Expository Writing Program
Courses

English 200 "Expository Writing II"

Course Description & Objectives 

Expository Writing II is an introduction to persuasive writing, in which you are asked to consider the needs of your audience in order to make your arguments more effective. When focusing on your readers, you will need to make decisions about what evidence to choose, what organizational patterns to employ, and what tone and style to use. Importantly, this course enhances your ability to imagine the needs and values of your readers and to understand the reasons for why they might hold differing viewpoints.

By the end of the course, you should be able to do the following:

• Adopt effective process writing strategies, including invention, drafting, analyzing your own drafts and those of others, revising, and editing.
• Construct an argumentative claim and develop and adequately support audience-based reasons.
• Identify and  apply the core concepts of an explicit argument: claims and audience-based reasons, evidence, warrants, credibility, conditions of rebuttal, as well as ethos, pathos, and logos.
• Anticipate and rebut counterarguments to your claims, reasons, warrants, or use of evidence.
• Locate and evaluate appropriate outside research sources and effectively integrate and cite them in your arguments.
• Analyze specific audiences.
• Produce a broad range of arguments for various contexts and audiences: evaluations, proposals, letters to the editor, etc.

Textbooks

• Ramage, John D. and John C. Bean, Writing Arguments (6th edition)
• Henderson, Jen and Karin Westman, Expository Writing 200 (5^th edition)

2004-2006 Catalog Description

Introduction to writing persuasively and in response to literature. As with ENGL 100, uses discussions, workshops, and conferences, and emphasizes the writing process.

Paper Descriptions

From these following types of arguments, students complete five major papers. 

Evaluation Argument. Using criteria for good argumentative writing created and agreed upon by the class, students apply the criteria to an argument and evaluate how well the argument works and persuades its audience. 

Proposal Argument. Focusing upon a local issue or problem, students write a proposal that identifies the problem, describes the solution, and justifies why the solution is necessary and the best course of action.

Two Letters to the Editor. Similar to the reaction assignment in ENGL 100, students enter the conversation of a controversial issue and attempt to persuade readers to accept two different perspectives. Each side of the argument must be fairly presented, so that neither side “wins.” This assignment asks students to recognizing the opposing views of their audience.

Persuasive Research Essay. This assignment, which asks students to conduct a significant amount of research, asks students to identify a controversial issue and write a persuasive report that attempts to sway a resistant audience towards a particular point of view.

Reflection Essay. Students look back at their writing during the semester and their experience in the classroom and reflect upon both their progress and their struggles. The purpose of this essay is for students to help gain insights into their patterns of thinking and writing and to evaluate what they have learned from these patterns.

Debate Essay. In this assignment, students present both sides of an argument in debate form. Students need to thoroughly understand opposing perspectives of the issue, in order to rebut the claims, grounds, warrants, or backing of each speaker and forward each speaker’s own claims and evidence.

 

The Portfolio Examination. During the last week of class, students turn in a final portfolio that contains three of the five papers they wrote. A different instructor will read their portfolio to determine if it passes.  Portfolio readers do not determine students’ final grade. They only determine if a student’s portfolio passes or fails the course, based on general criteria of focus/purpose, development, organization, tone, and editing.