College Writing Extended introduces students to the strategies and practices necessary to become a successful writer at the university level and beyond. As the required writing course for undergraduate students at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, College Writing challenges students to reflect upon and cultivate their strengths as readers and writers at this new stage of their educational careers. Students develop their critical reading abilities and written communication skills through meaningful writing projects of diverse genres, including multimodal composition.
The difference between College Writing (355:101) and College Writing Extended (355:104) is that College Writing Extended includes an 80-minute writing lab each week, in addition to the course’s two standard class meetings. As such, College Writing Extended is a 4.5-credit course. Students enroll in 101 or 104 based on Rutgers University’s writing placement test.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The overarching goal of the course is for students to develop habits of reading and writing that will allow them to respond successfully to the varied rhetorical challenges they will encounter in their future studies and in their lives beyond the university. Students will come to recognize the value of creativity and intellectual risk-taking in an interdisciplinary context while learning to appreciate writing as an instrument of critical thought as well as a means of communication.
Students who successfully complete College Writing Extended will be able to:
➢ READ AS A WRITER. You will learn to identify different types of texts in relation to their purpose and audience. You will reflect on your own experiences as a reader and adapt writing strategies you encounter in your reading to make your own writing more effective.
➢ JOIN THE CONVERSATION. You will learn productive and responsible ways to engage the ideas of others while developing your own understanding about complex issues. You will practice evaluating and responding to sources critically and will learn to use evidence thoughtfully and in service of developing your own arguments and areas of inquiry.
➢ PRESENT IDEAS CREATIVELY. You will learn to consider the form and structure of your written prose while also exploring the ways that images, videos, recorded sound, and other types of media can enrich the reader’s experience and convey ideas to a general audience.
➢ APPROACH WRITING AS A PROCESS. You will learn to practice the strategies and habits of successful writers, including drafting, revising, and responding to feedback. You will develop perseverance and resilience in the face of challenging writing tasks and approach those challenges as a member of a community of writers.
Students may not drop College Writing Extended from their course schedules. This is true both during the semester’s initial Add/Drop period and later when students may withdraw from other courses with a ‘W’. College Writing is a course that must be taken each semester until it is completed. In rare cases of verifiable emergency, the Director or Executive Director of the Writing Program may grant permission for students to withdraw from the course, but only before the withdrawal deadline.
If you have experienced an emergency or other extenuating circumstance, please make an appointment with the Office of the Dean of Students – Student Support area. That office can document your emergency and direct you to the appropriate resources in the Writing Program and elsewhere in the University. Please note that contacting the Office of the Dean of Students will not automatically result in permission to drop College Writing Extended.
