Readings about FYC and Composition: Entering the Conversation

For our first project, you worked on reading, analyzing, and responding to a single source. Now that you’ve started to develop your knowledge about rhetorical analysis and your writing skills, we’re going to expand our writing to look at multiple sources.

For our second project, you will be creating a synthesis argument that explains the connections between sources. This assignment will build on the previous essay, and you will use the essay you summarized and responded to as a starting place and as one of your sources.

This project, will give you the option of writing about one of two topics:

• The Five Paragraph Essay
• Standardized English

In this chapter, you’ll read through various sources to gain more knowledge about the topic of First Year Composition and Academic Writing. Specifically, you’ll find secondary sources about the two themes within that conversation listed above. We will also be reading some professional statements about the teaching of college composition courses. These primary sources will provide further resources for your synthesis essay.

In addition to learning about some of the arguments regarding college writing, we will begin to review the important writing skills necessary for research-based writing in college.

We’ll specifically look at

• Integrating Quotations
• Thesis Statements
• Essay Structure: intro, body, conclusion
• Paraphrase
• Synthesis
• Thesis Statements

By the end of this chapter, you’ll have the information necessary to begin writing your synthesis essay.