Program Learning Outcomes

PROGRAM LEARNING OUTCOMES

These are the learning goals for courses for the First-Year Composition Program at CSUDH. In other words -- once you successfully complete your composition course, these are the practical skills you'll have.

The skills come under four headings: RHETORICAL KNOWLEDGE, CRITICAL THINKING, PROCESSES, and CONVENTIONS.

Since you haven't taken the course yet, some of the concepts and vocabulary here might be unfamiliar to you, but your composition professor can easily explain them. You can also follow the links below for a very brief introduction to each concept -- but your best guide to these concepts is your writing professor, and your own increasing experience as you take the course.

Rhetorical Knowledge

Rhetorical knowledge is the ability to analyze contexts and audiences and then to act on that analysis to understand and create texts. Understanding rhetoric is essential to clear and powerful communication. Writers develop rhetorical knowledge by negotiating purpose, audience, context, and conventions as they compose a variety of texts for different situations. By the end of first-year composition, students will be able to:

Define and apply through analyzing and composing a variety of texts
Demonstrate rhetorical flexibility by reading and and
Demonstrate facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for in voice, tone, style, design, medium, structure, and conventions
that articulate a clear, thoughtful position, deploy support and evidence appropriate to audience, situation, and purpose, and consider counterclaims and multiple points of view
Demonstrate rhetorical awareness by , and revising these choices when necessary

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to identify information and interpret, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and reflect upon it. By the end of first-year composition, students will be able to:

Use and , interpretation, analysis, learning, and communicating
Balance openness to the ideas of others with a and characteristic of engaged citizenry
, , and source materials, acknowledging the interests and purposes those materials serve
Identify , purposes, , sub-points, and presented in a given text including their own
Develop and articulate their own
for audience, situation, and purpose

Processes

Writing and composing are recursive, social processes. There is no such thing as the writing process; rather, there are many strategies and tools that writers may use to read and compose. Because writers need to adapt to different contexts and occasions, reading and composing processes are flexible. By the end of first-year composition, students will be able to:

through multiple drafts
Develop flexible strategies for , , , , , and
Use , reconsider, and deepen their ideas
Work collaboratively with peers and instructors to give and act on
for different modes, genres, and audiences
and how these processes have influenced their work

Conventions

Conventions are the formal rules and informal guidelines that shape readers鈥� and writers鈥� perceptions of appropriateness and/or correctness. Conventions help readers and writers communicate more effectively by establishing common expectations about language usage and format. By the end of first-year composition students will be able to:

Explain how conventions , , and , and gain experience in negotiating variations in conventions
Practice and demonstrate the ability to use relevant and in order to communicate with academic and professional audiences.
Use conventions of appropriate to different kinds of texts and genres
Use and understand to concepts of responsibility, ethics, and intellectual property
Use to and more effectively employ conventions of style, grammar, and citation in their own writing

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