English 099

Student Course Description

English 099 is a preparatory course which is required of students whose Writing Placement Essays indicate that they will benefit from an extensive introduction to critical reading and writing before beginning the work of 101. While 099 does not confer credit toward graduation, it does count as a three credit course for financial aid and other such purposes.

English 099 does not review the high school Language Arts curriculum. Designed at the college-level, it introduces you to the methods and materials of academic reading and writing in a very supportive and structured setting that permits a great deal of personal attention.

Through sequenced assignments on a common theme, you will become engaged in a sustained academic inquiry. The course will allow you to see for yourself how understanding, fluency and authority develop over time through dialogue with yourself, your teacher, and your classmates about what you have written. You can expect to spend a lot of time discussing the readings and your written responses to them, the class becoming a community of learners in the process. You can also expect to practice revision as the chief means of advancing your thoughts and your organization of those thoughts. The course involves frequent informal reading and writing assignments that build toward 3-5 formal papers. With this emphasis on revision, we help students to relax, start writing, and keep writing without fear of making mistakes. School writing anxieties that may have built up over time begin to diminish. As a result, we have seen students emerge from this course both more conscious of what critical reading and writing consists of and more confident in their own processes and gifts. The course is designed for pleasure and success for all committed students.

Standard Policies

While each instructor articulates specific requirements in a course syllabus, all courses in the Freshman English program adhere to the following general guidelines:

• Students will do substantial daily homework, including weekly writing of extended prose, toward the shaping of formal, revised papers. Students write 3-5 formal papers, depending on the number of working papers and readings that precede them and revisions that follow.

• Students must meet due dates and keep up with the work as planned; late paper policies make it impossible for anyone to hand in a term’s work all at once. Students who fall substantially behind in their work should not expect to pass the course.

• Attendance is required. Students with more than 4 absences in Tuesday-Thursday or Monday-Wednesday classes should not expect to pass the course. Students with more than 6 absences in Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes should not expect to pass the course.

• Students are expected to come to class with all necessary materials for participating actively. Cell phones should be off and headphones put away.

• Students must abide by the University’s code on plagiarism and academic honesty. (See UMB Catalogue, pp. 332-35.)

Satisfactory Completion of 099

To receive a C- or better, you must fulfill your specific instructor’s course requirements, including attendance, paper completion and class participation. Over and above these basics, you need to have course materials that demonstrate the following outcomes:

1. Through your notes, drafts and completed essays, you show that you can use rereading and rewriting to improve your work.

2. You demonstrate an ability to form general ideas about readings in writing.

3. You show that you can test, examine and support those general ideas with specific details from the readings in papers of at least 3 pages.

4. You show awareness of your reader’s expectation for reasoned thought that is organized in paragraphs.

5. You demonstrate the ability to form written responses that are relevant to the assignment and to make comments in class that are relevant to the discussion.

6. You demonstrate persistence and a measure of success at identifying and self-correcting the surface errors that you and your instructor name as most important to your development as a college writer.