Eng 110 – College
Writing I
Section 005: MWF,
9:55-10:50, 326 Wimberly
Section 013: TTh, 9:25-10:50, 326 Wimberly
Instructor: Dr. Virginia Crank
Office:
Wimberly 425KOffice Phone:
785-6933
Required
Texts:
---Veit,
Richard, Christopher Gould, and John Clifford. Writing, Reading, and
Research, 5th ed.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. (available from textbook rental)
---Lardner,
Ted, and Todd Lundberg. Exchanges: Reading and Writing About Consumer
Culture. New York: Longman, 2001. (available from textbook rental)
---Kischner,
Michael, and Edith Wollin. Writers’
Choices: Grammar to Improve Style.Fort
Worth: Harcourt, 2002. (available from textbook rental)
---A
college-level dictionary
Course
Objectives:Eng
110 is designed to increase your competence and confidence in college-level
writing. The writing you’ll be doing in this course will give you practice
in using writing as a tool of thinking and learning, in understanding and
responding to rhetorical situations, and in thinking critically and analytically.
These practices are an essential component of general education and are
foundations for all further learning. These skills are also, on a larger
scale, essential to being a well-educated, contributing member of our society.
In
learning more about writing, you must examine some of the assumptions you
have about writing, such as “There’s really only one correct way to write,”
or “Some people are just born good at writing,” or “The teacher will tell
me everything I need to think and do,” or “If I just think about something
long enough, I should be able to write it perfectly the first time I try,”
or “Well, I really do write best when I procrastinate.”None
of those assumptions will serve you well in this course, as it is my belief
that writing is a skill (not a talent) that everyone can learn to do and
that each writer must explore many writing strategies in order to find
her own best process for producing a successful piece of writing.
In
your section of Eng 110, we will also be examining America’s consumer culture
and how that culture informs and influences the choices we make. The readings
and writing assignments will be designed to move you toward examining the
culture and your own contribution to it.
Course
Requirements:
Portfolio
(40%):
The largest portion of your grade in this class will be determined by a
portfolio of essays you submit at the end of the semester. Throughout
the semester, you will write four papers, which will be due periodically
for reading and evaluation.I will
return these papers with extensive revision suggestions, but no letter
grade. Instead, I will place a number between 1 and 5 at the end of the
paper. This number will correspond with a "Standards for Evaluation" sheet,
which I will give you prior to your first paper due date (see section below
on "Initial Polished Drafts"). These essays will be part of your working
portfolio, and you should continue to work on and turn in these essays
all semester. At the end of the semester, when you turn in your portfolio,
you will have revised, polished, and selected your two "best" papers for
my evaluation.These two "perfect"
essays, as well as the two essays you did not choose for evaluation will
comprise your writing portfolio. YOUR PORTFOLIO MUST CONTAIN ALL FOUR ASSIGNED
ESSAYS IN ORDER TO PASS. Your portfolio grade, however, will be an overall
evaluation of the two essays you’ve chosen as your best.
The
advantage of the portfolio system is that it allows you to continue to
revise your writing, using the input of your classmates and instructor
and the insight you’ve gained from further reading and writing. Each essay
is a "work in progress."This system
also allows you to feature and concentrate on your best work, setting aside
those projects which simply didn't "click" for you. This system requires
that you be responsible and disciplined in writing and revising your work;
you must work on essays even when there aren't due dates looming before
you.
One
advantage I see of the portfolio system is that, because you receive no
letter grades until the end of the semester, you are not penalized for
your early work; also, I expect that not having a letter grade will force
you to pay attention to the written comments on your essays.The
best way to know "how you are doing" in my class is for you to come to
my office and talk to me; I can tell you very specifically what I think
your overall strengths and weaknesses are.
Initial
Polished Drafts (10%):
For each essay assignment, there will be a due date for an Initial Polished
Draft. While this draft will not be given a letter grade, I will read it,
respond to it, and suggest areas for revision; I will also assign it a
number between 1 and 5 (corresponding to the above-mentioned “Standards
for Evaluation”), which should give you a general idea of the draft’s overall
quality. This number will not affect the number of points you receive for
turning in an initial polished draft; turning in a complete draft on the
assigned due date will automatically earn you, in addition to some in-depth
reader response, 25 points. At any time, and as many times as you’d like,
you may submit a revised draft of that essay; my only requirement for
re-submissions is that all revisions/changes/additions to the initial polished
draft be done in bold type (so you and I can both see those changes
easily).
Research Project:
The fourth paper you write will actually be a collection of documents,
which will constitute your research project. You will write a research
prospectus, which will describe what your project will cover and how you
plan to research and write about it; you will write a working bibliography
of sources used during your research; you will write a final report of
your research. This project will not be a traditional research paper, which
you might have written in high school or other writing classes; it will
be some sort of multi-source project, which connects, with the theme of
our consumer culture. We’ll talk more about what ideas would be fruitful
throughout the semester. This paper may be one you choose to include in
your portfolio or not.
Journals,
Homework, and Online Assignments (30%):
Journals:
In some weeks, you’ll read an assigned essay from Exchanges. In
response to that assigned reading, you will write a “one-pager”, which
is one full typed page, single-spaced, in 10, 11 or 12 point Courier New
or Times New Roman font. Look at the attached sample to get an idea of
how that should look. Your one-pager should contain your reactions to the
content and writing of the assigned essay, your responses to the ideas
it presents, your questions about the meaning or consequences of those
ideas, your interpretation of the author’s rhetorical context, your reflection
on the content of the essay and your own relationship to it. Journals are
graded for content, not structure and style, so I’ll be looking for journals
which show substantive thought about and interaction with the essay. You
needn’t worry about spelling, grammar, focus, development, and correctness,
as you will with a polished paper. These one-pagers will be collected in
class as listed on the course schedule. I will not accept any late journal
entries.
Homework:
As you read the Veit, Gould, and Clifford text, I’ll ask you to do some
of the practice exercises in each chapter in order to prepare to incorporate
the skills into your own writing. These responses will be used in class
discussion as well as submitted for grading; they can be handwritten. I
will not accept late homework.
Online
Assignments: Your section of Eng 110 is a hybrid class, meaning we meet
twice a week face-to-face and once a week online. Each Friday, rather than
meeting in our classroom, you’ll have an assignment to complete and post
to our class Blackboard site. These assignments will usually be due by
midnight on Fridays, although there will be a few exceptions. The assignment
for each week will be posted by Wednesday of that week, so you may complete
it any time between then and the final due time/date. Be sure to check
the posted assignments regularly. These online assignments will be graded.
I
will not accept any late online assignments.
Vocabulary
(10%): In
order to help build your fluency with written text, we will be studying
some college-level vocabulary words. For each paper you write, I will collect
a list of words from the related reading assignments. Many times, I hope,
these will be words with which you are already familiar; occasionally,
you will get to learn a new word. Twice during the semester, you’ll take
a vocabulary quiz to test your understanding of the new words and how they’re
used in writing. You may not make up a missed vocabulary quiz.
Final
Essay (10%):
During our final exam time, you will submit a final reflective essay which
discusses both the ideas we’ve explored about consumer culture and the
things you’ve learned about writing. The final exam time is listed on your
course schedule; since I do teach two sections of 110, you may come to
either of my final times (ask me when the other one is).
Your
final grade for this class, then, will be calculated as follows:
Portfolio
400 pts.
Initial Polished Drafts
100 pts.
Journals/Homework/Online Assignments 300 pts.
Vocabulary
100 pts.
Final Paper
100 pts.
The
total of 1000 points will be converted to a percentage, to which the following
letter-grade scale will be applied:
A
100-94
A/B
93-90
B
89-84
B/C
83-80
C
79-70
D
69-62
F
61-0
Attendance:Because
a writing class is a community, with all members contributing time, ideas,
reactions, etc., your attendance is very important. You may miss three
classes without penalty; each absence after the 3rd will result in the
loss of twenty points from your final grade. Seven absences or more
will earn you an F for this course. Signing up for a conference and
then not coming or calling to reschedule will also be counted as an absence.
Late Policy:
I do not accept late work. If you know that you need more time to complete
an initial polished draft, you may contact me before the due date for an
extension. You MUST have either a verbal or written exchange with me and
you MUST make the request at least 24 hours before the due date. Otherwise,
the paper may not be turned in. By not turning in a paper on the due date
or on the agreed-upon extended due date, you forfeit the 20 points earned
from the initial evaluation and any response, reaction, or revision suggestions
from the instructor. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT POLICY; BE AWARE OF IT! Extensions
apply only to INITIAL POLISHED DRAFTS, not to homework, journal entries,
or vocab quizzes.
Other Policies:
--Any quizzes
or homework cannot be made up.
--I
take attendance at the beginning of every class; if you are chronically
late, I will begin to count you absent. Please tell me early in the semester
if some mitigating circumstances will force you to be late habitually.
--All drafts
must be typed (word-processed), double-spaced, accordingto
MLA format (which we will discuss in class). Journals (one-pagers) must
be typed, single-spaced.
--Plagiarism
will result in failure. Do not represent someone else's ideas, words, or
concepts as your own.
--My
doors and ears are always open. Please talk to me about your writing concerns;
it is both my job and my privilege to read and respond to your writing.
--I
check my e-mail very regularly, and I highly recommend that you take advantage
of this very easy and reliable way to contact me. You will also find, when
I remember to post them, copies of our class handouts on my website at
http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/crank.
Go to “Courses” and then the link for your course.
--In
addition to my e-mail address and the class website, this class has a Blackboard
course site. You should use this site to post online assignments, to correspond
with your instructor and classmates, and to find handouts and assignments
that you either didn’t get in class or have misplaced. Your success in
the online portion of this class is dependent upon your becoming familiar
with how to use Blackboard and your checking the course site regularly.
ALL POSTED ATTACHMENTS MUST BE READABLE IN MICROSOFT WORD.