Course Requirements

All ENG 102 courses are required to include the following:

  • At least four formal texts
  • Formal writing in more than one genre
  • Regular informal writing
  • At least two teacher-sponsored revisions
  • Some in-class workshop experience
  • At least one assignment that requires students to integrate references to other texts
    meaningfully into their own, as well as to imagine, locate, and evaluate such texts
  • An attendance policy requiring no more than four absences in a Tuesday/Thursday course, no more than six in a Monday/Wednesday/Friday course

Learning outcomes

SUNY required learning outcomes (Basic Communication-Writing)

  1. Students will demonstrate the ability to produce coherent texts within common college level forms
  2. Students will demonstrate the ability to revise and improve such texts
  3. Students will demonstrate the ability to research a topic, develop an argument, and organize supporting details.

Oswego's ENG 102 learning outcomes

After completing ENG 102 students will be able to:

1. Employ effective writing processes

  • use critical reading and informal writing to generate ideas
  • edit and revise effectively, recognizing the two as distinct activities and developing strategies for generating critical distance when rereading
  • develop a reasonable and informed system of criteria for judging texts

2. Participate as writers in an academic discussion, understanding the conventions, features, and objectives of academic texts

  • develop a claim that matters in the context of a continuing discussion, writing with a sense of intellectual purpose and stake
  • make academic writing articulate a process of thinking, not just recite information
  • understand the differences between the kinds of writing academic writers are called upon to do
  • understand that readers in different disciplines approach text with different expectations and preferences

3. Make ideas cohere effectively in texts

  • imagine meaningful shapes for ideas, so that a text's form is a natural manifestation of what one wants to say
  • recognize identifiable genres and shape texts around different generic expectations where appropriate
  • sequence thoughts effectively, articulating connections between a text's individual discussions
  • marshal and present meaningful evidence

4.  Write in a way that's responsive to the texts and voices around one

  • analyze and respond thoughtfully to competing claims
  • evaluate and choose appropriate texts for citation
  • cite effectively and properly, conforming to academic expectations concerning paraphrase, quotation, attribution, and bibliographical forms
  • make informed choices about voice and style, using one's reading as a resource for rhetorical models

5. Reflect thoughtfully on one's own written work

  • assess the effectiveness of individual pieces of writing
  • consider how one's writing skills and practices are related to one's broader intellectual predispositions and habits of mind 

6. Adapt to emerging textual technologies and media

  • consider how different media lend themselves to the expression of different sorts of ideas
  • consider how texts acquire new meanings as they circulate through new media to different and sometimes unexpected audiences

7. Write fluently and effectively at the sentence level

  • demonstrate an evolving mastery of standard written American English
  • develop a facility with some range of complex sentence forms
  • understand the conventional, historical, and rhetorical nature of grammatical prescription