College Writing

Marengo Community High School - English 12

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     This course has been designed to resemble an advanced college writing class. The main goals of this course are to improve a student’s positive writing abilities and to prepare them for the world of advanced collegiate writing. The purpose of the class is to enable students to engage successfully and comfortably in any type of writing customarily done far beyond high school by using a rigorous writing process. Moreover, this course will focus on improving general writing skills and on the revision and editing practices that are necessary to achieve excellent writing. Students study essayists in different forms while applying this study to writing their own various essays.

     The syllabus is listed first, and students should first be familiar with the rules, expectations, and calendar for the course. Next, the grading rubric is provided for students. This rubric is used on all assignments and is a generally good tool for measuring the qualities of any piece of writing. Students will complete assignments as described in the syllabus. All materials for completing the assignments have been provided below. Class time will be used for workshop, lecture, independent work time, and collaborative exploration of all things writing. The student's job is to identify areas that he or she wishes to improve and then to do the tasks necessary to improve in those areas. The teacher will act as a guide/coach to help the student identify areas that need improvement and help the student better understand concepts which will lead to improved writing products.

The bulk of the coursework is listed below. For each assignment, you'll find the assignment sheet, the rubric, related notes, professional examples, and student examples. Each assignment lists the topic requirements, format requirements, hints/tips, topic ideas, thesis format, and organizational format. The professional examples are provided as a way for the student to see how professional writers employ that type of writing. Student examples are provided for two purposes: 1) so the current student can see, realistically, what former students have produced for this essay, and 2) so that the student can assess the example to see how they would improve that example. Student examples are sometimes excellent products, sometimes they are weak in some areas, and a few student examples are weak in many areas. Each student should apply the rubric to these examples to help see which aspects of the example are strong and which are weak. Finally, many of the examples are just plain fun to read!

"The ink of a scholar is worth more than the blood of a martyr." -Chinese proverb



*) Definition Essay:

Professional Definition Essays:


Student Argumentation Essays:

The Male Body