Frederick Douglass (1818–95) |
Michael K. JohnsonEnglish 100: Composition, Spring 2004Course descriptionMeets12:00–12:50 MWF/Roberts 201 Required texts
|
In English 100 we will focus on learning to communicate effectively through the medium of the written essay. This is not simply a matter of proper spelling or correct grammar, although those are both important parts of successful writing. We will work on creating effective arguments, presenting clearly stated ideas, and communicating to an intended audience, all of which are just as important as grammatical competence.
The assignments in this course will create a variety of situations that will require you as a writer to adapt and to respond to different tasks and objectives: writing a personal narrative, responding to another writer's work, constructing a convincing argument, analyzing an audience, writing a short version of a research paper, and, finally, writing two analytical essays focused on textual interpretation (in each case, involving an interpretation of a particular element of popular culture, such as a movie, a television show, or an advertisement). The assignments are also designed to encourage you to become more self-conscious about the writing process and about the relationship between writer and reader that informs that process.
Most of the assignments will place you in the situation of a writer developing strategies to determine how best to communicate information to a particular audience or specific group of readers. Through completing these assignments, you will be developing your analytical as well as your communication skills. Through the essays collected in Signs of Life in the USA, we will also work to develop the reading skills you will find necessary to your academic career.
Following the method outlined in Signs of Life, later essays will emphasize critical analysis of the way a particular popular culture text (such as an advertisement) communicates (or manipulates!) a specific audience. Whereas the earlier assignments ask you to examine what we will call "the rhetorical situation" from the perspective of a writer seeking to communicate to a reader, the later assignments will ask you to approach that situation from a sociological and critical perspective.
Grades will be determined primarily by your performance on five essays. Essays 1, 2, and 4 will each account for 15% of your course grade. Essay 3 will account for 25% and essay 5 20% of your course grade. Such factors as attendance, attitude, quiz performance, participation, and preparedness will account for 10% of your grade. The essays for this class should be completed in a professional and timely manner. Late papers will lose one-half a letter grade per class period (unless you provide me with evidence of a legitimate and verifiable excuse). Essays should follow Modern Language Association style guidelines for manuscript form. Please see section 9 of The Longman Writer's Companion for information on MLA style.
English 100 is oriented toward process as much as product. That is, even though we will have a specific end product in mind (a completed essay), the primary in-class emphasis will be on learning the necessary skills and habits of effective writing—the processes of brainstorming, drafting, analysis, and revision that every good writer must master. Since much of our in-class time will consist of workshops, writing activities, and group discussions, attendance is mandatory and expected.
Excessive absences (more than three), excused or unexcused, will damage your course grade, and I reserve the right to lower substantially any person's semester grade if that person has more than three unexcused absences. In order for an absence to be excused, you must either notify me in advance or provide me with documentation that a legitimate emergency or verifiable illness kept you from attending class. I will not ask you for such documentation; it is your responsibility to provide it.
While I am sympathetic regarding work-related time conflicts, the responsibility for negotiating work/school schedules remains with the student. Late adds should be advised that they have missed enough classes already and should be especially careful about additional misses.
Even if we miss class because of snow, you are still responsible for having completed the reading assigned for that day. If weather cancellations force us to make changes on due dates for essays or drafts, I will post information about due date changes on my website.
For papers, I assign letter grades that can be translated in terms of the following numerical values: C− (72), C (75), C+ (78). There are some exceptions to this pattern. An F corresponds to the numerical grade of 50. An assignment that is not completed will receive a grade of zero. Because the grade D− does not exist for me, a D grade will be assigned the value of 62. An A will be assigned the numerical value 100, an A− 95.
As the publicity surrounding historian Stephen Ambrose's failure to use quotation marks to indicate direct quotations from the work of other historians indicates, borrowing someone else's words without appropriate acknowledgement is still frowned upon (despite the fact that the internet has made such intellectual theft easier than ever before). I expect students to act "in good faith" in doing original written work for the class. If a student violates that trust (even if it only involves a sentence or two lifted from an internet source without properly acknowledging the original), the punishment for plagiarism will be at minimum a grade of zero on a particular assignment and at maximum failure of the course. For information on what does and does not constitute plagiarism, please see The Writing Center/Mantor Library Plagiarism Tutorial.
As a useful exercise, please play the "Is it Plagiarism?" interactive game.
The fourth credit hour of this class is reserved for individual conferences. Each student will be required to meet with me individually a minimum of four times during the semester. Missing a scheduled conference will count as an unexcused absence. We will make arrangements for scheduling these conferences as the semester progresses.
Please note that any student who needs accommodations in this course because of a disability should notify me at the beginning of the semester so that arrangements can be made.