ENG 101:  Composition I – Exploration and Authorship: An Inquiry-based Writing Course

This course introduces students to the skills, habits, and conventions necessary to prepare inquiry-based research for college. While offering students techniques and practices of invention and revision, this theme-based composition course teaches students the expectations of college-level research, academic devices for exploring ideas, and rhetorical strategies for completing investigative writing. Students prepare a sequence of prescribed assignments that culminate in a final research paper. These assignments provide small manageable tasks that scaffold the process of the normally overwhelming research paper. Students complete a semester ending portfolio, part of which involves reflecting on their writing and their development as writers and critical thinkers over the course of the semester.

While instructors are free to choose the theme and readings for their courses, they follow a prescribed series of assignments that each student completes for a final portfolio.  Instructors choose the content and readings that interest them in hopes that they will instill this same investment in their students. 

Throughout the semester, the instructor presents techniques and strategies that will help students both decipher texts and well as compose their own.  The inquiry-based paper (a. k. a., the research paper) is the semester-long endeavor of this course. In lieu of assigning this specifically academic genre three weeks before the end of the semester and saying, “Get ready, get set, go,” instructors assign a mandated sequence of step-by-step writing tasks that collectively inform the essay-composing process as well as motivates students to explore the topic and its formulation into words. In other words by composing a sequence of interrelated assignments, students explore how the contents of written academic papers are invented, organized, researched, articulated, and presented.  They then compile these various pieces of writing plus a final culminating inquiry-based project into a portfolio; they earn their grade based on the contents of this writing portfolio.  

English 201: Disciplinary Investigations—Exploring Writing Across the Disciplines

The second semester of freshman writing at John Jay emphasizes writing-across-the -curriculum curriculum, introducing students to the diverging rhetorical approaches of different disciplines. Instructors choose a single theme and provide students with reading and writing assignments that address the distinct literacy conventions and processes of diverse fields. Students learn how to apply their accumulated repertoire of aptitudes and abilities to the writing situations presented to them from across the disciplines. This engenders a greater capacity for students to take on new writing challenges when writing in their chosen disciplines and in other future writing scenarios, including in the workplace.

English 201 familiarizes students with introductory lessons about WAC so that may be aware of disciplinary expectations of writing and avoid composing pitfalls when they encounter them.

Rather than prescribed assignments such as occur in English 101, in this second-semester course, instructors must choose their topic-based readings and writing assignments from a variety of disciplines.  By explicitly drawing attention to the preferred genres, research conventions, and specialized organization and formatting of different disciplines, we can help students more easily adapt their writing throughout their educational careers.

English 245: Creative Nonfiction

The definition of CNF is true stories well told.  In this course, you are the author and you are in charge of telling the stories.  Along the way you learn literary and craft techniques to help you tell the stories you want to tell.  The course can feature writing in various genres:  personnel memoir, ethnography, literary journalism, character studies, interview projects, and multimodal projects that include images or documentary video.  Students also learn how to read and critique each other’s work in a supportive productive environment.  Your writing life will make a huge leap in this course.

ENG 247: Express Yourself: The Power of Voice

This course explores the essence of voice: what it is, what it does, and how creators harness it to make their audiences think, feel, and act. In this course you will learn about voice by studying and evaluating the craft techniques of writers, designers, and producers who work in multiple genres and media (words, sound, images, video). You will also develop and refine your own voice by creating texts to reach your audiences clearly, effectively and movingly.  By the end of the course, you will claim your power by putting YOUR voice into the world.

ENG 250: Writing for Legal Studies

This course is an in-depth introduction to the craft of legal writing. Skills to be acquired range from writing legal memoranda, briefs and pleadings, to negotiating and drafting contracts. Students will gain experience in reading and interpreting judicial opinions, as well as applying legal rules to factual scenarios. Deductive reasoning, forensic rhetoric and English grammar will receive substantial attention.