What and Why English 100?

Institutional and Pedagogical Contexts

Communication A

In the early 1990s, the University revised its general education requirements. Administrators assumed that, although incoming students came with some background in academic writing, they still needed practice and instruction in the kinds of communication typically asked for in courses at UW-Madison (both oral and written). Thus, the communication component of the first- and second-year curriculum was made more coherent and comprehensive, and a new "Communication A" (Comm A - click here for details) requirement was crafted to introduce students to academic discourse and to develop their abilities in writing and public speaking. Comm A courses are taught primarily in the departments of Communication Arts (Comm Arts 100) and English (English 100), but they are also taught in Ag-Journalism (AgJournalism 100), Engineering (EPD 155), and Family and Consumer Communications (Fam Com 100).

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English 100

English 100 aims to help students investigate complicated issues through writing, reading, and research. Its goal is to work with students to understand how written language—through revision, in negotiation with other writers, and in the different conventions and genres used for different academic and intellectual purposes and audiences—is a complicated and challenging medium, one that extends beyond the boundaries of much of what they have previously encountered. Students will not only get a lot of practice in writing and revising essays for a variety of audiences—they will also begin to understand how the conventions of written language work, and what happens when they are put to different purposes. By focusing on these issues, English 100 also prepares students for academic writing in future courses.

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English 100 Program Objectives

To teach students how to write clear and coherent papers. In so doing, students will learn to express themselves intelligibly in well-organized essays that demonstrate logical progression of thought. Towards this goal, students spend time defining problems or issues that motivate their writing; finding and using information from different sources to make an original argument; identifying and sustaining a focus; adapting their work to different audiences; and learning and using the conventions appropriate to the context in which they are writing.
To engage students in critical analysis of writing. Towards this goal, students spend time identifying and evaluating writers’ viewpoints, examining what a writer may be leaving unsaid, and synthesizing diverse views into their own written responses to course texts.
To develop thorough research techniques. Students spend time conducting primary and/or secondary research, learning to use the libraries on campus (including their electronic information sources), and using the disciplinary conventions appropriate to their work (which may include the conventions for writing both within English as a discipline, as well as within their chosen, or prospective, majors).

In English 100, students write

papers on questions about which people can reasonably disagree;
papers that can be read with respect and interest by a number of different audiences, some of whom may be well-informed about the subject;
papers that cannot be produced in a single sitting, but which involve a good deal of drafting, research, and revision, extending over at least a week (and often more);
papers that require collaborative work with peers in the process of writing, revising, and critiquing.

Ultimately, English 100 is a course in which students spend the majority of their time writing (through brainstorming, drafting, outlining, revising, etc.), in which their writing and the writing of their peers serve as objects of study and critical thinking (in full-class discussions as well as in group work), and in which the complexities of language in different genres, conventions, and disciplines form the subject matter.

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