ENG 100 English Composition
T Th 11:00-12:15
Ricker 202

Daniel P. Gunn
Roberts 204
Ext. 7422
dpgunn@maine.edu

Required Texts:

Corbett & Finkle, Little English Handbook, 8th ed. (Harper-Collins)
Rymer, Genie (Harper-Collins)
Kitchen & Jones, eds., In Short (Norton)

(These books will be available at Devaney, Doak, and Garrett, the bookstore in downtown Farmington, on Broadway.  Please don’t ask for them at the UMF Bookstore.)

Bill of Fare.  This is a four-hour course designed to help you improve your writing.  If a few other things happen along the way, too, that's fine, but my principal goal is to give you a sustained opportunity to work on and think about your writing, in a relaxed, informal setting, with lots of feedback and support.

Class Time.  In class, we'll spend a good deal of our time in a workshop setting.  This means that we'll be writing and rewriting, reading aloud, and responding to each other’s work.  There will also be quite a bit of discussion.  We’ll be talking about the essays in In Short, which we will use as models and points of departure.  I’ll bring in other material for us to look at from time to time--poems, advertisements, newspaper clippings--and we’ll spend a few weeks talking and writing about Russ Rymer’s Genie, an unusually well-written and moving piece of scientific journalism.  Many of these discussions will begin with brief student presentations and questions for the class to consider.  Finally, I will talk from time to time throughout the semester about writing, rhetoric, and grammatical terminology.

Papers and Journals.  Your principal work for the class will be to write and rewrite eight short essays (usually about 600-800 words, with one longer assignment).  You’ll also be keeping a regular course journal, including entries both in and out of class.  You will always be able to continue working on your papers after they are returned to you with comments; two rewrites and a preliminary portfolio will be required during the semester, and you will eventually put together a final portfolio of five rewritten essays which will count for 40% of your final grade.  Please note: I expect that you will spend a minimum of six to eight hours every week working on your writing for this course, and I will evaluate your papers accordingly.

Conferences.  Regular individual conferences outside of class are a crucial feature of the course.  (They're required, by the way; that's one reason that you get four credits even though we meet three hours a week.)  The conferences should support and expand the work we do in class; they offer us a chance to concentrate exclusively on your writing within the framework established by the workshop sessions.  Please be sure to set up a regular conference time with me as soon as possible--by Thursday, September 9, at the latest.

Grades.  Final grades will be computed as follows:

Initial Grades on Papers 3-7 . . . . . . 20%
Eighth Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10%
Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15%
Class Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15%
Final Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40%

Attendance.  Since many of our classes will be discussions and workshops, which depend on your engaged contributing presence for their success, I value regular attendance very highly.  Frequent absences--more than two or three--will ordinarily lower your final grade.  A student absent for more than one-third of class meetings will not ordinarily receive credit for the course.

As you will read below, you must attend all seven individual conferences to receive credit for the course; if you miss a conference for some reason, we'll have to reschedule it.  If you frequently miss conferences without contacting me in advance, you can expect it to lower your final grade.

Requirements.  To receive credit for this course, you must: turn in all of the assigned essays; keep a regular journal and pass it in when required; attend seven individual conferences; submit a final portfolio; and attend class regularly.  You must, in addition, hand in work on a fairly regular basis; you may not submit several essays at once at the end of the semester.

Plagiarism.  Everything you submit in this (or any other) course must be your own work.  I will assume that you have personally composed every sentence and phrase not enclosed in quotation marks.  I will assume, moreover, that you have not consulted any printed or digital sources for any essay unless we have discussed it explicitly in advance.  Anyone who attempts to submit someone else's work as his or her own will be liable to an F in the course.

Outline of Assignments and Conferences

 

WEEK BEGINNING	ESSAY DUE FRI	CONF T & W
September 6		A
September 13	#1	B
September 20	#2	A
September 27	#3	B
October 4	Rewrite	A
October 11	#4	B
October 18	#5	A
October 25	Mid-Term Portfolio	B
November 1	#6	A
November 8	#7	B
Noveember 15	Rewrite	A
November 22	--	B (Wed conferences rescheduled)
November 29	#8 (first version)	A
December 6	#8 (final version)	B

The FINAL PORTFOLIO will be due on Monday, December 20, at 4 PM, in my office.

 

Back to ENG 100 Page

Back to Dan Gunn's Page

Top