Academic Writing for ELL (English Language Learner) Students
This course satisfies one Hub requirement: The Individual in Community
WR 111 is a pass/fail course but still requires substantial academic work. We hope that the pass/fail designation allows students in their first semester at BU to take risks in their writing, try new strategies, and adapt to college-level writing, reading, and speaking needs without worrying about the effects on their GPA.
WR 111 is designed to lay the foundation of your academic communication skills at BU. The course places you in an international, multicultural group of learners and provides opportunities to explore how individual personality is cultivated in relationship to larger communities through various communicative acts. You will read challenging and interesting essays about identity, cross-cultural communication, migration, families, and food–among other themes–and build your awareness of situation, audience, purpose, and diverse points of view. You will engage in in-class discussions, team oral presentations, debates, and on- and off-campus activities.
Please note: Students are not permitted to enroll in WR 111 after completing WR 112, WR 120, WR 151, WR 152, or WR 153.
Course Objectives
All WR 111 sections follow the same curriculum, draw from the same designated texts, and aim to achieve the common goals for this level. You will develop your abilities to:
- understand the culture of American academia and fluently perform varied language functions
- build awareness of situation, audience, purpose, and diverse points of view in order to participate in discourse communities, both on campus and beyond
- use effective strategies for reading college-level texts and acquiring new vocabulary to communicate in academic and public contexts
- express ideas in appropriate rhetorical structures, using multiple modes of expression
- identify and practice various writing styles and formats
- acquire and apply knowledge of advanced grammar and meta-language
- perform meta-cognitive and self-reflective tasks that situate your beliefs and experiences in the new context of an American university and community
Instructional Format and Course Pedagogy
The work you are assigned in this course will not be graded, but that does not mean it is unimportant. Students who prepare diligently for class, participate actively, and take the homework exercises and drafts seriously generally learn more and write better final papers than those who do not.
Experienced writers routinely share their work with others, because they understand that the best way to improve a piece of writing is to test it out with actual readers. In this class, you will learn how to respond productively to the writing of others and how to use feedback from others to improve your own work. All students in the class are expected to share pre-writing exercises, drafts, homeworks, and in-class writing. If you are concerned about sharing your writing, please talk with me about your concerns.
Although this is primarily a writing class, the oral presentations and class discussion components are designed to help you practice fluency and improve confidence in public speaking. Active class participation is expected throughout the semester.
Course Requirements
- Assigned readings, including shorter essays and a longer work (novel or memoir)
- Regular written homeworks such as reflections, annotations, reading journals, basic summaries, outlines, discussion questions, vocabulary logs, short multimodal assignments, etc.
- Creation of and contribution to WR cumulative portfolio
- Four formal academic papers with drafts and revisions
- Two group oral presentations and three individual mini presentations
- Two (or more) instructor conferences
- Three (or more) outside-of-class activities
- Regular class attendance and active class engagement
Note: Students register for WR 111 after taking the Multilingual Writer Placement, or by self-selection. After successfully passing WR 111, students are expected to register for and pass WR 112 before taking WR 120.