Butte College

Course Outline

2026-2027 Catalog

ENGL C1000 - Academic Reading and Writing

Catalog Description

Transfer Status
CSU/UC
Prerequisite
Placement as determined by the college’s multiple measures assessment process
Unit(s)
4.00
  • Lecture: 68.00 Contact hours/136.00 Out of class hours/204.00 Total hours/4.00 Unit(s)
  • Total: 68.00 Contact hours/136.00 Out of class hours/204.00 Total hours/4.00 Unit(s)

Course Description: In this course, students receive instruction in academic reading and writing, including writing processes, effective use of language, analytical thinking, and the foundations of academic research. This course focuses on close reading; expository, argumentative, and fictional texts; and develops expository, persuasive and argumentative academic writing. Essays will demonstrate analysis, critique, and synthesis. Graded only. (C-ID ENGL 100).

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:

  1. Demonstrate strategies for planning, outlining, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading written work.
  2. Compose thesis-driven academic writing that demonstrates analysis and synthesis of sources as appropriate to the rhetorical situation.
  3. Read analytically to understand and respond to diverse academic texts.
  4. Use style, diction, and tone appropriate to a diverse academic community and the purpose of the specific writing task.
  5. Find, evaluate, analyze, and interpret primary and secondary sources, incorporating them into written essays using MLA or other appropriate documentation format.
  6. Integrate the ideas of others through paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting without plagiarism.
  7. Analyze stylistic choices in their own writing and the writing of others.

Course Content

Topic Titles / Suggested Time Topic

Lecture

Lecture topics and suggested hours
TopicsLec Hrs

Read, analyze, and evaluate diverse texts, primarily non-fiction, for rhetorical strategies and styles.

Apply a variety of rhetorical strategies in academic writing, including well-organized essays with effective theses and support.

Develop varied and flexible strategies for generating, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading formal writing.

Analyze rhetorical choices in students’ own and peers’ writing and effectively provide and incorporate feedback.

Write in various genres and modalities, including low stakes, analytical, argumentative, collaborative, reflective writing, synthesis, literature review, and other forms.

Exhibit acceptable college-level control of mechanics, organization, development, and coherence.

Identify, evaluate, and effectively integrate material from source texts through paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting using appropriate documentation conventions.

Compose a minimum of 5,000 words of formal writing across major assignments.

Critical and analytical reading of college-level texts
   • Annotating texts
   • Identifying key points, drawing inferences, and understanding broader implications 

Audience and Purpose
   • Identifying target audiences
   • Anticipating reader response and addressing opposing or differing perspectives
   • Identifying and following conventions that meet the needs of particular audiences
   • Understanding the various influences that shape perspectives, values, language and identities
   • Understanding the variety of platforms and disciplines in which writing occurs and the intricacies of each

Research strategies and documentation methods
   • Strategies for focusing searches and finding strong sources
   • Methods for organizing research
   • Understanding discipline-specific conventions for documenting research
   • Using research handbooks/websites to identify the necessary format for documenting individual sources

Evaluating and integrating sources into a research essay
   • Identifying scholarly versus non-scholarly sources
   • Navigating a variety of popular and scholarly sources of information whether in print, media, or online
   • Identifying methods for evaluating popular media, online, and print sources
   • Using strategies for synthesizing points from source materials into more complex, college-level arguments

68.00
Total Hours:68.00

Methods of Instruction

  1. Collaborative Group Work
  2. Discussion
  3. Homework: Students are required to complete two hours of outside-of-class homework for each hour of lecture
  4. Lecture
  5. Individual conferences; online resources and technology enhanced instruction; a minimum of 6,000 words will be written

Methods of Evaluation

  1. Methods of formative and summative evaluation used to observe or measure students’ achievement of course outcomes and objectives will include primarily academic writing, which may include timed/in-class writing.
    B. Methods of evaluation are at the discretion of local faculty.
    C. Quizzes, oral presentations, class participation, and class discussion.

Examples of Assignments

Reading Assignments

  1. Read the essay assigned by the instructor. As you read, note the author's claim and supporting evidence as well as his or her focus on audience, tone, and rhetorical strategies.
  2. Carefully read the essay assigned by the instructor. Note the author's use of inductive and/or deductive logic, attention to counterarguments, and use of fallacious reasoning to persuade the reader.

Writing Assignments

  1. Construct a well-developed essay in which you propose a concrete solution to a common societal problem and support that solution with evidence gleaned from a variety of sources. To gather ideas for your essay, conduct research on our college's databases. Cite your sources using MLA or APA style. Minimum of 3 to 5 pages.
  2. Construct a well-developed essay in which you critique an author's support for a claim, focusing on the quantity and quality of evidence as well as on the use of logic and fallacies. Minimum of 3 to 5 pages.

Out-of-Class Assignments

  1. Use our college's online databases to research what other scholars have to say about an issue detailed in an assigned academic article. Bring two articles to the next class.
  2. Find a scholarly and a popular source that both address the same aspect of the issue you are writing about for your inquiry project. Note similarities and differences in how the two sources treat the topic, including any information or perspectives that are glossed over or ommitted in either source.

Recommended Materials of Instruction

Jacobus, Lee (Ed.). (2020). A World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers. Macmillan, 11th. 9781319194444.

Shrodes, Caroline F. et. al. (2011). The Conscious Reader. Pearson, 12th. 9780205803286.

Graff, G., Birkenstein, C. (2024). They Say/I Say. W.W. Norton, 5th. 9781324070030.

Zero Cost Textbook

Wangler, S. & Ulrich, T. (2019). 88 Open Essays: A Reader For Students Of Composition & Rhetoric. OER. https://openwa.pressbooks.pub/lwtech88readings/

Guptil, A. (2016). Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence. OER. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/247

Other Learning Materials

An anthology, or appropriate Open Educational Resources (OER) containing culturally diverse college-level essays, articles, or other texts.

A college-level handbook on writing and documentation or evidence of similar writing pedagogy.

Course texts may include book-length works.

Texts used by individual institutions and even individual sections will vary. The list of representative texts must include at least one text with a publication date within seven (7) years of the course outline approval date.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), film, video and other electronic sources.

Minimum Qualifications

English (Masters Required)