Welcome to First Year Writing at Chico State!
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.
Program Learning Goals:
- Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts.
Pursue authentic questions with intellectual openness and curiosity.
Find, evaluate, interpret, and synthesize primary and secondary sources and integrate our own ideas with those of others.
Learn, analyze, and apply genre conventions such as organizational styles, forms of evidentiary support, modes of presentation, and citation practices.
Participate in writing as a social activity through reading, collaboration, peer review, and other forms of feedback.
Develop flexible strategies for drafting, reviewing, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing using a variety of technologies.
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.
Reflect on their growth as writers and readers across their literate life spans.
What Class Do I Need to Take?
All students must meet the General Education Written Communication requirement (Area A2) in order to graduate. When you are admitted to Chico State, the Office of Admissions will use a combination of your GPA, high school coursework, and test scores to determine your placement for GE Written Communication. There are four possible outcomes:
- Category 1: A2 Requirement Met. You may have met the requirement through AP tests, IB exams, or dual enrollment classes in high school. If you are in Category 1, your Degree Progress Report will show GE Area A2 as already completed.
- Category 2: GE Ready. If you are in Category 2, you will see no special messages about your Written Communication requirements, but your GE Area A2 will show as incomplete in your Degree Progress Report. If you are in this category, you may enroll in either ENGL 130W Academic Writing or JOUR 130W Professional Writing for Public Audiences.
- Category 3: GE Ready with Support Recommended. If you are in this category, you will have a message in your Student Center’s Tasks section under “Holds.” It will tell you that you are recommended to take your GE Written Communication with a support course, ENGL 131 Writing Workshop (see below for more information). If you are in this category you may take any of these options: ENGL 130W with ENGL 131 (Recommended); ENGL 130W; or JOUR 130W.
- Category 4: GE Ready with Support Required. If you are in this category, you will have a message in your Student Center’s “Tasks” section under “Holds.” If you are in this category, you are required to take ENGL 130W and ENGL 131 in order to satisfy your Written Communication requirement. If you add ENGL 130W to your shopping cart without also adding ENGL 131, you will get an error message when you attempt to enroll. You can fix this by adding ENGL 131 to your shopping cart.
- International Students: We also offer a course, ENGL 130EW, designed specifically to meet the needs of our campus’s international students. If you are not an international student, you won’t be able to enroll in that course.
- ENGL 131 Writing Workshop: ENGL 131 is an online, asynchronous 1-unit workshop class that provides additional support to help you succeed in your ENGL 130W class. It features individual attention and assistance from a specially-trained student mentor via interactions in your regular ENGL 130W class and/or via the Canvas online learning system.
If you run into any trouble while trying to enroll in an ENGL 130W course, please contact the English Department Office at 530-898-5124, and we’ll help you find and enroll in the right course.