ENGH 123 One Page Curriculum Description

Overview and Main Concepts

ENGH 123 is four-credit equivalent to ENGH 101. This course provides student writers with the skills and mindsets needed to effectively respond to a range of academic and public writing situations with additional language support for building English fluency. Multilingual students with developing proficiency in English learn rhetorical reading and writing strategies that attend to the linguistic structures and moves enacted in non-fiction genres. Students learn to engage in a process of discovery and consider diverse perspectives before making a judgment, taking a stance, or proposing a solution; locate, evaluate, and synthesize source material to discover and answer complex questions; and reflect on linguistic choices and research and writing processes. Students develop linguistic proficiency in English through context-specific instruction and practice in the interplay of grammatical structures and rhetorical aims and receive individualized feedback on language usage/writing development. 

Major Project Requirements

All ENGH 123 classes include (multiple project requirements may be combined into a single assignment):

  • An inquiry-based research assignment that begins with an instructor-reviewed research question
  • An in-depth annotated bibliography 
  • Rhetorical adaptation work in which students' work on unique rhetorical situationsInformation from one project is repurposed for a new rhetorical situation (focusing on adapting one’s writing and linguistic choices for changed purposes, audiences, and genres)
  • Argument writing
  • Public writing (can include multimodal/digital genres)
  • Consistent English language instruction

Major Instructional Topics 

  • The rhetorical situation
  • Analysis of rhetorical situations, including audience and genre analysis with particular attention to conventions of structure and language
  • Critical and rhetorical reading, including rhetorical language noticing    
    • Rhetorical architecture/elements
    • Key concepts and key terms (for lexical development, reading instruction, and research tool) 
  • Inquiry-based research, including research question development and driving questions
  • Information literacy, including source evaluation (with lateral reading strategies such as SIFT), selection, analyses, and synthesis
  • Topic brainstorming, selection, and narrowing/exploratory research strategies
  • Writing process, including feedback, revising and editing strategies
  • Argument/persuasive writing, including responses to audience perspectives and concerns
  • Additional support in English language instruction though focused attention on English grammatical structures and usage in relation to rhetorical aims

Mason Writing Intensive Requirements

Because this course is a Writing Intensive course, students will: 

  • Produce at least 3500 words of formal graded prose and engage in informal and reflective assignments, early drafts, and/or task-specific writing assignments (e.g. summaries or reading analyses).
  • Be engaged in the writing and research process and regularly receive feedback and instruction.
  • Revise at least one major project after receiving detailed instructor feedback prior to submitting for a grade.