Critical Reading and Writing

Course Number:
IRW 115
Transcript Title:
Critical Reading and Writing
Created:
Aug 11, 2022
Updated:
Aug 11, 2022
Total Credits:
5
Lecture Hours:
50
Lecture / Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0
Satisfies Cultural Literacy requirement:
No
Satisfies General Education requirement:
No
Grading Options
A-F, P/NP, Audit
Default Grading Options
A-F
Repeats available for credit:
0
Prerequisites

ABE 75 or ABE 70 or GED 70 or equivalent placement

Course Description

Prepares students for College Composition - WR 121 (the next course in the required writing sequence). Introduces the writing process with emphasis placed on thesis development, idea and essay organization, and revision. Focuses on reading as it relates to critical thinking, personal exploration, academic inquiry, and essay composition. Emphasizes the importance of understanding and responding to texts, expanding critical thinking and reading skills, developing greater research skills and information literacy, and preparing students for college composition. Prerequisites: ABE 75 or ABE 70 or GED 70 or equivalent placement. Audit available.

Course Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. Read to understand texts (occasion, audience, purpose, argument, voice, tone, formality).
  2. Use composing and reading strategies for investigation, comprehension, and critical thinking.
  3. Locate, evaluate and use information effectively to question texts and encourage intellectual curiosity.
  4. Use reading strategies to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with appropriate sources in support of a central idea.
  5. Use writing conventions (content, form, format, citation) to meet the expectations of diverse audiences.
  6. Use flexible strategies for pre-reading, reading, reviewing, rereading, correcting comprehension, drafting, revising, and editing.

Suggested Outcome Assessment Strategies

  • Portfolio
  • Timed, in-class essay writing
  • In-class writing
  • Out-of-class writing
  • Responses to assigned texts
  • Research tasks
  • Group/individual work demonstrating comprehension strategies
  • Group/individual work demonstrating vocabulary usage
  • Book review/project of novel, biography, or autobiography
  • Conference(s) with instructor
  • Individual projects, such as journals, flash cards, outlines, maps, diagrams, multi-media compositions, note-taking methods, career exploration readings, Service Learning
  • Midterm and comprehensive final
  • Quizzes on vocabulary and correct usage
  • Class participation

Course Activities and Design

The determination of teaching strategies used in the delivery of outcomes is generally left to the discretion of the instructor. Here are some strategies that you might consider when designing your course: lecture, small group/forum discussion, flipped classroom, dyads, oral presentation, role play, simulation scenarios, group projects, service learning projects, hands-on lab, peer review/workshops, cooperative learning (jigsaw, fishbowl), inquiry based instruction, differentiated instruction (learning centers), graphic organizers, etc.

Course Content

Outcome #1: Read to understand texts (occasion, audience, purpose, argument, voice, tone, formality)
  • Analyze texts in order to identify explicit and implicit ideas.
  • Distinguish fact from opinion.
  • Determine the author’s potential bias.
  • Cultivate flexibility and skepticism as a reader.
  • Explore relationship between audience and rhetorical choices in texts.
Outcome #2: Use composing and reading strategies for inquiry, comprehension, and critical thinking.
  • Use stages of reading.
  • Develop self-reflection and metacognition.
  • Adjust reading rate to needs of the text.
  • Broaden use of vocabulary development strategies to learn and use new words.
  • Use active reading strategies to formulate questions and develop a line of inquiry
Outcome #3: Locate, evaluate and use information effectively and ethically to construct a line of inquiry and encourage intellectual curiosity.
  • Formulate a research query.
  • Select appropriate sources of information.
  • Identify and make use of steps in the research process.
  • Maintain academic honesty by acknowledging all sources in written work.
  • Refine connections between text, the student’s life, student’s knowledge of the world, and other texts.
Outcome #4: Use reading strategies to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with appropriate sources in support of a central idea.5. Use writing conventions (content, form, format, citation) to meet the expectations of diverse audiences.
  • Focus writing through use of topic sentences or clear topics
  • Construct unified essays
  • Develop a variety of adequate and relevant support
  • Practice use of writing conventions like mechanics and grammar
  • Practice crediting source material using a recognized academic style.
  • Shift form to meet audience needs.
Outcome #5: Use writing conventions (content, form, format, citation) to meet the expectations of diverse audiences.
  • Evaluate one’s own reading and writing processes.
  • Accurately describe ideas in source material and relate them to one’s own.
  • Evaluate one’s own writing skills and writing process to revise drafts to emphasize a central idea and the relevance of evidence.
  • Notice commonalities and characteristics of different types of writing
  • Practice emulating forms based on models
Outcome #6: Develop flexible strategies for pre-reading, reading, reviewing, rereading, correcting comprehension, drafting, revising, and editing.
  • Adjust reading rate to the nature of the material
  • Use critical thinking to evaluate increasingly complex and diverse information and sources for learning.
  • Practice writing to learn.
  • Improve essays through revision, incorporating peer and instructor feedback
  • Examine interactions between structure, style, vocabulary, and purpose within complex texts.

Suggested Texts and Materials

No text required, OER strongly encouraged. Some examples include:

  • "Intersections: An Integrated Reading and Writing Textbook"
  • “About Writing” by Robin Jeffrey