The Composition Program at George Mason University serves nearly 7,000 students a year on five campuses via three courses: English 100, English 101, and English 302. In English 100, multilingual students have the opportunity to develop writing and research strategies while receiving feedback tailored to their needs. ENGH 101 introduces students to the recursive, iterative nature of writing for a variety of audiences.
Our advanced composition course, ENGH 302, offers students the opportunity to hone their academic research skills as they become familiar with the writing practices of their disciplines. Undergraduate students at Mason have the opportunity to participate in the award-winning OSCAR program, and ENGH 302 provides opportunities for students to learn about the research and writing skills that will serve them as they engage in undergraduate research opportunities within their disciplines.
In addition to these course offerings, the composition program partners with INTO Mason to offer writing instruction to our undergraduate and graduate international students participating in the Pathways program. The ENGH 121/122 courses offer a two-semester approach for undergraduate international students working on developing and refining academic writing skills based on current composition and rhetoric and linguistics scholarship.
Students are encouraged to see writing as a social, imaginative, multifaceted action. Writers create texts that attend to particular cultural and academic contexts and that meet the expectations of particular audiences.
At Mason we understand that writing is not a skill that can be taught once and mastered. It must be continually learned and re-learned as writers move into new rhetorical situations and respond to different audiences. To that end, our faculty help students attend to their writing throughout an extended, recursive process of drafting, revising, and editing.
The Composition Program helps students to: