This is the third course in the developmental English language sequence at the AOS level offered at NTID. Students will continue to develop their reading and writing skills to become more proficient in the literacy skills necessary for success in a career-focused associate degree program at NTID. Topics in this course provide the context in which students comprehend and use additional complex English sentence elements, increase their content word vocabulary to about 6000 words, evaluate reading tasks to select appropriate reading strategies, and expand their skills for writing paragraphs and longer compositions at a functional level of written communication.

This course introduces students to the genres of writing in STEM fields. Students will explore various multimodal materials from a wide range of STEM texts. They will develop a range of academic discourse skills necessary for undertaking coursework in RIT’s University Writing Program. Students will compose a variety of texts to strengthen their knowledge of STEM genres and contexts. Assignments include summaries, reaction papers, journal entries, presentations, and formal essays.

Writing Seminar is a three-credit course limited to 19 students per section. The course is designed to develop first-year students’ proficiency in analytical and rhetorical reading and writing, and critical thinking. Students will read, understand, and interpret a variety of non-fiction texts representing different cultural perspectives and/or academic disciplines. These texts are designed to challenge students intellectually and to stimulate their writing for a variety of contexts and purposes. Through inquiry-based assignment sequences, students will develop academic research and literacy practices that will be further strengthened throughout their academic careers. Particular attention will be given to the writing process, including an emphasis on teacher-student conferencing, critical self-assessment, class discussion, peer review, formal and informal writing, research, and revision. Small class size promotes frequent student-instructor and student-student interaction. The course also emphasizes the principles of intellectual property and academic integrity for both current academic and future professional writing.