ENGL 0300 - Foundations of Composition Course Syllabus

The content for this course is aligned with the Texas College Readiness Standards as adopted by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Texas College Readiness Standards:

1. Writing
   1. Compose a variety of texts that demonstrate clear focus, the logical development of ideas in well-organized paragraphs, and the use of appropriate language that advances the author’s purpose.
      1. Determine effective approaches, forms, and rhetorical techniques that demonstrate understanding of the writer’s purpose and audience.
      2. Generate ideas and gather information relevant to the topic and purpose, keeping careful records of outside sources.
      3. Evaluate relevance, quality, sufficiency, and depth of preliminary ideas and information, organize material generated, and formulate a thesis.
      4. Recognize the importance of revision as the key to effective writing. Each draft should refine key ideas and organize them more logically and fluidly, use language more precisely and effectively, and draw the reader to the author’s purpose.
      5. Edit writing for proper voice, tense, and syntax, assuring that it conforms to standard English, when appropriate.
2. Reading
   1. Locate explicit textual information, draw complex inferences, and analyze and evaluate the information within and across texts of varying lengths.
      1. Use effective reading strategies to determine a written work’s purpose and intended audience.
      2. Use text features and graphics to form an overview of informational texts and to determine where to locate information.
      3. Identify explicit and implicit textual information including main ideas and author’s purpose.
      4. Draw and support complex inferences from text to summarize, draw conclusions, and distinguish facts from simple assertions and opinions.
      5. Analyze the presentation of information and the strength and quality of evidence used by the author and judge the coherence and logic of the presentation and the credibility of an argument.
      6. Analyze imagery in literary texts.
      7. Evaluate the use of both literal and figurative language to inform and shape the perceptions of readers.
      8. Compare and analyze how generic features are used across texts.
      9. Identify and analyze the audience, purpose, and message of an informational or persuasive text.
      10. Identify and analyze how an author’s use of language appeals to the senses, creates imagery, and suggests mood.
      11. Identify, analyze, and evaluate similarities and differences in how multiple texts present information, argue a position, or relate a theme.
   2. Understand new vocabulary and concepts and use them accurately in reading, speaking, and writing.
      1. Identify new words and concepts acquired through study of their relationships to other words and concepts.
      2. Apply knowledge of roots and affixes to infer the meanings of new words.
      3. Use reference guides to confirm the meanings of new words or concepts.
   3. Describe, analyze, and evaluate information within and across literary and other texts from a variety of cultures and historical periods.
      1. Read a wide variety of texts from American, European, and world literatures.
      2. Analyze themes, structures, and elements of myths, traditional narratives, and classical and contemporary literature.
      3. Analyze works of literature for what they suggest about the historical period and cultural contexts in which they were written.
      4. Analyze and compare the use of language in literary works from a variety of world cultures.
   4. Explain how literary and other texts evoke personal experience and reveal character in particular historical circumstances.
      1. Describe insights gained about oneself, others, or the world from reading specific texts.
      2. Analyze the influence of myths, folktales, fables, and classical literature from a variety of world cultures on later literature and film.