We are very proud of our English 101 course at Western. The course curriculum is updated every year to reflect new academic research, and the assignments and teaching methods we use meet the highest standards of both the Council of Writing Program Administrators and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. To read about the aims and learning outcomes for the course, click through the Courses tab above.

Because the course provides such an essential launching pad for incoming students into their development as college-level writers, English 101 is built into the GUR requirements in the form of the A-Com requirement. All students must pass English 101 with a C- or better before the end of their first year.

There are a few exceptions, however. Students who earned a score of 4 or higher on their English AP exams may opt out of the course. If this applies to you, you should reach out to your academic advisor or the admissions office. Furthermore, in rare cases, high-credit transfer students who have not satisfied an A-Com equivalent course at another institution are allowed to earn their A-Com credit in a 300-level writing course. This allows them to take a writing course with peers who are at a similar place in their degree.

The final common exemption from the English 101 requirement is to substitute a college-level writing course previously taken at another institution. We need to be clear here, not every college-level writing class will satisfy our standards for A-Com equivalency. The course must align with the values and methods of Western’s English 101 class. Additionally, you must have earned a C- or above in the course.

We judge whether or not your previous course will count as equivalent to our English 101 on a case-by-case basis. However, we have some general expectations for any class we approve for equivalency. Read through them and judge for yourself whether these describe the course you took in the past.

1. THE SUBJECT MATTER OF THE COURSE SHOULD BE HOW WE WRITE, NOT ABOUT LITERATURE OR SOCIAL/CULTURAL DEBATES. This means you are not reading novels, films, or other forms of literature in the course, and you are not devoting your writing assignments to analyzing literary texts or general cultural/social debates.
2. THE WRITING ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE COURSE SHOULD INCLUE MANY DIFFERENT FORMS OF WRITING, NOT JUST ESSAYS OR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS. This means you should be writing in a range of genres, such as research reports, memos, proposals, and journalistic articles. You should also practice writing in multimedia formats, such as writing for online publication, creating infographics, or recording audio essays.
3. THE CLASS SHOULD INCLUDE A HEAVY EMPHASIS ON LEARNING WRITING PROCESSES. This means all writing projects should go through multiple drafts and you should receive feedback on those drafts from either your peers or your teacher. This also means you learned techniques like Free Writing, outlining, peer review, and paragraph construction.

Obviously not every college level writing class will satisfy all of these points. We will make a judgement call whether yours matches closely enough with the topics and approach of our English 101 course. We offer this list here so that you can judge for yourself whether your previous class mostly satisfied these requirements, and thus whether it’s worth your time to request an exemption.

If you think we’ve made the wrong call with our assessment, you will of course be welcome to come talk with us in person. But this form is where we’d like you to start the process.