This Composition I syllabus is designed for the first semester of a two-semester First Year Composition series.  Units are cumulative and build on one another while maintaining an emphasis on rhetorical basics such as audience, purpose, and communication throughout the semester.  Students will experiment with a range of genres while still allowing enough time for revision during each unit, emphasizing the importance of revision as part of the writing process.

​

Beyond this, a well-designed and executed Comp and Rhetoric course might well be termed, instead, Critical Thinking and Critical Communication for Functioning Adults.  The depth of investigation and analysis demanded by Composition and Rhetoric will be repeated in many forms in the disciplines that students will be entering into.  Though they may never again be asked to complete a rhetorical analysis, for instance, the critical thinking involved, such as examining the parts that make up a whole, understanding how they work together, questioning why an author would make such choices, and expressing these functions in clear prose foreshadow similar depth of thinking in future coursework. 

​

This syllabus incorporates film in the classroom, as well.  The use of film in such a course is not standard; however, in a world of increasingly visually integrated media, it is an important consideration.  Students can be trained to understand the rhetorical choices and manipulations inherent within printed text without ever making the leap to understanding that these exist in visual media, as well.  Film provides an opportunity for students to explore this form of rhetoric and become more savvy consumers of many forms of media, making them better-informed and shrewder in their interactions with media both in coursework and beyond.