Syllabus

Welcome to English 1301, Composition/Rhetoric I. Encountering English (like our encounters with other subjects) can help us grow, and I hope that you come to the class with at least a small desire to grow as a writer, whether you now have confidence in your abilities or even if you have no liking for the task at all.

I look at learning as a participation sport. While I certainly have opinions about what we will read and do this semester, real learning is not likely to occur for you if you sit there and pretend to listen to me ramble on. You will likely learn if you actively take part: read carefully, write thoughtfully, revise with genuine concern for what you are doing, and discuss what you discover or fail to discover.

Alright, so now that we have gotten out of the way some of my views on this subject, let's get to some of the administrative details of the course.

Textbook: American Voices: Culture and Community, fourth edition, Dolores laGuardia and Hans P. Guth, editors. I also recommend that you buy and use a good, hardback dictionary and perhaps a handbook if you have problems with sentence level writing. In addition, you should consider buying at least one diskette to save your work on since all papers will be typed. (If the class meets in a computer classroom, this disk will be even more important since you will do all of your in-class writing, workshop responses, and exams on the computer.)

Attendance. Be here. If you miss class, you will miss vital information about the works and assignments that we are discussing. Be on time. Class begins at the time scheduled according to my watch. If you are more than ten minutes late, you are considered absent, though you are welcome to participate. Expect me to conform to any policies set forth by Eastfield College concerning excessive absences. I reserve the right to grant a performance grade of F for anyone who does not attend enough class meetings. I also reserve the right to allow or not allow a student to make up missed work. If you miss class, you must see me about any work you might have missed. Make up quizzes and tests are generally more difficult than the originals. Also, to facilitate fairness, I will not allow in class work to be made up, except under extreme circumstances, after one full class day. Expect a zero for what you do not make up.

In class. Come prepared. That means read the material before class begins. It also means that you should be ready to discuss what you read and what you are writing about. While I do not want to foster stuffiness, I ask that you be respectful of others, of me, and of yourself. I would also request (no, demand) that while you are in class that all pagers and cellular phones be turned off.

Grades. Your grade in this course will be determined on the following:

Penalties for late work. Concerning in class work (quizzes, informal writing, etc.), the policy is that you have one class day to make up the material, but only if I have excused the absence. As far as essays is concerned, you are allowed one late hand in. After that, I will deduct a letter grade from your final grade for each late paper. As this is a summer class where material is covered quickly, it is in your best interest to avoid getting behind.

Plagiarism. In a word, don't. Whether accidental or deliberate, anyone who doesn't not write her/his own work risks the danger of failing the course at the very least. More severe penalties will be determined by the instructor and by officials of the school.

Students with learning, mental, or physical disabilities: Students requesting accommodations due to the presence of a disability must identify themselves in a timely fashion and demonstrate/document the need for accommodation through the Services for Special Populations Office (SSPO). For information regarding the rights and responsibilities of students with disabilities, contact SSPO at (972) 860-8348 voice/TDD.

Assignments

All reading is to be done on the day scheduled. Read carefully, taking good notes in your book and you will likely be prepared for any quiz (remember they are not announced). Workshops cannot be made up except under extreme circumstances. The following is our plan for now. I reserve the right to drop, add, or change assignments as I deem necessary.

June 7 Where do I fit in? Garrison Keillor, "Born Among the Born-Again" (37); Mary Crow Dog, "Lakota Woman" (31); Susan J. Miller, "My Father’s Other Life" (42); Janice Mirikitani, "For My Father" (165).

June 8 Caroline Hwang, "The Good Daughter" (57); Nguyen Louie, "A Daughter’s Story" (60); Sandra Cisneros, "Mericans" (64).

June 26 Workshop #3.

The essays that generally succeed at a greater level are those where the writer has taken the task and the subject seriously (which does not mean a sense of humor is out of place), shown some originality where needed, and revised a great deal from draft to draft. The best papers demonstrate that real thinking has occurred, not just regurgitation of stale and disparate thoughts. While writing is not the easiest or most enjoyable task you will have this semester (or ever), your attitude and approach may make the difference between doing well and just doing.

All essays are to be typed and double spaced according to MLA standards. There should be one inch margins all around each page. There is no need for a cover page. Run the spell check and proofread carefully. Attach workshop materials and draft to the back of your final copy. If anything is missing, please attach a brief note of explanation.

Take the time to compose your papers as if you really care about the subjects. You are likely to gain more from the experience of writing if you do a little at a time, rather than write at the last minute. Try to connect what you read for class to what you are trying to say in each paper. You’ll also note that none of the assignments have length requirements. There are reasons for that.

Other writing conventions you need to be aware of: Titles of articles, stories, and poems go in quotation marks, as in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" and "The Gilded Six Bits." Long plays, books, magazines, and newspapers are underlined, as in A Doll House and The Dallas Morning News. Unless you know personally the person whose work you are writing about, do not address her or him by the first name. Each page after the first should have your last name, a blank space, and the page number in the upper left hand corner. A Works Cited page is the last page of the document and paginated accordingly. Understand the difference between quoting directly and paraphrasing. Do both accurately and fairly. Though I plan to discuss other elements of academic writing, you should ask if you have any questions.

Write a narrative essay that illustrates who you are. Don’t write a biography or "introduce" yourself, but when I finish reading the paper, I want to have a strong idea of who you are or at least one aspect of your personality. This requires that as much as possible you show rather than tell.

Perhaps there is a defining moment your personal history you wish to relate. Maybe there is an aspect of your personality that is different from most people that you feel needs to be changed or enhanced. It could be that you are more conscience of who you are as a member of society because of your race, gender, or some other aspect of your identity. What you are doing is writing a story that highlights that part of who you are (and perhaps give some idea of what you’d like to be).

Write a paper about a group of people that is outside of your circle of friends or family. These should be people that you have had some sort of contact with, but perhaps don’t know or understand very well. In fact, your paper should have something to do with that interaction or attempted interaction.

Here are some questions to ponder, but not necessarily answer. Are you around these people often or only on certain occasions. Do you deal with them everyday or observe them from a distance? What do you know or understand about them? Are you or have you been guilty of stereotyping? What do they know about you? How can or do these people enhance your life or make it difficult?

Try to help your reader understand who these people are from your perspective and why they deserve/need to be written about. Be honest, but be fair. Think carefully. Write thoughtfully. Do you best to grow.

In this paper you are to write about a role model. You are not writing a biography of this person, but you should tell who he or she is, who that person influences, what motivates the person to do what she or he does, and how this person influences others. You should probably provide specific examples to support your points.

The person (and it must be a single person) need not be famous, but it should be clear to your reader why you think this person should be written about. You do not have to choose a positive role model. In fact, you may want to write about someone who has had both a positive and a negative influence. The person does not have to have had an impact on you, but as I stated, you do need to use specific examples to show what this person’s life or example has done for (or to) others.

If you need to compare or contrast this person with someone else, fine, but do so sparingly. Be sure that the material you include relates to the concrete points you are making. Just because you know something interesting about this person does not make it relevant. Last, keep in mind, you are writing for an audience. Make sure that you do your best to communicate the importance of your subject. That is, when I am finished reading, I should feel as if I learned something and that what I read add something important to my own understanding of the general subject of role models.

Think about something that is changing now or will change in your immediate world. Go to the library and do some research on this trend or idea for the future. You might be interested in looking at the career you plan to pursue or the way you plan to educate your children, for example. It might have to do with an issue of personal interest to you. You have some room here, but your subject must be specific, must have to do with you and must involve a trend or the future. Consider the following. What is going to happen and why? How will this affect you and/or the world around you. Do you see this change as something negative or positive or a mixture of good and bad? How do you expect to cope with this trend? These are not the only questions you might be concerned about, so don’t stop your exploration here.

Your essay is an argument in the sense that you must support what you say with more than general statements of opinion, but with material that demonstrates you know what you are talking about and have thought very carefully about the subject.

I suggest that you avoid topics dealing with the decline or moral values or other such vague subjects. I am not saying that you cannot approach your topic from a moral or ethical perspective. However, your reader is not interested in reading you rant and rave. This is an essay, not a sermon. Besides, since I want you to focus (as much as possible) on what you plan to do with your own life, many such discussions are likely to be out of place in this assignment.

You must use at least two sources for you paper. They must come from either books or articles that are published in magazines or journals. No other sources will be allowed to count toward the required number, but you are welcome to use material from other places like the Internet in addition to those requisite for the assignment. You must quote or paraphrase these sources properly and attach a Works Cited page that properly documents these sources. I strongly advise that you do three to five times more research than is necessary so that you will choose the best sources for the points you are making.

While this is a mini-research paper of sorts, I don’t want you to get the impression that it is an arduous assignment. This should prepare you for the sort of writing you will have to do in English 1302, where you will be required to present a cogent argument and use research to back up your opinions and demonstrate your understanding of various topics.