Instructor:  Abhijit Rao                                                    

Office Hours: MW (9-11)                                                        Email:  rao.abhi@yahoo.com
Class Hours : (MWL) Lab day (F)                                                                            arao@iastate.edu
            aaaaaaaaaClassroom Meeting (MW)                               Office: 449 Ross Hall              
Class Time: aato be decided aaaa aa aa                                            Tel No: (515) 294-8735

Note to Composition Instructors
This course is built on a pedagogy of multi-genre literacy using biofuels as its main theme. It includes assignments from genres that support written, oral, visual, and electronic modes of communication. Considering biorenewable resources to be a critical issue especially in the Midwest, where a majority of these resources are produced and researched, the theme is used help students generate an understanding of meanings behind the messages that are relevant in their daily lives.

By engaging students in analyzing and writing in multiple genres, this unit attempts to increase audience awareness and to understand rhetorical issues that shape the production of social documents. Students will use reflection as a writing tool to understand their writing process and become aware of choices made by them and make critical changes to the social messages eventually constructed by them. Thus, throughout the course, students will engage in the personal, rhetorical, and critical aspects of composition whereby students will learn to become critically literate citizens of the world.

Objectives of English 250
The course has been designed based on ISU Comm's WOVE principles; hence, the course has the following four objectives.

Written

• explore critical concepts and understand implications of critical citizenry
• brainstorm and compose alternative viewpoints to mainstream perceptions of a cultural concepts
• analyze professional writing to assess its purpose, audience, and rhetorical strategies
• construct arguments that integrate logical, ethical, and emotional appeals
• write source papers analyzing a rhetorical situation and identifying and accurately documenting appropriate source material
• avoid distracting or confusing sentence-level errors
• reflect systematically upon all of your communication processes, strengths, goals, and growth

Oral

• give an oral presentation, either individually or as part of a team, using effective invention, organization, language, and delivery strategies
• be an effective team member in small groups as a contributor, listener, and presenter

Visual

• rhetorically analyze visual communication, such as an advertisement, film, etc.
• create a visual argument (i.e. advertisement, slide presentations)

Electronic

• rhetorically analyze and produce electronic communication, such as emails and websites and post on blogs