First-Year Writing at Montclair State University

First-Year Writing Program
English Department
Dickson 468

Interim Director: Jessica Restaino
Director: Emily J. Isaacs (on sabbatical, Spring 2012)
Assistant Directors:Maria Giura and Bonnie Dowd
First-Year Writing Faculty
Secretary: Phyllis Brooks

Office hours by appointment, Monday thru Thursday. For course substitution or waiver, see here.

The First-Year Writing Program provides undergraduate students with coursework required to fulfill the University General Education Communication requirements in Writing and Reading. These courses introduce students to the academic discourse of the university community.  The First-Year Writing program consists of three courses: Introduction to Writing (ENWR100), College Writing I: Intellectual Prose (ENWR105), and College Writing II: Writing and Literary Study (ENWR106).  

The Purposes of First-Year Writing Courses

Because good writing is so important, first-year writing coursework is required of every student in the university. Although Montclair State students have, by their acceptance into the university, demonstrated significant abilities, writing in college is different from writing in high school. 

In college, students are expected not only to have mastered formal conventions of good writing—control over topic, organization, grammar, mechanics, and usage—but also to have gained significant abilities in intellectual writing.  Intellectual writing is marked by compelling argumentation offering appropriate evidence and analysis.
The first-year writing courses, which collectively fulfill the general education requirements in reading and writing, require students to write argumentative essays based on intellectual prose or literature.  All courses help students develop fundamental abilities that are characteristic of an educated person: the ability to use writing to discover, refine, and pursue questions and the ability to use texts to search for, consider, and construct possible answers for those questions. All of these courses are concerned with the kind of intellectual inquiry that drives learning in school, work, and everyday life.  Further, all of the courses are concerned with the uses of writing and reading, not just for obtaining and reporting information, but as vehicles for experiencing and thinking about problems in the world, in our communities, and in our own lives.

Introduction to Writing and College Writing I
Becoming an academic writer means becoming an active or generative thinker. Yet, the ability to engage in generative thought cannot be directly taught, for it is not reducible to a single set of skills. Rather, writing and thinking are best learned as processes. Introduction to Writing and College Writing I serve to initiate students into the writing processes that most students find enable them to produce clear, meaningful, and intellectually valuable prose. These processes include freewriting, brainstorming, receiving and giving feedback to peers, revising through writing multiple drafts, and editing. While learning the processes of successful writing, students will amass a considerable quantity of writing.  Students will complete five revised, formal essays.  In lieu of a final exam, students will complete a portfolio of revised work. Student writing will be prompted by a range of texts selected by the instructor.  The central goal of Introduction to Writing and College Writing I is to help students to become effective writers of intellectual arguments.

College Writing II
College Writing II builds on the basic writing strategies taught in College Writing I and extends the goal of helping students to become effective writers of intellectual arguments.  Students continue to practice and develop as writers, but the focus in this course is on reading and interpreting literature, with attention to the characteristics of three major literary genres: fiction, poetry, and drama.  Students will write 6,000 words of formal, revised prose. In lieu of a final exam, students will complete a portfolio of revised work

All students in the first year writing courses can expect rigorous enforcement of the University's policy against academic dishonesty and plagiarism particularly. The Student Handbook defines plagiarism, but students can and should seek further explanation from instructors and/or the staff of the Center for Writing Excellence.  Students who are caught plagiarizing can expect to fail the course and face disciplinary action.