There are four English composition courses offered at Cameron University. Each course has different goals and outcomes. Understanding the overall goals of your course can help you understand the individual assignments and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Here’s a brief overview of those goals for each course:

Developmental Writing (ENGL 0113)

This class is designed to help you develop your writing skills in order to be prepared for college-level writing assignments. Students who have been out of school for a while, or who didn’t have the best preparation in writing skills before enrolling at Cameron, might need to take Developmental Writing to help get ready for the expectations of Comp I and other writing-intensive college courses.

After successfully completing this course, students should be able to:

• Recognize expectations of college-level reading and writing
• Apply strategies for reading, annotation, and planning/drafting to a variety of assignments
• Compose written texts for specific audiences and purposes
• Integrate material from sources into their own writing with clear attribution
• Revise their writing on both global (organization, ideas, etc.) and local (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) levels

Supplemental Writing Instruction (ENGL 0512)

Supplemental courses are paired with a Comp I (ENGL 1113) course to give you extra time and tips to work on the assignments and skills for Comp I. You’ll have the same instructor for your Comp I course and your supplemental course, but work in a smaller group in the supplemental course to prepare for and work through the assignments in Comp I.

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Recognize expectations of college-level reading and writing
• Apply strategies for reading, annotation, and planning/drafting to assignments in ENG 1113
• Compose written texts for specific audiences and purposes
• Integrate material from sources into their own writing with clear attribution
• Revise their writing on both global (organization, ideas, etc.) and local (grammar, vocabulary, etc.) levels

English Composition I (ENGL 1113)

This class is designed to introduce you to the basic skills of college-level writing. You’ll work on approaches to writing assignments and how to use critical thinking to read and analyze different kinds of texts and write about and with them. You’ll also practice reading and composing different genres of writing as well as how to adapt your writing to different audiences and situations.

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Analyze rhetorical strategies
• Evaluate diverse texts
• Apply genre conventions
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of rhetorical situations

English Composition II (ENGL 1213)

This class builds on the skills you learned in Comp I, especially what you learned about critical thinking and rhetorical analysis. In Comp II, you’ll be introduced to academic research skills and how to evaluate and use outside sources. You’ll construct arguments for both academic and public contexts and practice supporting those arguments with evidence from research.

After completing this course, students should be able to:

• Evaluate research materials
• Construct arguments for academic audiences
• Document sources according to conventions
• Compose and revise texts that synthesize source material with original ideas

College Writing After the Composition Sequence

After you finish your required composition courses, you aren’t “done with English”! Instead, you’re going to use what you learned in composition in many of your other classes at Cameron — whether that’s doing research, writing a report, summarizing results of an experiment, tackling the essay question on an exam, or even just composing an email appropriate to your audience and situation.

What you learn in college composition also helps you outside of school, too! You’ll eventually have to evaluate whether something you read on the internet is trustworthy, compose a cover letter for a job application, write a letter to your landlord demanding repairs, send an email to your boss, or just plain figure out the right strategies for communicating in different rhetorical situations. Hopefully the skills you learn in college composition stick with you and continue to help you communicate effectively through writing and words.