GEN 104: English Composition
Develop confidence and fluency in your writing
Writing is an essential skill in almost any professional career you can name. In this online english composition course, students learn to become better readers and writers. Your goal is to produce clearer, more active sentences, better structured paragraphs, and more coherent and interesting personal and analytical essays. Throughout the semester, class discussions will use the critique of images and videos on art as a stimulus for writing. Students will develop two polished essays that will be presented for peer critique.
About This Course
Project-Based Learning
Creative writing projects will focus on developing, expanding, and editing your ideas for academia or the professional world.
What Skills Will I Develop?
Students in this course can expect to learn to:
- Employ various strategies for generating ideas for expository writing.
- Develop an essay outline and flesh out ideas and arguments.
- Meet expectations for writing and thinking in an academic "voice."
- Improve the quality of written work through editing and proofreading.
- Capture the experience of a text or image in writing.
- Incorporate quotation in writing in an appropriate and effective manner.
- Avoid plagiarism in writing.
- Create and communicate structure and flow in a piece writing.
- Apply strategies for academic writing in a professional context.
- Identify and correct style and grammar issues such as commonly confused words, commas and semicolons, run-on sentences, comma splices, fragments, modifier and parallelism issues, apostrophe issues, and passive sentences.
What Software and Supplies Do I Need?
- Computer with Internet connection.
- MS Word or equivalent program.
Course Instructor(s)
The course is taught by the following instructor(s):
Carolyn Zaikowski
Carolyn Zaikowski is an author and educator with degrees in psychology and creative writing. The author of the novel A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013), her fiction, poetry, and essays have been published widely.
Course Outline
Introduction and Generation
How do you come up with ideas for your writing? In this first lecture, we'll discuss different ways to think about writing and to generate ideas for your essays. We'll also visit the role of grammar and style in effective and clear writing.
Expansion and Revision
This week's lecture discusses some time-tested ways to get from your rough notes to something resembling a complete piece of writing. We'll also explore the topic of how to develop a voice in your writing, in this case an academic voice. Think of this lecture as offering tools that will help you build and shape your work.
Editing and Proofreading
The best writing needs at least one editing and proofreading pass. In this lecture, we'll explore a process that is essential to any good writing, whether it's a design brief or the elusive Great American Novel.
Until I See What I Say: Writing as Conversation
This week's class will offer insight into the two aspects of writing as conversation: how to capture your experience in your writing and how to integrate outside material to enrich your work.
Writing for Academia
So far in this course, we've focused on both the larger issues surrounding academic writing and the nuts and bolts of grammar and punctuation. The content of this lecture falls somewhere in the middle ground: how to write with, around, and in response to others' work, and how to represent the progress of your ideas on the page.
Writing for the Professional World
In the last few lectures, we've been focusing on tools, rules, and techniques for writing the academic essay. Much more important, though, is the chance to practice habits of thought and analysis that will help you become a strong writer, thinker, and creator throughout your professional life and beyond. In this lecture, we'll examine how the writing skills you've developed in this course can be applied in the working world.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How Do The Courses Work?
Our courses are project-based and instructor-led. In each course you’ll complete a series of lectures, projects, discussions, and critiques designed to stretch your creative skills. Weekly assignment deadlines keep you on track, and with no set-logins or Zoom meetings, you can build your studies around your schedule.
Who Are The Instructors?
Our courses are developed and taught by our industry-leading faculty of creative professionals. This means that you’ll learn in-demand skills, get feedback on your work, and build a portfolio of creative work. View our Student Gallery for featured student projects.
When Can I Start?
Classes start January, April, and August, and this course is completed in a 15-week term. College credit from this course can be applied to a range of Degree and Certificate programs at Sessions College. You can enroll in this course on an individual basis or as part of a program.
Explore our Programs: Bachelor's Degree | Associate Degree | Undergraduate Certificate
How Do I Register?
To register for a program, complete our program application. To register for this course on an individual basis, please contact our admissions team at admissions@sessions.edu. An Admissions Advisor will contact you to setup your enrollment.
| Course Tuition and Fees | |
|---|---|
| Tuition | $300/credit |
| Registration Fee* | $200 |
| Total Course Price | $1100 |
Registration fees are nonrefundable after 5 days from enrollment.
Is Sessions College Accredited?
Yes. Since 2001, Sessions College has been accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC). The Distance Education Accrediting Commission is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a recognized accrediting agency and is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).