ENGL 1050 Argumentative Writing and Critical Thinking

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Catalog Description

Prerequisite: ENGL 1005B, ENGL 1010, or equivalent. Instruction in argumentation and critical writing, critical thinking, analytical evaluation of texts, research strategies, information literacy, and proper documentation. 

Credit Hours: 3 lecture hour(s) per week.
Grading: ABCDF.

Course Description

ENGL 1050 integrates writing and other critical thinking activities to increase students’ learning while teaching them thinking skills for posing questions, proposing hypotheses, gathering and analyzing data, and making arguments, applicable to any discipline or interest. 

Learning Outcomes

  1. Demonstrate the ability to distinguish between knowledge and belief, facts and values, and identify faulty reasoning through an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought, through writing, reading, and research.
  2. Analyze and evaluate a range of evidence used to support various types of claims.
  3. Recognize, respond to and use common techniques of persuasion.
  4. Understand the fundamentals of logic and critical thinking and the relationship of logic to language.
  5. Use inductive and deductive reasoning to reach well-supported conclusions.
  6. Identify the assumptions upon which particular conclusions depend.
  7. Refine fundamental rhetorical strategies used to produce university-level writing, especially
    1. modify content and form according to the rhetorical situation, purpose, and audience
    2. incorporate textual evidence through quotation, summary, and paraphrase into their essays and appropriately cite their sources
    3. evaluate the relevance, validity, and authority of information, and ethically use and cite that information in their own writing
  8. Develop cogent arguments for views on theoretical and practical matters
  9. Exhibit knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to voice, tone and style
  10. Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling

ENGL 1050 Essay Requirements

Prewrite, draft, write, and revise a minimum of 6000 words of formal writing. The writing will be in a variety of genres, assume a variety of rhetorical approaches, respond to a rhetorical situation, address a specific audience, address a variety of viewpoints, and articulate a stance. Some of the essays will incorporate outside texts.