LACR 009 - Fundamentals of Composition I

LACR 009 develops students’ critical reading and writing skills so that they may employ the writing processes expected at the college level. The emphasis is on reading comprehension and writing processes (analyzing, applying, and evaluating), as well as on the technical aspects of writing, specifically essay structure, paragraph construction, grammar, punctuation and spelling. As this course is six hours per week, one-to-one time with the instructor is built into the class, so students can work on individual reading and writing issues.

By the end of this course, successful students will:

Develop critical reading and writing skills: describing, summarizing, evaluating, and interpreting.
Compose a thesis and support it in the body of the essay in well-structured paragraphs.
Analyze sources (locate the author’s thesis and evidence).
Apply source material through quotation, paraphrase, and summary.
Understand how to avoid intentional or unintentional plagiarism.
Access source material in the stacks of the library.
Recognize and edit patterns of grammatical error (sentence fragments, run-on sentences, subject-verb agreement, verb tense, punctuation, and spelling) to write clear sentences.

Prerequisites & Notes
This course does not count for credit toward graduation. LACR 009 is graded on a pass/no grade basis. Students who pass LACR 009 enter LACR 100. On rare occasions, a student may pass, with the instructor’s recommendation, from 009 to LACR 102. Such a student must meet with the Dean of Liberal Arts to decide on a suitable writing intensive course that will make up for the 3 LACR 101 credits. The student must make up these credits to fulfill the 42 credit requirement in Liberal Arts. Placement in LACR 009 is based on performance on a diagnostic test.

Credits: 3 cr, 6 hrs