One of the first experiences a student will have at UTPA in a classroom might be with a teacher in English 1301 or 1302, our first year rhetoric and composition classes. Here's some information to help you get to know who we are. We're a large group of teachers trained in the teaching of reading, writing, and research. We work with over 1800 students each semester. And we're invested in student-centered classes where students engage in discussions and inquiry about learning, writing, and a variety of contemporary issues.

 

In our classes, we challenge you to read more, write more, and become a more self-sustaining learner in your college work. We want to give you opportunities to develop writing and reading strategies in feedback-rich environments. Those experiences will help you recognize and work on your strengths, weaknesses, and potentials as writers who have important ideas – ones we're invested in hearing at the same time that we're helping you make them compelling for public audiences. You might think of our group as a map, a bridge, and a spark all rolled into one community of teachers.

 

What does this all mean for students taking classes in the writing program? By the time you successfully complete English 1302, you'll be able to:

 

• improve your writing by engaging in processes of inventing, drafting, organizing, revising, editing, and presenting;

• write with a purpose and compose texts in genres appropriate to your purpose and audience;

• productively interact with peers, engaging in small group activities regularly during which you'll exchange feedback;

• think critically about the positions you develop in the context of a larger ongoing conversation about the issues you're investigating;

• be aware of the choices that writers have to make and feel confident in your ability to use that awareness to engage in a variety of future writing tasks;

• find, evaluate, and use appropriate sources for research;

• meaningfully integrate and correctly document information from sources; and

• rhetorically understand the ways technology affects writing.