Introduction

 

Course Description:

This course is designed to strengthen your reading, critical thinking, and writing skills for future academic and professional studies, specifically in the sciences. We will be building on a foundation of scientific knowledge by reading reports and studies from a variety of researchers in different scientific fields to develop an appreciation for scientific writing and thought. You will become a stronger writer and thinker capable of entering scientific discussion with a well-informed point of view. With a focus on examining different concepts and issues within the world around you, this course will help you synthesize information, find answers, and present ideas to an audience in different genres seen often in science writing. In particular, we will analyze various reports and critical reviews that have been recently published which will allow you to compose your own writing in these genres.

Course Learning Outcomes: 

  • Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations.
  • Develop strategies for reading, drafting, collaborating, revising, and editing.
  • Recognize and practice key rhetorical terms and strategies when engaged in writing situations.
  • Engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.
  • Understand and use print and digital technologies to address a range of audiences.
  • Locate research sources (including academic journal articles, magazine and newspaper articles) in the library’s databases or archives and on the Internet and evaluate them for credibility, accuracy, timeliness, and bias.
  • Compose texts that integrate your stance with appropriate sources using strategies such as summary, critical analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and argumentation.
  • Practice systematic application of citation conventions.

Required Text:

This is a Zero Textbook Cost course.  All course readings are embedded online in the “Weekly Schedule” tab, and some articles will be distributed in class for group activities.

Blackboard:

Please ensure that you have access to Blackboard. We will be using Backboard extensively throughout the course for general communication, posting assignments, peer-reviews, and blog posts. Blackboard will also contain a link to our CUNY Academic Commons course site.