The goal of the Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) is to prepare college-bound
seniors for the literacy demands of higher education. Through a sequence of eight to ten rigorous
instructional modules, students in this yearlong, rhetoric-based course develop advanced
proficiency in expository, analytical, and argumentative reading and writing. The cornerstone of
the course—the ERWC Assignment Template—presents a scaffolded process for helping students
read, comprehend, and respond to nonfiction and literary texts. Modules also provide instruction
in research methods and documentation conventions. Students will be expected to increase their
awareness of the rhetorical strategies employed by authors and to apply those strategies to their
own writing. They will read closely to examine the relationship between an author’s argument
or theme and his or her audience and purpose; to analyze the impact of structural and rhetorical
strategies; and to examine the social, political, and philosophical assumptions that underlie the
text. By the end of the course, students will be expected to use this process independently when
reading unfamiliar texts and writing in response to them. The ERWC is closely aligned to the seven criteria of the UC English requirement. Students
successfully completing this course develop skills, knowledge, processes, and dispositions in
the following areas of academic literacy: reading rhetorically, writing rhetorically, listening and
speaking rhetorically, and habits of mind.