English 130: First Year Writing Program

The First Year Writing Program is made up of a community of instructors and students engaged in learning about writing in a course called English 130: Academic Writing at Chico State. 

English 130, “Academic Writing,” is a core General Education and W (writing intensive) course (Area A2)  that introduces you to the challenges of university level writing, reading, and critical thinking. To do this, instructors focus on:

• developing your ability to read, engage with, connect to, and make a variety of texts, 

• deepening your research and inquiry processes and skills,

• using writing to effectively respond to situations and communicate with others, 

• helping you through the writing process in a social, collaborative, revision-focused environment.

In W-courses, students use writing in the English language to inquire into and respond to course topics, engage in rigorous study about a body of knowledge essential to various audiences, and communicate that knowledge clearly to those audiences. A grade of C- or better is needed to pass this course. 

1. Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts.

2. Pursue authentic questions with intellectual openness and curiosity.

3. Find, evaluate, interpret, and synthesize primary and secondary sources and integrate our own ideas with those of others.

4. Learn, analyze, and apply genre conventions such as organizational styles, forms of evidentiary support, modes of presentation, and citation practices.

5. Participate in writing as a social activity through reading, collaboration, peer review, and other forms of feedback.

6. Develop flexible strategies for drafting, reviewing, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing using a variety of technologies.

7. Identify the constructedness of writing conceptions and rules/conventions in light of the varying social and rhetorical contexts of academic, professional, civic, and/or personal writing situations.

8. Reflect on their growth as writers and readers across their literate life spans.