English 1100: Freshman Composition I

Tentative Syllabus for Fall 2002

• General Remarks
• Format Standards
• Late Assignments
• Submitting Assignments
• Summary of Assignments

Please notice that your fees for this semester include a Computer & Technology Fee, which entitles you to any empty seat at most of the computer labs located around campus. Although some labs are restricted (the BVTE Lab is reserved for BVTE students, the Writing Lab is reserved for freshman composition students, etc.), most students use the lab in Austin.

Also, it's a pretty good idea to keep a backup copy of everything you write. You'll need a 3.5" DS/DD (720 KB) or DS/HD (1.44 MB) "floppy," and these are available at the bookstores.

Format Standards

A professional appearance establishes any writer's credibility and improves reader understanding; thus, all written work submitted for evaluation should follow the criteria below:

• Use 20 lb., white, bond paper (or whatever paper is available for printers in the various campus writing labs)--avoid onion skin or erasable paper.
• Maintain a 1-inch margin (top, bottom, left, and right margins).
• Printed text should be dark and clear but without smears and smudges (if a dot matrix printer is used, make sure to print in the letter-quality mode).

Late Assignments

There aren't any, but if an assignment is submitted after a deadline has passed, 10 points per class meeting will be deducted for the grade awarded.

Submitting Assignments

Assignments are submitted in either of two ways:

• Turning it in at the end of the class when it is due, or
• Delivering to the instructor (or his office) by the end of the day the assignment is due; actually if it's in the box by my door by the beginning of the next class day, that'll be okay, too (but remember that I get here around 7:00 a.m.).

  

Table 2: Grades and What They Mean
Letter Grade	What the Grade Means
A (100 - 90)	Very Good--A great pleasure to read, this writing excites the reader by how well it achieves the  purpose of the assignment.
B (89-80)	Good--Well worth reading, this writing makes it easy for the reader to gain new insights and knowledge and to respect your point of view.
C (79-70)	Fair--Not so good, but not too bad, the writing gives readers something for their efforts, but no very much.
D	(This grade is rarely given because what you turn in is either acceptable or unsatisfactory)
F (69-0)	Poor--Lacking significant thought and hard to understand, this writing is plagued by such things as inappropriate or inaccurate word choice, weird syntax, grammatical errors, misspellings, and punctuation errors. This leaves the reader wondering or regretting any effort at reading.

Project #:1 (Writing Processes Portfolio)
Project #2 (Literacy Narrative)
Project #3 (Rhetorical Analysis)
Project #4 (Evaluation)
Project #5 (Style Portfolio)
Project #6 (Critical Response/Timed Essay)

Project #1: Writing Processes Portfolio

For this project, you will complete several brief (1-2 pages) writing projects based on the first several chapters of the textbook. Each of these projects will be reviewed in class by your peers and revised before submission in a portfolio. Brief writing assignments will ask you to consider the following aspects of writing: 

Inventing: generating topics for writing. For this brief assignment, you will write a 1-page essay in which you pose a significant question about life as a new college student.  You should envision your audience for this assignment as a friend who is currently a senior in high school and who is planning to go to college next fall.  In addition to explaining your question clearly and providing needed background, you must convince your audience that the question is important for them to consider.

 Exploring: developing ideas for writing. In this assignment you will use two of the techniques discussed in the reading and in class to explore possible responses to the question you posed in the "Inventing" assignment described above.

 Focusing: generating particulars to support your points.  This portion of the assignment asks you to write a 2 page answer to the question you have posed and explored in parts one and two of this project. Your answer should have a clear thesis and should be supported by specific examples, particulars, and details. Rememeber that your intended audience for this assignment is a friend who is currently a senior in high school and who is planning to go to ECU next fall.

 Customizing: adapting writing to specific purposes and audiences. Successful writers always adapts their writing to the interests and perspectives of their audience. For this portion of the project, you will write a significantly different version of the 2-page answer you wrote for the "Focusing" part of this assignment. Select one of the following new audiences and rewrite your answer using the organizational scheme, arguments, examples, and language that are appropriate for this new audience:

• Your parents

• Your little sister (or brother) who is currently in middle school/junior high school

• Chancellor Muse, who is the chancellor of ECU)

•  A community or church group to which you belong.

Keep in mind that the purpose of this assignment is to write a significantly different text than the one you wrote for the previous part of this assignment. If you think you would say the same things, in the same way, to your parents that you would to your friend who is still in high school, then pick one of the other audiences. The goal of this part of the assignment is for you to use different details, language, and arguments (you may even decide to answer the question differently) for this new audience.

Project #2: Literacy Narrative

In this assignment, you will consider events related to your use of reading and writing and organize this information into a narrative essay. In the essay, you will describe and reflect on an event or a few related events in which writing and/or reading something had a lasting effect on you. The effect might be positive or negative, but in either case you must carefully describe the event for your audience of classmates, and you must use the details you provide to help your reader understand the significance of the event(s).

 Project 3: Rhetorical Analysis

 This assignment asks you to select a short text (an advertisement, poem, printed speech, letter to the editor, etc.) and analyze how the writer of the text uses rhetorical strategies.  Questions you will need to consider in your analysis include the following:

• Who is the intended audience for the text? 

• What are the writer’s purposes in writing the text?

• What effects on the audience is the writer trying to produce?

• What rhetorical strategies does the writer use to produce these effects?

As part of your analysis, you must quote specific passages to support your claims about the writer and his or her use of rhetoric.  You should be as detailed as possible, examining everything about the rhetoric of the text, even how and why the writer uses specific words in a specific order in specific sentences. Be sure to include a photocopy of the text with your paper. 

Project 4: Evaluation

 This project asks you to evaluate something controversial on the ECU campus or in your local community. After identifying and researching a controversial rule, person, place, thing, or phenomenon that interests you, you will need to select an audience for your evaluation. This audience should be someone with a clear interest in the thing you have chosen to evaluate.  Once you have selected a subject and an audience, you will write a paper that does three things:

• convinces your reader that the subject is both controversial and significant

• establishes and justifies criteria for evaluating the subject, and

• explains how the subject does and/or does not meet those criteria. 

Your paper will also require you to acknowledge and respond to other views of the controversial subject. 

Project 5: Style Portfolio

Aside from the final exam, the Style Portfolio will be the last project you will submit.  Style is one of the fundamentals of writing and is connected to virtually all other elements:  audience, purpose, tone, diction, grammar, and so on.  It is the music or rhythm of phrases and sentences and paragraphs; the choices writers make and the tools with which they make them; the nuts and bolts of the writing process that contribute to clarity or obscurity, tautness or looseness, comedy or drama—the overall effect of writing.  This portfolio will include various exercises we have done throughout the semester, both in and out of class, and will illustrate your progress and development as someone who writes with style.  Each portfolio will include the following components:

• A letter to the instructor reflecting on the contents of the portfolio and on your progress in the course.

• A table of contents briefly identifying the pieces in the portfolio

• Exercises from the AB Guide, the Williams book, and in-class writing.

 Project 6: Critical Response/Timed Essay Writing

One of the most important skills an academic writer must possess is the ability to respond effectively to various texts.  For your final exam, you will be presented with a text to which you will respond analytically.  As university students, you will sometimes be called upon to write essays under time constraints:  to read quickly, to organize and outline your ideas, and to produce a reasonably detailed, lucid, and organized piece of critical writing. Your in-class final will ask you to respond to a text provided to you on the spot and with which you are probably unfamiliar. 

• Attendance
• Participation
• Plagiarism

Because this course is built on a building-block format, in which each assignment builds upon the one before and prepares students for the assignment to follow, attendance is essential.

Although "life's little problems" often come up at the darnednest times, students are expected to be in class on time, every time, for all the time allotted to this course because it is in the classroom that information essential for the successful completion of this course is presented. However, if circumstances require your presence elsewhere, you are still responsible for material presented in class. If you anticipate any absences, please see me before hand.

As an incentive to help motivate students with their attendance, those who have perfect attendance will be rewarded by having one point added to their final grade average (additional points are not available to "give" to any students.).

Participation

Class participation is an important element of the learning process, and students are expected to feel free to freely and openly discuss the subject at hand. Since participation demonstrates (at least in part) your preparedness for each class, you are expected to:

• Participate in class discussions and honor the Honor Code (read: Don't Plagiarize!).
• Develop and maintain a sense of professionalism and decorum at all times (by now, students should be serious about developing some degree of professionalism). 
• Be honest--don't try to B. S. me (my two sons haven't been out of college that long!).

In the past, I have encouraged students to review their assignments as they prepare for future assignments. In order to do this, students necessarily have to have each assignment returned to them. Some students have allowed their friends (fellow members of clubs, fraternities, or sororities, not to mention those they are dating or their best bud) to make photocopies of their assignments (or worse yet) place their original, corrected copy in club/fraternity/sorority file).

Know this: such action violates the university's Honor Code and does a disservice to students who "copy the 'right' solution" from past assignments. Although former students have thought they'd help their friends, they have really harmed them (by robbing students of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes). The "real world" doesn't follow this unethical practice, and if I find that any of my students (either present or former) participate in this form of plagiarism (by either copying a completed assignment of a former students or by providing an assignment for you to copy) both students will be prosecuted to the fullest of my ability. This is not a warning; it's a promise.

With this thesis in mind, we will discover, evaluate, and practice principles of effective academic writing and rhetoric. Along the way, we will experiment with elements of style and develop strategies for argument, analysis, and critical response.

During this course, students will develop the following aptitudes:

• Reading and thinking critically.

• Carrying out the writing process (which involves discovering subjects, exploring subjects,  and drafting, revising, and editing manuscripts to serve intended purposes and audiences).

• Compose expressive prose, exposition, and critiques.

Students are expected to:

• Attend class.

• Complete all assignments on time.

• Take part in class discussions.

Created May 1, 1997  Last Updated Nov. 19, 2002