English 101

Required Textbooks

Student Guide to English 100, 101, and 102/102i, 2009-2010
Ruszkiewicz, John How to Write Anything - Customized UNC Edition
You instructor may also require additional texts, including: They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff; and/or Sharing and Responding by Peter Elbow.

Please note that the Student Guide and How to Write Anything are also required for English 102 (or 102i), so you should keep the textbook for your future class. You instructor may also require the Carolina Summer Reading Program book.

An Overview of English 101

English 101 focuses on the conventions of analysis and argumentation. You will write papers that explore, clarify, and substantiate your positions on various subjects. One aim of the course is to help you understand how writing varies according to the situations or occasions in which people write. You probably already recognize that, in conversation, your language differs according to where you are and with whom you are talking. For example, you use one way of speaking—one set of conventions—when you’re hanging out with friends and a significantly different way of speaking when you’re interviewing for a job. English 101 is designed to build on this knowledge that you already have, giving you opportunities to examine and practice the conventions that govern different contexts for writing and speaking.

This course will be writing-intensive: you will write during nearly every class meeting, reflect on your writing process as you work on the writing assignments, and you will also work on your writing in a more individualized way during one-on-one meetings with your instructor. English 101 classes are structured as a workshop, which means that they focus on planning, drafting, and revising each assignment. You will share your work with classmates, who will respond in ways that will help you make each succeeding draft better.

The course should enable you to respond to the following question: How do we use language to influence the world? The assignments will ask you to examine how writing influences our lives. Real writing, as opposed to much school writing, never occurs in a vacuum. People write as members of a community, and they write with the intention of influencing people in that community. At the same time, the very act of writing serves to identify writers with a particular group, as in the case of accountants who write financial statements, attorneys who write legal briefs, and so on. Writing that may influence the members of a group also serves to define what the group is and what it does. In other words, the relationship between writers and the communities in which they write is reciprocal. Your composition course will try to approximate these features of real writing.

Although everyone has membership in several communities, in English 101 you will investigate the language conventions of three groups: popular culture, a public community, and a professional community.