First-Year Composition

First-Year Composition, a two-semester sequence consisting of English 101 and 102, is required of all students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In order to be useful to students with various majors and interests, the courses strive to give you tools for critical thinking, reading, and writing that you can use in courses beyond your first year.

In order to prepare you not only for the writing you will do in classes outside of English but also for the writing you will do beyond the university—in our rapidly changing and increasingly technological workplace—First-Year Composition addresses the many different ways we use language (including the new "languages" that make up our multi-media forms of communication). Its aim is to prepare you to communicate and create new knowledge in the many different communities--academic and business, personal and international—in which you will live and work.

This means what you study in First-Year Composition is rhetoric: how we use language as a social tool to communicate, effectively and responsibly, with diverse audiences. One primary goal of both English 101 and English 102 is teaching you to recognize and accept responsibility for the effect your words will have on others, a particularly important skill to have as more and more of us "talk" through electronic media and not face-to-face. You will learn how communication and arguments take place within rhetorical situations and are shaped by your purpose for writing, your audience, and the context in which the communication happens, with a focus on how these factors also shape the way you inquire into a topic, inform your development of a research question, and guide the development of your own arguments.

All of these goals mean that what you study in First-Year Composition is not a body of knowledge but a process of thinking with language. And since we are all engaged in this process every day of our lives, studying it can not only help you succeed in college and in your career, it can also help you to become a more informed and active member of our society and our world.

Contact Information

Dr. Mary Jo Reiff, Director
Randall Wilhelm, Associate Director
Misty Krueger, Assistant Director
311 McClung Tower
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996

Phone: (865) 974-5401