Academic Reading and Writing

Academic Reading and Writing is what you’ll be expected to do throughout your college and professional careers. Courses at MCC like ENG 101 (College Composition), ENG 200 (Advanced Composition), REA 100 (Reading in the Disciplines), and REA 101 (Critical Reading) help students to build and develop essential reading and writing skills. All students are required to take English 101 or English 200; this is because the critical thinking and communication skills emphasized in these courses are the building blocks for success in all of your other courses. However, don’t expect the only writing and reading you’ll do to occur in one of the aforementioned courses. All of your courses at MCC will depend on your effectiveness as a clear communicator and savvy reader.Academic writing and academic reading are interdependent. In order to communicate effectively in college and the workplace, you need to know how to write well. In order to write well, you need to know how to think critically. And, to know how to think critically about a given subject, you need to first read and consider what others have said about that subject. You’ll spend a lot of time in college growing your ideas by reading, discussing, and analyzing multiple perspectives on a variety of subjects. This is true of any discipline, whether you’re studying stem cell research in a biology course, acting theory in a drama course, or refrigeration in an HVAC course. You’ll also learn how to write more effectively by considering how various authors employ a variety of rhetorical strategies within distinct contexts and for different audiences. When you read and analyze someone else’s writing, you learn what works and what doesn’t in terms of writing strategy; you can then return to your own writing with a more critical eye, thinking about which organizational, stylistic, or rhetorical models might benefit your purposes. Study after study shows that strong writers are always strong readers.

In English 101, you’ll gain foundational reading and writing skills. You’ll learn how to summarize what others have said, and also how to analyze reasoning, evidence, and emotional appeals used by authors. You’ll learn how to synthesize information from multiple texts and perspectives to arrive at and advance your own conclusions. You’ll learn how to organize, develop, and defend an argument, how to establish your credibility as an arguer, and how to respond to opposing views. You’ll learn how to applyresearch techniques to locate and evaluate authoritative source material, and how to use a standard citation style to credit your sources. You’ll also learn how to revise your content and style through draft work and based on feedback you receive from peers, professors, and tutors. You’ll discover that writing is a process that requires time, personal investment, and self-reflection.

At MCC, we believe that writing and reading are essential to our identities as college students, professionals, and citizens. All courses at MCC, regardless of discipline, will ask you to constantly develop and nurture these necessary skills. You will take these skills with you when you graduate and move on to your chosen career or transfer college; you will continue to rely on and hone these skills throughout your entire life. We are glad you are starting that journey here.

Elizabeth Johnston

English Faculty and Composition Co-Coordinator

 

“About five or six weeks into the semester of my upper-level psychology classes, some of my students are inevitably overcome by confusion and ask if I’m an English teacher. My ability to intelligently discuss psychology and answer their various questions about the topic doesn’t impress them half as much as a couple of comments on a homework essay that say ‘fragment,’ or ‘comma-splice,’ or the commanding ‘stop using semicolons.’ They probably thought we had a deal: I’d ask them to read the literature of psychology, which—curiously—is made up of words and sentences and paragraphs in papers and books, carefully written to avoid misinterpretation, and in return, to show they’ve become educated in this endeavor, they’d fill in bubbles on a scantron. Funny how college works sometimes.”— Mike Ofsowitz, Psychology Faculty