Developmental Writing 100
WRT 100: Foundations of College English
At UW Oshkosh, students who score 320 or lower on the Wisconsin English Placement Test (WEPT) are referred to WRT 100: Foundations of College English.
A course designed to develop competencies in the fundamentals of English grammar, usage, sentence structure, and paragraph writing. Through individualized instruction and tutoring, students placed in English 100 are prepared, upon satisfactory completion, to enter WRT 101. Units (crs.) earned in English 100 do not apply toward the 42 unit (cr.) general education requirement or toward the minimum 120 units (crs.) required for graduation. Pass/Fail course.
Word and Page Expectations
Students should compose a minimum of 2000 words of revised, formal writing per semester (approximately 8 typed, double-spaced pages of finished written product). Students should write daily and this figure of 2000 words does not represent a considerable additional amount of informal writing.
Of these 2000 words, approximately 750 words (3 typed, double-spaced pages of finished written product) should be a single work of formal, academic prose, including a thesis statement, examples, introductory paragraph, and conclusion.
Course Criteria and Outcomes
Basic Writing should emphasize strategies for completing written work using the writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing).
Writing as a Process
By the time students leave WRT 100 and enter WRT 188, students should
- have the ability to read instructors’ assignments to discern the written task to be addressed in the assignment;
- have the ability to use journals, mapping and other strategies to create and test ideas;
- recognize the need for revision and create two or more formal drafts of an academic essay.
Academic Writing
By the time students leave WRT 100 and enter WRT 188, students should have the ability to
- compose summaries of a variety of outside sources (such as films, webpages, published essays);
- create an academic thesis;
- incorporate examples from personal experience and external sources to support a thesis;
- use varying organizational strategies for essays (compare / contrast, cause and effect, classification / division);
- employ rhetorical modes (persuasive, informative, narrative, descriptive) to write for different audiences and purposes.
Writing Conventions
By the time students leave WRT 100 and enter WRT 188, students should have the ability to
- edit and proofread their own work for spelling, punctuation, capitalization, sentence boundaries (run-ons and comma splices), and other areas of grammar and usage;
- recognize that the audience for academic writing requires a more formal language than social writing situations such as email and text messaging;
- understand effective paragraphing (unity, topic sentences, support, transitions; functions of introductory and concluding paragraphs);
- recognize sentence completeness and variety (simple, compound, and complex sentences).
Ethical use of Print and Electronic Information
By the time students leave WRT 100 and enter WRT 188, students should be familiar with
- discerning the authority of print and electronic information;
- integrating and citing source material appropriately and ethically to avoid plagiarism;
- documenting sources in MLA format.