Adding ENG112 College Writing AP (Advanced Placement) to College Writing

CHANGES:
• Currently, a student who received a 4 on the AP Placement Test receives 3 credits for
ENG110 and is not required to take any more writing classes because a 4 on the
Placement Test is accepted as a B/C or higher in ENG110. Under the proposed
ENG110/112 structure, the score of 4 on the AP test is no longer accepted as a BC or
higher. Therefore, even though the student will continue receiving the 3 credits, he/she
is required to take ENG112.
• Currently, a student who received a 3 on the AP Placement Test receives 3 credits for
ENG110 but is also required to take a 300-level writing course because a 3 on the
Placement Test is not accepted as a B/C or higher in ENG110. Under the proposed
ENG110/112 structure, the student will continue receiving the 3 credits but is required
to take ENG112 instead of the 300-level writing course.
• Currently, a student who received a grade of C or lower in ENG110 must take a 300-
level writing course. Under the proposed ENG110/112 structure, a student who
received a grade of D or F in ENG110 or ENG112 must repeat the respective course.

IMPORTANCE OF ENG110: ENG110 is an invaluable college experience for students and should
not be bypassed in a student’s writing education because of a score of 3 or 4 on the AP
Placement Test. On the one hand, students face higher expectations and more challenges in
writing as they move from high school to college; on the other hand, ENG110, fittingly titled
College Writing, provides the students with a broad preparation for writing at the university and
beyond by providing them with a more rhetorical writing education: to write for a variety of
purposes, with a variety of audiences, and in a variety of genres.
More specifically, in high school, students’ writing education is more basic, highlighting
learning writing conventions through more spontaneous self-expression, while in college,
students’ writing education is more advanced, emphasizing now also the metadiscursive/heuristic
and civic engagement dimensions. That is, for example, writing in college focuses more on
adjusting similar strategies to meet the demands of writing in particular communities of practice,
and it also focuses more directly on argument. Given that most students are formally entering
their adulthood as they enter colleges and universities, this transitional College Writing
experience is crucial to the growth of both responsible, resourceful citizens and individual
writers. As a result, the guidance and practice they experience in ENG110 is irreplaceable in
most cases. (See attachments for the comparison of the rhetorical competency expectations seen
in AP Placement Tests and in the ENG110’s course description and sample syllabi).

ENG300S AND ENG110: Like advanced classes in many fields, ENG300s are more specialized,
designed for learning to write with more specialized audiences, for more specialized purposes,
and in more specialized genres. While ENG300s provide students with advanced writing
challenges in a specific area such as Writing for Teachers, those students who skip ENG110 and
take an ENG300 course do not develop the powers and writing flexibility mentioned in the
paragraph above on English 110.
ENG110 AND ENG112: Both ENG110 and ENG112 aim to achieve the GenEd primary and
secondary outcomes for freshman writing as well as departmental outcomes for freshman
writing. An important difference is in the level of development and, subsequently, in pedagogy,
which is appropriate for students’ needs. For example, in meeting the outcome of writing as
inquiry/learning, many students in ENG110 will learn to explore for new understandings to a
given puzzlement or for solutions to a given problem, while many in ENG112 also learn to find
good puzzlements and locate good problems. On the ENG110 assessment scale, this means that
many ENG110 students may reach the level of 3 or 4 (i.e., Good), but more ENG112 students
may reach the level of 4 or 5 (i.e., Exceptionally Good).

Attachment A: Sample AP Placement Tests (2009)

Attachment B: The number of students who received 3 and 4 on the AP composition and literature tests
(from Teri Hinds).