English 203/Critical Thinking and Composition through Literature
English 203 is the literature-based version of Palomar’s critical thinking and writing class. In my sections of English 203, we will be reading several novels and also analyzing a film in order to learn how to interpret and formulate analytical claims about texts.Why take English 203 (besides the fact that it’s a required class if you’re planning on transferring)? English 203/Critical Thinking and Composition through Literature is an advanced writing course that will help you develop the writing skills you learned in English 100.
In English 100, you learned about the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, and revising) and about different ways to organize your essays. In English 203, we will draw upon those skills and talk about more advanced ways to write essays to help you succeed in your more advanced college classes. One of our goals by the end of our semester together is to make it much easier for you to write essays for our class and for all of your other classes as well.
A second goal of English 203 is to develop our critical thinking skills. In my class, we will do so by discussing and analyzing literature organized around particular themes in our culture. Above all, in our English 203 class we will work on our analytical skills. Developing our analytical skills doesn’t mean that we will start criticizing everything we see; rather, developing our analytical skills will enable us to look at our own experiences and the world around us in a more questioning way.
For a copy of our course syllabus, please visit our class Blackboard website.
