First-Year Composition Overview

At Mason, students taking their first-year composition course have the opportunity to find a class that fits their needs and interests. All three classes fulfill the same learning outcomes and meet the Mason Core lower-level writing requirement. However, they provide different types of support for different students, particularly in relation to language. 

  • ENGH 100, a 4-hour credit course, supports multilingual students and students who learned English in addition to another language. You should consider this course if you are comfortable using English in everyday and academic settings but would benefit from additional support with college-level reading and writing. It offers language-enhanced composition instruction, opportunities for extra practice, and more individualized support.

  • ENGH 101, a three-credit course, supports monolingual or fluent English speakers and writers who do not want additional language support.

  • ENGH 123, a four-credit course, supports international students and English language learners. You should consider the course if you are still developing confidence with academic English and would benefit from more intensive English language support in reading, writing, and communication. It offers language-enhanced composition instruction, opportunities for extra practice, and more individualized support as well.

If you are trying to determine which course would be the best fit for you, we highly encourage you to take the Directed Self-Placement (DSP) to help you make that choice. This will ask you questions about your language and literacy experiences and provide you with information about each of these courses to help you determine which course would be best for you. 

Part of the Mason Core and Mason Impact, ENGH 100/101/123 as the first course in Mason’s vertical writing curriculum provides student writers with the skills and mindsets needed to effectively respond to a range of academic and public writing situations through particular attention to rhetorical flexibility and inquiry-based research. Students learn to engage in a process of discovery and consider diverse perspectives before making a judgment, taking a stance, or proposing a solution. Students learn to analyze and respond to a range of rhetorical situations (writing in various genres for different audiences and purposes); develop strategies to critically read a range of non-fiction genres; engage in in-depth inquiry and writing processes; locate, evaluate, and synthesize source material to discover and answer complex questions; and reflect on what they are learning and how they are applying new knowledge, as well as on their research and writing processes.

ENGH 100/101/123 Learning Outcomes

1: Students are able to analyze and respond to a range of rhetorical situations with increased awareness of the purposes, audiences, and contexts of writing. They are able to identify appropriate rhetorical strategies and apply them in their own writing.

2: Students develop strategies for anticipating and using audience response as they engage in and reflect upon a recursive writing process that includes exploration, inquiry, and invention, as well as drafting, organizing, revising, peer-reviewing, and editing.

3: Students gain emerging college-level proficiency in critically reading and writing nonfiction genres to develop analysis, reflection, exposition, argumentation, and research skills.  

4: Students are able to use research strategies for topic exploration and refining research questions; locate, select, evaluate, synthesize, and document sources; and incorporate outside facts, perspectives, and ideas in their writing to complicate and extend their own ideas. They are able to employ appropriate technologies and resources to support their reading, thinking, researching, and writing.

5: Students develop knowledge of linguistic structures and writing conventions through critical reading and practice (writing and revision). They understand why writing conventions vary based on genre and audience and apply this knowledge by composing different types of texts. 

Requirements and Prerequisites

Students in ENGH 100/101/123 will produce at least 3500 words of formal graded prose and will engage in informal and reflective assignments, early drafts, and/or task-specific writing assignments (e.g. summaries or reading analyses). Students will be engaged in the writing and research process and regularly receive feedback and instruction. Students will also have the opportunity to revise at least one major project after receiving detailed instructor feedback prior to submitting for a grade.

The courses are offered in a variety of learning modalities, including face-to-face, hybrid, hybrid online, and both synchronous and asynchronous online. For a description of course modalities and to see how each type of modality appears on PatriotWeb, please visit our course modalities page.