Wrt 105 Syllabus 18-19.docx
Syracuse University
Future Students 2018-2019 (Student Meeting)
Instructor: Mrs. T. Davis
Office: R157
E-mail: [email protected]nastotacsd.org
“Every challenge you face today makes you stronger tomorrow. The challenge of life is intended to make you better, not bitter.”
Roy T. Bennett
Course Description:
WRT 105 is an introduction to academic writing that focuses on the practices of analysis and argument, practices that traverse across disciplinary lines and into professional and civic writing. These interdependent practices of critical inquiry are fundamental to the work you will do in your college courses and later in your careers and civic engagements.
In Writing Analytically (7th edition), Rosenwasser and Stephen claim that, “A lot of what passes for thinking is merely reacting: right/wrong, good/bad, loved it/hated it, couldn’t relate to it, boring” (16). Argument, however, involves analysis – and moves into making claims to a specific audience about how the world is or should be. Argument here goes beyond opinions, pro/con debates; evidence for your arguments comes from analysis, from discussion with others, from your personal experience, and from research in the library and on the web.
Complex reading and thinking practices are correlative to complex writing. Consequently, the writing projects in this course will be substantial and challenging, but so will the thinking and reading. Our writing informs our reading, and our reading informs our writing, and both of them inform, and are informed by, our thinking. So if it looks like a lot of reading, it is.