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English Composition

15 instructional weeks + finals week (Week 1–Week 16) Free sample edition

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This is a complete course: fifteen instructional weeks and a finals week, every student component, built with The Course Maker and ready to import. Weeks are relative (Week 1 to Week 16); you set the dates when you import it. Browse the whole thing below. Click any piece to read it in full, then click back to return here.

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Free sample edition. No instructor, institution, or term identity appears anywhere in this edition, by design. The syllabus carries fill-in slots (instructor name, contact, office hours, institution policies) for the adopting instructor to make it their own. (Original objectives written from the standard English Composition body of knowledge; not copied from any school's course outline.)

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What the paid build adds

This sample is complete and yours to keep. A paid build is the same course made yours in the ways a download cannot be:

Every date set to your term and your breaks, and re-paced to a second campus calendar at no extra charge.
Your syllabus, your policies, and your outline of record in the build, with an alignment report that shows which component addresses each objective and SLO, and a Universal design for learning section drawn from the course's own data.
Your name on every page as the course's creator.
Kept current every term: fresh assessment variants, every link re-checked and the dead ones replaced, and the subject brought up to date where it has moved.
The full instructor pack: answer keys and worked solutions, the alignment report, and the UDL map.
A record for your college's file: the design attestation, a disclosure statement for every edition, and what changed at the end of each term.

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Included in every course

ChapterRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Slide deck with speaker notesRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — a slide deck with speaker notes, a chapter to read, and captioned videos — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee.
Captioned video linksRequired
Required in every course. Every module presents the same content in three ways — captioned videos, a chapter to read, and a slide deck with speaker notes — so each student can choose how to take it in. The course is designed to reflect UDL's multiple means of representation, and the alignment report describes this to your curriculum committee. We link videos only when a caption track exists (from the creator or generated automatically), and we never host them.

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The syllabus

Policies, schedule, and grading

Read the full course syllabusPolicies, the week-by-week schedule, grading, and the bring-your-own-AI rules, with fill-in slots for the adopting instructor.→

Weighted gradebook

Assignment groups & weights

Configured in the export — the gradebook is set the moment the course is imported.

Assignment group	Weight	Notes
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%	Letter Standard

Objectives & outcomes

What students will be able to do

Objective 1

Analyze the rhetorical situation — writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context — and approach writing as a recursive process of invention, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection, distinguishing revision (re-seeing ideas and structure) from editing (sentences and surface).

Objective 2

Read critically: annotate a text, summarize it accurately and neutrally in your own words, respond to it analytically with reasons, and separate a writer's claim from its support and a summary from a response.

Objective 3

Develop an arguable, specific thesis and organize an essay around it — unified, coherent, well-developed paragraphs built from a point through evidence to explanation, with an introduction that lands the thesis, transitions that name real relationships, and a conclusion that synthesizes.

Objective 4

Compose in multiple rhetorical modes — narration and exposition, rhetorical analysis, and argument — using the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos) to explain how a real text persuades and the structure of argument (claim, grounds, warrant, counterargument, rebuttal) to build your own, arguing from evidence and representing opposing views fairly.

Objective 5

Find, evaluate, and integrate credible sources: turn a topic into a research question, classify sources, judge credibility by lateral reading and a checklist, and quote, paraphrase, summarize, and synthesize with signal phrases and attribution — never patchwriting, never plagiarizing, and never trusting an unverified quotation, source, or citation.

Objective 6

Document sources in MLA style — in-text citations in the author-page form and a works-cited list built on the ninth edition's template of core elements and containers — and apply MLA formatting conventions accurately, checking any generator's or chatbot's entry against the template and the real source.

Objective 7

Revise globally and edit locally: re-see a draft's thesis, structure, argument, and evidence; then sharpen sentences for concision, variety, emphasis, and voice; and correct the most common surface errors — fragments, comma splices, fused sentences, agreement, pronoun reference, apostrophes, and commas.

Objective 8

Reflect on writing as a process: assess your own choices with specific, evidence-based reflection, assemble and introduce a curated portfolio, and articulate which skills transfer beyond this course and where.

SLO A

Composition and argument — compose clear, well-organized, thesis-driven, audience-aware prose in multiple modes, and develop and support an argument using appropriate rhetorical strategies while representing opposing views fairly.

SLO B

Source-based research and academic integrity — locate, evaluate, integrate, and accurately document credible sources in MLA style, avoiding plagiarism and verifying every quotation, source, and citation against the real text.

How this course is built — read this first

Every teaching module carries the same set, in the order a student meets it: a Start Here overview, the chapter (the primary reading), the lecture (titled “Lecture: <module title>”), the slide deck with speaker notes, readings & resources (links only), the lecture tutorial and practice exercises worked with an AI tutor, the quiz, the discussion and the assignment, and the weekly Writing Studio. Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the final in Week 16, a finals week with no module.

The discussion and the assignment each ship in both formats: the adaptive version is the published, graded item, and its traditional alternative (no AI) is a separate item that ships unpublished beside it. An instructor who prefers the traditional format publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one.

What you see here is every student page. The instructor pack (answer keys and worked solutions, rubric calibration, image prompts, audio-brief scripts, and the alignment report) ships only in the download, never on this site.

Adaptive and traditional

Discussions & assignments: both formats in every module

Same learning objective either way; what changes is how the work happens.

Adaptive · published

Work it through with an approved chatbot

The student does the work in a guided conversation with an approved chatbot, using a copy-paste prompt the course provides. For a discussion, the AI is a Socratic partner that challenges their thinking and never writes the post. For an assignment, the AI is a coach: it asks questions, checks the reasoning shown, and waits for the student to revise. The student submits the chat link with the required summary or report.

Traditional alternative (no AI) · unpublished

The familiar way, one click away

The student does the work themselves and submits it, and the instructor grades it against the rubric. No AI required. It ships unpublished, opening with a one-line note to the instructor; publish it instead of the adaptive version if you prefer.

All 16 weeks

Every week, every component

Each week is a heading; every component under it links to the full student page. Week 8 is a teaching module that also carries the midterm bundle; Week 16 is the finals week, with the final exam bundle and no module.

Week 1

The Writing Process & the Rhetorical Situation

the rhetorical situation as five questions — writer, audience, purpose, genre, context — with the exigence named in words and the rhetorical triangle as the classroom picturethe writing process as a recursive model: invention, drafting, revision, editing, reflection, with proofreading inside editing; the process tradition placed in wordsrevision (re-seeing ideas, focus, structure) vs. editing (sentences and surface) — the distinction that earns or loses the most points all terminvention tools; the same-message-three-readers move on illustrative messages; the running draft's topic read through the five questions; an ungraded diagnostic write kept for Week 15

Week 2

Critical Reading: Summary & Response

reading rhetorically and annotating: underline the claim, bracket the support, mark the turns, question the marginssummary (what the text says — neutral, comprehensive, in your own words) vs. response (your reasoned evaluation, with reasons about the text); opinion-leakclaim vs. support vs. topic; the 'they say / I say' order — represent the text fairly first, then respondthe week's real text read by link and summarized, quoted only in its two pinned fragments (Eisenhower's farewell address, 17 January 1961, at the National Archives); the first AI-critique reflex — an editorializing summary and a quotation that may not exist

Week 3

The Paragraph

the paragraph as the unit of composition; the topic sentence and its controlling idea — a claim the paragraph can prove, not a title or a bare factunity (every sentence serves the topic sentence) and the find-the-breaker testcoherence: logical order, transitions that name a real relationship, old-to-new flowdevelopment as evidence plus explanation — the P-I-E move and its twin, MEAL; the running draft's body paragraph in weak and revised form

Week 4

Thesis & Essay Structure

the thesis and the working thesis; the two-part test — arguable and specific — and the impostors: a topic, a fact, a question, an announcementnarrowing a broad topic to a claim; the running draft's topic becomes its working thesis, mapped to three pointsthe shape of an academic essay: introduction (hook, context, thesis), body paragraphs in a deliberate order, a conclusion that synthesizes; transitions between paragraphsthe reverse outline as a test of structure; the thesis-at-the-end-of-the-introduction placement taught as a convention, not a rule

Week 5

Narrative & Expository Writing

rhetorical modes; narration (telling a true story to make a point) vs. exposition (explaining or informing)showing vs. telling — concrete sensory detail in place of a named feeling; concrete vs. abstract words; purple prose as over-writing to cutscene vs. summary; chronological and process order with time and sequence transitionssignificance — the narrative's 'so what?', stated or implied; the first major essay (narrative or expository), with no outside sources

Week 6

Rhetorical Analysis

the four appeals — ethos, pathos, logos, kairos — placed factually (Aristotle's three artistic proofs plus the opportune moment) and glossed in plain wordssummary vs. agreement vs. analysis: analysis explains how a text persuades and to what effect, never whether the reader agreesdevices tied to the appeal they serve — anaphora, antithesis, metaphor, allusion, parallelism — on the verified fragments of King's 'I Have a Dream' (28 August 1963, the Lincoln Memorial), analyzed for craftthe claim → evidence → effect engine of an analytical paragraph; quote a few exact words from the archived text and spend the sentences on the effect; the rhetorical analysis essay

Week 7

Argument: Claims, Evidence & Warrants

the Toulmin model (1958): claim, grounds, warrant, with backing, qualifier, and rebuttal named; evidence alone is not an argument — the warrant is the linkwhat makes a claim arguable (not a fact, not a topic, not a matter of taste); the pinned roster of substantive, non-partisan topic areascounterargument stated at its strongest (steel-manning) and answered by a rebuttal; the qualifier as honest scoping; Rogerian argument named in words as the common-ground alternativethe appeals in service of a thesis; logical fallacies taught by definition with neutral invented examples; the running draft mapped as claim, grounds, stated warrant, counterargument, and rebuttal; the argument essay

Week 8 Midterm

Midterm Review & Exam

cumulative review of Weeks 1 to 7 organized by the one distinction each topic asks for: revision vs. editing, summary vs. response, topic sentence vs. title, thesis vs. topic, showing vs. telling, ethos vs. logos, warrant vs. evidencethe summary → analysis → agreement habit as three separate sentences (light new material that bridges to the research weeks)the midterm exam

The midterm exam bundle

Week 9

Research: Finding & Evaluating Sources

topic vs. research question — focused, answerable with evidence, arguable enough to lead to a thesisprimary vs. secondary sources; scholarly (peer-reviewed) vs. popular vs. trade; library databases vs. the open webthe five-question credibility checklist (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) and lateral reading — leaving the site to see what independent sources say (Wineburg and McGrew)the mini-source set sorted and evaluated; bias as a purpose to see clearly; a chatbot's claims about a source are unverified until checked laterally

Week 10

Integrating Sources: Quoting, Paraphrasing & Avoiding Plagiarism

the three honest moves — quotation, paraphrase, summary — and when each is the right choice; the signal phrase and its verbattribution of ideas, not only words; common knowledge as the exception; when unsure, citepatchwriting (Howard) as plagiarism a citation does not fix; the cover-the-source test; the paraphrase pair built on Strunk's Rule 13the running draft's quotation integrated with a signal phrase and in-text citation; a first look at synthesis; the sharpest AI-critique of the term — a quotation with author, title, and page that does not exist

Week 11

MLA Documentation

the MLA Handbook, ninth edition (2021); in-text citation in the author-page form — signal-phrase form and parenthetical form, no comma, no 'p.'; web sources with no page numbersthe works-cited entry on the template of core elements — Author. Title of Source. Title of Container, Contributor, Version, Number, Publisher, Publication Date, Location. — and the container idea; include only the elements the source hasformatting the list: the 'Works Cited' heading, alphabetical by first element, the half-inch hanging indent, title case; one-inch margins, double spacing, the running head; the matched-pair rulethe mini-source set's four entries built element by element (a news article, an article with a DOI, a book with an edition, a government page) and the address-inside-a-site model; auditing a generator's or chatbot's entry on format and on facts

Week 12

The Research-Based Argument

argument vs. report — a report collects, an argument makes a case; sources support the writer's claim rather than replacing itsynthesis — sources in conversation (agree, extend, disagree) around the writer's point, not a listthe four-part integration move — signal phrase, quotation or paraphrase, MLA in-text citation, the writer's analysis — against the dropped quotation; citing paraphrases; counterargument with sources; balance of voicesthe running draft in full, from thesis to works-cited list; the research-based argument essay; an AI citation is unverified until the source is opened and the words found

Week 13

Revision & Style

global revision (thesis, structure, argument, evidence) vs. local editing (sentences and surface) — two passes, big pass first; Sommers (1980) placed in words; the reverse outlineconcision — every word earns its place: inflated phrases, redundancy, empty intensifiers, buried verbs; Strunk's Rule 13 and Orwell's rules named as the tradition; the illustrative concision pairsentence variety (mix lengths, vary openings, combine choppy sentences) and emphasis (the end of the sentence, the main clause)active vs. passive voice as a choice made on purpose; the AI-critique — a 'tightened' paragraph that erased the voice or changed the claim

Week 14

Editing: Grammar, Mechanics & Common Errors

proofreading as a skill: read aloud, make it unfamiliar, hunt one error type at a timeindependent and dependent clauses as the one tool; the fragment, the comma splice, and the fused sentence, with the five valid fixes for a splice or a run-onsubject–verb agreement (find the real subject); pronoun agreement and reference, with singular they named in words; the apostrophe — possession vs. contraction, its vs. it'scommas after an introductory element, before a coordinating conjunction joining independent clauses, around a nonessential aside; the semicolon; the sentence-error set; the AI-critique — a chatbot that 'fixed' a correct sentence or moved a comma instead of fixing the boundary

Week 15

Reflection & the Writing Portfolio

metacognition and reflection; the two-part test — specific and evidence-based; 'I learned a lot' vs. a named skill shown in a named piecethe writing portfolio as a curated selection with a rationale; the reflective cover letter's four jobs, read as a rhetorical situation of its ownthe Week 1 diagnostic revisited as the baseline; the running draft's weak and revised paragraph as the model of a revision a student can point totransfer — naming the skill and where it will travel; the AI-critique — a chatbot's reflection on 'my growth' is fluent, generic, and about a writer who does not exist; where the course has taken you

Week 16 · finals week Final

Finals week

No module this week: the final exam bundle