  • Analysis of a Concept
  • Writer’s Reflection

ENGL 1310 | Developmental

Those sections of ENGL 1310 designated as “developmental” use the same curriculum as those sections that are not developmental. However, students in the developmental sections must also complete an additional co-req, TSIW 1300. These students will register for an additional one-hour lab and must attend a series of nine workshops over the course of the semester. The purpose of these workshops is to help our developmental students become members of UNT’s academic community while strengthening their skills as readers, writers, and learners. These workshops will be taught by eight of our MA students under the supervision of Kathy Raign.

Course Topics

Here are some of the topics that will be covered:

  • Learn How to Set Goals
  • Learn How to Read Closely
  • Learn How to Take Notes and Ask Questions
  • Learn How to Think Critically
  • Learn How to Think Introspectively

If you’d like to learn more, go to the TSIW website:

https://sites.google.com/view/tsiw/home

ENGL 1320

The ENGL 1320 course guides students into habits of effective academic and nonacademic argument. Instruction in ENGL 1320 begins with a focus on student-driven research and inquiry. Students are guided in strategic information literacy skills as they begin to identify, read, and analyze arguments about social and cultural issues that are important to them. While paying close attention to other arguments, students also practice commenting and evaluating to begin forming their own opinions about relevant issues. The course then helps students articulate a context for their own arguments and begin gathering evidence for their own claims and conclusions. Before they write their own final arguments, students are encouraged to play with argument through forms and modes outside of the traditional academic essay. Reflection on this experimentation helps students contextualize written argument alongside other possibilities for informing and persuading audiences. The ENGL 1320 course ultimately asks students to put everything they have been learning about writing and argument together in a high-stakes final writing project that showcases written argument on the topics students have been researching all semester. This final project serves as a capstone for student learning in the ENGL 1320 course, emphasizing clear explanation of the issue students are addressing, effective use of evidence and support, and compelling claims and conclusions.

Major Assignments

Students will complete four formal written assignments in addition to other informal and unassessed writing:

  • Research Proposal
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Research Essay (including a First Draft, Revision, and Final Draft)
  • “Remixing” Assignment (optional)

Last Updated: November 5, 2024