For people working in the Health Sciences, the ability to communicate expertly, while adapting to an ever-changing collaborative landscape that includes many different levels of expertise, is an incredibly important skill. Clear communication is especially vital in the health professions, as it really may mean the difference in someone’s health. This course aims to introduce you to various types of writing that you will be exposed to and undertake in the health professions. The course will also help you begin to develop key competencies in health communications, which you will further hone as you professionalize into your respective fields.
However, as many of you may know, health professions are expansive and diverse. For this reason, it is impossible to cover all types of writing for every health profession. Instead of attempting to do this, ENGL 1913 focuses on rhetorically analyzing some common texts as a way of practicing figuring out how to read and write the different texts you will encounter in the future. In other words, we will closely look at the elements of select texts to better understand why they contain particular components and who they are written for and why. Going through this thinking process will help you develop a meta-awareness of the writing process and rhetorical context that you can apply to your future writing and reading.
What this looks like in terms of our class is a heavy amount of reading, writing, and rhetorical analysis. As long as you stay on top of these things, participate in class, and ask your instructor if you have any questions, you should do fine.
We think you will find this course engaging and fun as you learn more about health writing and get to delve deeper into your own academic and health interests.
Course Goals & Objectives
- Prepare you to go on to OUHSC as more confident writers within your field.
- Study the discourse conventions of genres in health science fields.
- Understand how to rhetorically analyze different texts and to apply that knowledge to crafting your own field-specific texts in the future.
- Gain familiarity with issues in the field.
- Reflect on writing and reading practices.
- Practice the research process.
- Produce writing that adheres to conventions (including content, organization, format, and documentation style) and remains free from errors that detract from meaning
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