Welcome to the course

WRA 110 - 743 Syllabus
WRA 110 - 744 Syllabus

Course Description:

As part of the general education requirement, First-Year Writing contributes to the Michigan State University mission by focusing on inquiry-based teaching and learning that encourages students to begin to understand themselves as:

• contributing members of MSU’s community of scholars
• committed to asking important questions and to seeking rich responses to those questions
• developing skills, knowledge, and attitudes that improve the quality of life for self and others through scholarly, social, and professional activities.

In pursuit of these goals, Tier I Writing and Preparation for College Writing courses engage students in writing and reflection activities that make overt the ways that invention, arrangement, revision, style and delivery literacy activities:

• can be engaged across inquiry situations (scholarly, social, and professional)
• require the development of knowledge about the importance of contextual factors that affect the application of these methods of inquiry

Our shared learning outcomes support inquiry-based learning that transfers across writing situations in relation to three major issues: writing, reading, and researching.

Our Course Section:

Our section of WRA 110 will focus on the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that successfully enhance writing, reading, and researching in the digital age. Some course materials have been pre-selected to support this goal and focus us on the shared learning outcomes for the First-Year Writing Program at MSU. Specifically, we will be looking at issues and concepts dealing with digital technology and visual rhetoric to think about what we know about literacy, how we know what we know, and how we can engage and enhance our literacies through deep explorations of what things mean. I look forward to working with you this semester. We all have some shared and some different literacy experiences, strengths and weaknesses; please remember to be respectful of the other members of this class as we support one another this semester. Specific learning objectives for each assignment appear on individual assignments sheet.

Required Texts:

Roen, Duane, Gregory Glau. and Barry Maid. The McGraw-Hill Guide: Writing for College, Writing for Life. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.
Aaron, Jane. The Little, Brown Compact Handbook. (MSU customized version) Boston: Pearson. 2010.
Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers. 7th ed. Boston: Pearson. 2011.

Please note: The Ballenger text is a new edition that includes the 2009 MLA updates. This is the version I have ordered for class. If you choose to get an older version, you will need to be responsible for using the latest versions of MLA style when you use sources. Also, be aware that if you get the older versions of these books the bookstores will not buy them back at the end of the semester.