Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

In the College Reading Class (RD115), we practice reading, skills that relate to reading, and knowledge of text structure. We will write a bit about texts and ourselves. We will also build ways of thinking, writing skills, and work habits that will be useful as you advance in your college experience.

We also practice research skills with the help of a librarian. We look at what makes online sources valid and we do exploratory research and report on our findings. We talk about documentation styles (MLA and APA) and practice those to prepare for WR121.

Finally, we work on student skills like on-time submission of work, meeting deadlines, working with online learning systems, discussion and group work, and other skills that help students succeed at PCC.

This is a PRACTICE (doing) class, not only a lecture (hearing) class. You will be working and trying things out to prepare you for college-level reading and writing. You will be reading, writing, discussing, taking notes, and thinking about how to write for your audience and your set purpose.

Course grades are determined by the work you do in class AND the work you do independently. Attendance at Zoom sessions is absolutely required. If you know you will miss more than two weeks' worth of the class meetings, do yourself a favor and take the course as a Web option (online only) and do the work on your own time. Or try again in another term that you know will work better for you. 

This is a fun and relaxed class, but its purpose is to give you a ramp up to college work and teach you good habits that will serve you well as a college student. It's OK if you are just starting out or you are coming back after a long absence from school. That's normal, and this class is exactly FOR that--to get you up to speed as much as possible!

The course is labeled "Remote," which means we will meet online on Zoom twice weekly to go over assignments, practice, discuss, and learn together.

You will not need to worry about a printer! However, you should have a working device: a tablet, a laptop, a gaming console with a keyboard and internet access, or a desktop computer. You will need to access D2L/Brightspace, PCC's online class system, so your internet connection needs to be reliable, though not high speed.

We'll use both Google Docs and Microsoft Word in class, and for doing your work, Microsoft Word is best. All PCC students can access Office365 for free at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/download-and-install-or-reinstall-microsoft-365-or-office-2021-on-a-pc-or-mac-4414eaaf-0478-48be-9c42-23adc4716658?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us and then log in with your MyPCC username and password. Do this before class starts, and especially do it if you have an Apple machine--they don't play nice with Google Docs or Word files. 

The above is the very best way you can prepare yourself for our class. 

Note: Chromebooks aren't compatible with Office365, so try to secure yourself a desktop or laptop computer.