College Composition
Lisa Breger, Director of College Composition
The College Composition (CC) program offers three courses: CC 110, a Topic-Based Writing Course; CC 111, Writing Fundamentals, and CC112, Controversial Issues. Upon entering Pine Manor College, students select a section of CC110 based on their topic of interest. Sample topics include: Constructing Identity in the Contemporary World, Examining Hip Hop, Gender Issues, Legends, Lore and Lies, Please Don’t Steal My Jordans: Wealth and its Discontents; Self, Spirit and Society, and The Impact of Science on Society. At the conclusion of CC 110, students complete a portfolio, along with a self-assessment, to determine the next placement. A committee of CC staff makes placement determinations for one of the following options to complete the CC requirement:
1. Moving from CC 110 into CC 111 followed by CC 112 in the following year. In this sequence, completion of the requirement takes three semesters.
2. Moving from CC 110 directly into CC 112.
3. Placing into an honors section of CC 112
4. Exempting CC 111 and CC 112
All students must take CC 110, CC111 and CC 112, with the following exceptions:
1. Any student who transfers in credit is exempted from the appropriate course.
2. Any student with a score of 600 or higher on the SAT II in Writing is exempted from CC 111.
3. Any student who exempts from CC 111 or CC 112 on the basis of the portfolio review.
Ordinarily, students are expected to complete the composition sequence no later than the end of their first semester, sophomore year.
Learning Outcomes of the College Composition Program
1. Effective communication in writing about contemporary, classical, and controversial issues.
2. Critical thinking about the relationship and complexity of ideas in writing, and making connections between texts while considering issues through a variety of perspectives
3. Understand the ways in which race, class, ethnicity, and gender affect contemporary society
College Composition Course Descriptions
CC 110 A Topic-Based Writing Course
Prepares students for the writing demands of other college courses. The course uses writing as a way to learn, as well as a means of communication. Readings, movies, and class discussion stimulate thinking and provide subject matter for student essays. Activities emphasize the writing process with a focus on revision through peer and teacher-student conferences. Students will have opportunities to present their work in larger forums outside the classroom.
Fall and Spring.
CC 111 Writing Fundamentals
Designed particularly to provide intensive work in writing skills. Class sizes are smaller to allow for more individualized instruction on grammar and mechanics, as well as paragraph and essay construction. This course also emphasizes writing as a process, and students have opportunities to present their work in larger forums outside of the classroom.
Prerequisite: CC110. Fall and Spring.
CC 112 College Composition II Controversial Issues
Builds on the skills and processes introduced in CC 110 and CC111, but introduces more challenging academic writing. This class emphasizes the rhetoric of analytic and persuasive writing and on information literacy in the context of the research paper.
Prerequisite: CC 110, CC111, or placement. Fall and Spring.
Program Goals and Objectives
All sections of College Composition share the following goals:
• To create a community of writers, readers, and listeners
• To develop your understanding of writing as a process
• To enable you to effectively use narrative, descriptive, analytical and persuasive techniques as appropriate within your essay
• To develop your own voice, style, and sense of audience
• To help you think critically in the following ways:
• To help you begin to understand concepts such as tone, audience, and identifying a writer's underlying concepts
• To help you work to identify and paraphrase main points and to abstract ideas from reading
• To read texts closely for analysis as well as to read them to explore your own ideas about a topic
• To write both analytical and exploratory essays
• To help you begin to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your own writing
• To enable you to use parenthetical citations and create a Works Cited list
• To enable you to distinguish active from passive voice and to use each appropriately
• To enable you to write clear sentences, using correct grammar and mechanics, and language that is appropriate for the audience and occasion
Objectives of CC110
To introduce the vocabulary necessary to discuss and analyze writing
To help students relate personal experience to a text and vice versa
• To help students gain the ability to abstract ideas from reading
• To guide students toward an understanding of audience, purpose
• To give students practice summarizing information
• To give students practice in paraphrasing information (paraphrasing is a sophisticated skill which can present special difficulty for international students. It is advisable to provide frequent practice in this skill throughout the semester. This skill receives special emphasis in CC112.)
• To help students learn to synthesize information. (Special emphasis in CC112)
• To continue to work on documentation
• To help students use writing as a means of inquiry and a tool of critical thinking
• To teach close reading i.e. have students learn to analyze a piece of writing for style as well as content and for the connection between style and purpose
• To make sure students can demonstrate an understanding of what a thesis is and that to some degree all theses must be persuasive
• To give students opportunities to evaluate their own writing and that of their peers
• To give students the ability to write grammatically and mechanically correct essays (grammar introduced through short lessons) which demonstrate in particular correct use of tense, person, active voice, modifiers
Objectives of CC111
• To familiarize students with writing as a process that includes brainstorming, freewriting, drafting, revising, and editing
• To familiarize students with a range of rhetorical strategies in reading and writing including description, narration, analysis, comparison/contrast.
• To familiarize students with the vocabulary of an essay e.g. introduction, thesis, paragraph, topic sentence conclusion
• To teach grammatical principles in context paying special attention to sentence boundaries, and consistency in person and tense
• To help students progress from personal to text based writing
• To build vocabulary
• To introduce students to the conventions of the Works Cited list and parenthetical documentation
• To help students distinguish main ideas from supporting details both in reading and writing a text
• To help students write short essays with the following characteristics;
Clear thesis statement
Introduction, body, conclusion
Logical organization
Unified paragraphs built around a main idea
Clear syntax (i.e. grammar does not present an obstacle to a reader's understanding of the text)
Individual voice (works toward this goal)
Objectives of CC112
• To help students increase their proficiency in skills introduced in CC110 and CC111
• To help students develop critical thinking skills in the following areas:
• reading arguments and identifying an author's position, tone, and underlying assumptions
• evaluating evidence and summarizing arguments
• To help students learn why and how to document sources
• To give students practice writing persuasive essays which do the following:
Take a clear position
Show that the student writer has researched, analyzed, and evaluated evidence
Use evidence to support a point of view
Rebut or concede to the opposing point of view when appropriate
Use subordinate and compound-complex sentence structure effectively
Use parallel structure correctly