Course Description
Courses and section #'s for the current or upcoming semester.
Special 200- and 300-Level Courses in the Writing Program
The following is a list of courses offered in our program. WRT 101 and WRT 102 will be offered each semester.
WRT 101
Introductory Writing Workshop: Students in this class are asked to produce frequent short papers to develop fluency and correctness. Students will also be introduced to the basic requirements of academic writing. A through C/U grading only. Students may not use the Pass/No credit option. Not for credit in addition to the discontinued EGC 100. Does not satisfy DEC A requirement for students matriculating before Fall 1999. Prerequisite: Placement essay, transfer evaluation, or ESL instructor. Three credits.
Intermediate Writing Workshop–A: This class emphasizes writing for academic purposes. Students learn strategies for extended writing assignments at the university. Short papers and at least two major essays in a variety of academic genres are required. Students will do extensive revision on multiple drafts in a variety of genres, including a researched argument and will be required to submit a final portfolio that must be judged acceptable by their teacher and an outsider reader. A through C/U grading only. The Pass/No credit option may not be used. Not for credit in addition to the discontinued EGC 101. Placement essay or transfer evaluation. Three credits.
Grammar and Style for Writers
Students will study the aspects of grammar that are most relevant to punctuation and to clear writing, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, phrases, clauses, gerunds, participles, infinites, and complete sentences. Students will also study prose style as a way of achieving rhetorical effectiveness through arranging and rearranging sentence elements. Students, through frequent writing, will learn to apply principles of clarity, concision, and coherence with more consciousness. Sentence imitation, sentence combining, and sentence invention techniques will be used to help students become more flexible in their syntactic fluidity. Several tests and three short papers.
Critical Writing Seminar: Special Topics
A writing seminar , with rotating historical, political, social, literary, and artistic topics suggested by the professors each semester . Frequent substantial writing projects are central to every version of the cour se. May be repeated for credit as the topic changes.
The Personal Essay: The personal essay is a form that has recently come back into fashion. In this case we will engage the form by writing our own personal essays as well as reading and responding to the work of writers who have come to define the genre: examples include Michel de Montaigne, Charles Lamb and E.B. White, as well as more contemporary writers such as John Didion and Scott Russell Sanders. We will explore the differences between shaping experience as truth in a personal essay or memoir and as a work of fiction. As a definition of personal essay evolves, we will consider whether personal writing and essay writing (or "essaying") have a place in academic writing. Students in this class will also be able to prepare a personal statement for their application for graduate or professional school.
Writing for Your Profession: Professions of all kinds consistently attest to the significance of strong writing and communication skills in their field. In fact, a national study shows that about 70% of paid jobs involve writing. This is verified by data from a 2012 survey of over fifty employers of Stony Brook University graduates. So in this course students learn about types of documents, rhetorical principles, and composing practices necessary for writing effectively in and about professional contexts. Coursework emphasizes each student's career interests, but lessons also address a variety of general professional issues, including audience awareness, research methods, ethics, collaboration, and verbal and visual communication. Students complete the course with practical knowledge and experience in composing business letters, proposals, and various kinds of professional reports. A creative, self-reflexive assignment also contextualizes each individual's professional aspirations within a bigger picture of his/her life and culture.
Writing for the Health Professions: This course will enable students interested in a health care career (e.g., medicine, nursing, public health, dentistry) to develop their critical writing and researching skills. Increasingly, health care practice is "evidence-based"; therefore, we will explore the uses of various types of evidence to understand better the health care needs of different populations. Students will conduct field research on a health issue of a local target population of their choice, investigate government documents that contain date on that issue and population, and perform scholarly research on the same issue as it affects the larger national population represented by that local one. Writing assignments will include a research proposal, field research results, data analysis, literature review and a final project incorporating the multiple forms of research about the issue and population.
Advanced Analytic and Argumentative Writing: Argumentative writing involves making a claim and supporting it with specific, related points and appropriate evidence -- in other words, it is thesis-driven writing. Whenever we don't quite like someone else's idea and we want him or her to come closer to ours, argumentative writing is the most efficient method for such persuasion, in whatever profession you're considering. This class, therefore, will focus on learning how to effectively utilize argumentative and counter-argumentative writing strategies. Students will explore an area of disciplinary interest to them through several stages -- proposal, preliminary draft, multiple versions, literature review -- culminating in a 20-30 page piece of writing in which they make a claim about a particular subject in that area of interest and support it with scholarly research and extensive elaboration.
Writing Center • 631.632.7405
