You are beginning your college career in the middle of some of the most rapid technological change the world has ever known. Because of changing communication technologies (the internet, smartphones, social media like Facebook) your everyday experiences of reading and writing are different not only from your parents’ and professors, but even from those of the students who were taking English 110 four years ago. The skills that college English teaches––understanding and critically engaging with what we read, see, and hear, crafting arguments to get our point across––are still vital for academic, workplace, and personal success. But new kinds of media mean there are many new ways to practice these literacies.

In this composition class we’ll practice a range of writing genres, from personal essays and thesis-driven arguments to newer kinds of online writing (such as blogs and and Twitter) that have a huge influence in public life. Through classroom discussion, writing assignments, and online participatory learning, you will critically explore your personal experiences with digital media, while reading about its history, power structures, and possible futures. Together, we will work through the writing process to develop your ideas on these subjects from fleeting thoughts and opinions into persuasive, thoughtful arguments and analyses. The course doesn’t require or expect any technological know-how beyond the ability to send an email and create a Word document. But if that’s as far as you go at the moment, you’ll probably end up with a few extra skills.

What English 110 is for: Learning Outcomes
By the end of the semester, students in all sections of English 121 will learn to:

• use writing processes to generate, develop, share, revise, proofread, and edit writing projects
• produce a variety of writing genres
• create essays that shows structure, purpose, significant content, and audience awareness
• understand and integrate others’ texts into your own writing
• reflect on your own writing process and rhetorical effectiveness
• learn to self-edit and to edit the work of others

Required Texts

Mark Bauerlein (ed). The Digital Divide: Arguments For and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. Penguin, 2011. Optional––no need to buy this if you don’t want to

Extensive readings from blogs, journalism, and academic writing available online in the readings section of the blog.