English_250

Written Communication

• Motivate your readers early by engaging them with a worthwhile question, problem, or issue.
• Provide a meaningful title and subdivide your writing with reader-oriented headings.
• Organize your writing to prove a point, not just talk about a topic.
• Give details you can touch, see, hear, smell, taste—a concrete world readers can experience.

The English 250 Test-Out exam is intended to test the communication skills that you already possess, specifically in rhetorical analysis, argument, and designing and orally presenting a visual argument using presentation software. This exam has two parts. In the first part you'll do a rhetorical analysis of an essay (we'll give you the essay at the test-out), and you'll write an argumentative essay of your own. In the second part, you'll prepare a two-minute oral presentation supported by a single electronically designed visual (slide, graph, poster, etc.).

The registration form for the English 250 Test-out may be downloaded as a PDF document:

English 250 Test-out Registration Form

The English 250 Test-Out exam is intended to test the communication skills that you already possess, specifically in rhetorical analysis, argument, and designing and orally presenting a visual argument using presentation software. This exam has two parts. In the first part you'll do a rhetorical analysis of an essay (we'll give you the essay at the test-out), and you'll write an argumentative essay of your own. In the second part, you'll prepare a two-minute oral presentation supported by a single electronically designed visual (slide, graph, poster, etc.).

The test-out examination for English 250 involves a multi-stage set of activities related to written, oral, visual, and electronic (WOVE) communication and takes about 4.5 hours.

Note: The First-Year Composition Program will become the ISUComm Foundation Courses Program beginning in Fall 2007. As part of this process, English 104 and 105 will be renumbered (English 150 and 250); refocused from an emphasis on writing-only to an integration of written, oral, visual, and electronic communication (WOVE); and restructured (shifting the second course to the sophomore level).

Welcome to ISUComm! English 150, 250, and 250H serve as a transition between a student's high school experience and the intellectual life of the university. The communication activities students will do in class will prepare them to use written, oral, visual, and electronic communication (WOVE) in their chosen disciplines—business, engineering, agriculture, science, the humanities, and many others.