1 NORTH SEATTLE COLLEGE Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Quarter: Class: Time: Room: Fall 2014 English 101.05 12 – 12:50 Daily CC3360 Instructor: Office: Office hours: Phone: e-mail: www: Molly Tenenbaum IB2423C, Suite 9 M & W 1-2pm or by appointment (206) 934-4553 molly.tenenbaum@seattlecolleges.edu www.canvas.northseattle.edu Admission to the Class: To enroll in this class, you must present a copy of the Compass placement test evaluation form which directs you to English 101, or a white recommendation form from your previous English class. or A signed “eligibility” form, provided by an advisor, along with a copy of qualifying test scores from another college or test service (TOEFL, IELTS, SAT, ACT, Compass, or Accuplacer). A signed “eligibility” form, provided by an advisor or the English Coordinator, along with a copy of qualifying course work on a transcript from your previous college. I must have your placement forms by Friday, January 16. Without proper placement, you cannot remain in the class. Please see me if you have questions. Basic Skills Needed: This class assumes basic skills such as the ability to write complete, grammatical sentences, organized paragraphs, and the ability to proofread. If I see that you need more practice with these skills, I will let you know, and you will need to do more work on your own in order to keep up with the class. Help is available from the Page One Writing Center, in the new HSSR building. You need these skills to pass the class. Disability Services: I want to support all students in this class. If you have a condition that will affect your performance in this class please let me know. Students with disabilities are encouraged to use Disability Services for support in implementing reasonable accommodations. 1 2 You may make an appointment with Disability Services by calling 527-3697 or stopping by the DS office on the 2nd floor of the College Center. Diversity: One of NSCC’s key values, all of which you will find listed on North’s website under “Mission and Accreditation,” is embracing diversity: “We create a richer environment by embracing diverse cultures, ideas, perspectives, and people." I want to emphasize that in this class we welcome, appreciate, encourage, and learn from everyone REQUIRED TEXTS AND MATERIALS Books: 50 Essays, 4th Edition, edited by Samuel Cohen Writing with Style, 3rd Edition, by John R. Trimble Recommended: The Everyday Writer, 4th Edition, by Angela Lunsford or another basic English Handbook. A dictionary to bring to class regularly Internet & computer: On our course website: Find course announcements (if there is a snow day or a changed due date, for example Find links to resources Find course handouts and assignments (also provided on paper in class) Check your grades Turn in some assignments Printer: Some assignments are submitted on paper. You must have easy access to a working printer. If you are using an unfamiliar printer, make sure before the last minute that your documents are compatible with that printer. Plan ahead for long lines you may find at the printers in the computer labs just before class, and be aware of the computer lab’s policies regarding the use of printers. “I had to wait to print my paper” is not an acceptable excuse for being late to a writing group or for turning your paper in. You’ll need easy access to computer word-processing for the many and frequent papers in this class. You’ll need a good connection to the internet, so you can look things up, and, in emergencies, e-mail your instructor and classmates. Materials: A notebook with pockets, in which to keep all course materials. You are expected to have all course handouts in class with you daily. 2 3 Blank, lined paper, and pens with blue or black ink. COURSE GOALS Course outcomes/Learning Objectives: 1. Read critically. 2. Write about and respond to texts. 3. Use the writing process—generating material, drafting, reviewing, revising, and proofreading. 4. Use peer review. 5. Produce writing with a thesis or central purpose. 6. Produce specific details, facts, or examples to support the thesis. 7. Demonstrate critical thinking. 8. Produce coherent, logically organized prose, using transitions. 9. Choose an appropriate organizational pattern. 10. Make writing choices based on various audiences and purposes. This course addresses the following NSCC Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO’s): Knowledge: Facts, theories, perspectives and methodologies within and across disciplines. Critical thinking and problem solving. Communication and self expression. Ethical awareness and personal integrity. Synthesis and applications of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and problems. ASSIGNMENTS AND ACTIVITIES 1. Four formal essays (100 points each): For each of these essays, you’ll bring either one or two drafts to class for in-class activities and peer review. After the peer review, you’ll revise the essay to turn in for a grade. These will be submitted online, through Canvas. 2. One in-class final essay (50 points): This essay will be based on a reading from 50 Essays. The class will develop possible questions; the essay will be based on one of these questions, and will take place on Friday, March 20, during our regular class time. 3. 8-10 Seminar papers (10 points each): These are short assignments that respond to the readings and prepare you for class discussion and practice. These will be submitted on paper. 4. Informal writing activities (3-5 points each). These will include short in-class writings, verbal exercises, and various brainstorming, prewriting, and editing activities. 5. Small and large group activities (3-10 points each). These will include collaborative discussions of the readings, exercises using the Writing with Style book, group 3 4 brainstorming sessions, and peer-review workshop discussions of essay drafts. Format for the Four Essays: Assignments must be in doc, docx, or rtf. No other file formats are accepted. Formatting, continued All essays must use Modern Language Association formatting. Links and details will be provided on our course website, but here are some of the highlights of this format: Double-space Center the title above the text, and capitalize all words except prepositions (such as of, between, through), articles (such as a, the, and an), and conjunctions (such as but, and, or; however, capitalize them if they begin the title or the subtitle) Title: Do not underline or italicize your title or put it in a bold font. Use what is called “Title Case”: Capitalize the first word and all major words. To start a new paragraph, indent 5 spaces (or one tap of the “Tab” key) Except for the title, which is centered, align your text with the left margin. Do not justify the margins. (Justified margins make the text in to a straight light on both the right and left sides. Do not do this. The right margin should be ragged.) In class we will practice the format for introducing and including quotations. GRADING, ATTENDANCE, AND OTHER COURSE POLICIES Assignments are given point values, and these are added up and averaged, as follows: Assignment Essays In-class essays Peer review workshops Seminar papers Points each Points per quarter 100 400 50 50 10 40 10 80-90 In-class writing, activities and discussions Oral Participation Total 3-5 50 50-100 50 670-730 Whatever your percentage of the total points possible, that’s your course grade. Below is a conversion chart to show how percentages convert to grades on the 4-point system. These conversions are standard across the Seattle Colleges System. Student Performance Excellent Percentage of Points Earned Above 94 % Letter Grade Equivalent A Numerical Grade 4.0-3.9 4 5 High Average Minimum 90%-93% 87%-89% 84%-86% 80%-83% 77%-79% 74%-76% 70%-73% 67%-69% 65%-66% 64% and below AB+ B BC+ C CD+ D F 3.8-3.5 3.4-3.2 3.1-2.9 2.8-2.5 2.4-2.2 2.1-1.9 1.8-1.5 1.4-1.2 1.1-1.0 0.0 Checking your grades: During the quarter, you can check your grades on our course website. At the end of the quarter (four business days after the last day), you can look up your final course grade at: https://northseattle.edu/online-services/grades. After English 101, to succeed in English 102: The NSCC English Department recommends that you pass English 101 with a 2.0 or higher. Those with lower grades tend to do very poorly in English 102. Attendance: If you miss class, your grade can begin to fall dramatically, as you miss the activities for that day, and these cannot be made up. Additionally, you miss information and practice needed for writing your essays, and so your essay grades may be affected. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to find out what you have missed. If you are absent when papers are returned, please make sure you pick them up from me, or you’ll miss out on what I hope is valuable feedback. If you need to leave class early for any reason, please clear it with me first. Stay in the room during the entire class period. Take care of all bathroom and telephone needs before class. Leaving the room during class activities may cost you points, as you’ll miss out on the points for that activity. Never ask me, “Did I miss anything?” If you miss class of course you miss something! Tardiness: Being late also affects your grade by causing you to miss some or all of various class activities, and these are worth points. If you arrive in class while we are in the middle of doing something, then you have missed out on the points for that activity. Be aware that if you are late on writing group day, you must wait until other latecomers arrive to be in a group, and thus it is possible you will miss out on that writing group entirely—an entire 10 points. Print out assignments and have any necessary copies made copies made ahead of time. Do not be rude to other class members by arriving late. For Running Start Students: You are responsible for resolving any schedule conflicts between your work here and your work at your high school. No matter how important 5 6 your high school activity, I never excuse you from any of your work or attendance here. Please make sure all your instructors know this. LATE AND MISSING WORK Formal Essays. The four formal essays will be turned in online, through our Canvas website, at 11am on the day the essay is due. Late essays are half credit. Even if they are late by only a minute, they are given half credit. Essays more than a week late are not accepted. Late seminar papers are not accepted. Seminar papers will be turned in on paper, and must be present, on your desk, at the beginning of class on the due date. Seminar papers not printed out and in the room at the beginning of class are not accepted. Missed class activities and missed discussions cannot be made up. This includes the peerreview workshops. For these, you must be on time with your copies ready, or you will have to wait for other latecomers to be in a group with, and if there are no other latecomers, you will be without a group, and thus without credit for the workshop discussion. Emergencies: I will determine what constitutes an emergency, but emergencies, by my definition, do not mean computer problems, printer lines, jobs, traffic, confusion about the assignment, writer’s block, etc. Please plan ahead to allow for these. Please get in touch with me right away if something comes up, and we will figure out how to keep you caught up. If you have been attending regularly and keeping up with assignments, I will be more likely to be sympathetic and will work with you to resolve the situation. In the case of an extended emergency, get in touch with me to find out how you might stay caught up. Be aware, though, that in this case it may be better to drop the class and take it again when you are able to attend. Do not e-mail me assignments unl PARTICIPATION AND CLASSROOM COMMUNITY Be here on time, and be prepared for class, ready to share your insights. Turn off all cell phones and remove them from sight. Stay in the room for the entire class period. Do not go in and out. Ask questions! Share your confusions generously! Raise your hand to speak. Eventually we may migrate away from hand-raising, but let’s begin with this method of class discussion. 6. Make sure everyone can hear you when you speak. Face your classmates when you speak to them. 7. If you don’t hear what someone says, please say so. 8. Avoid distracting behavior. Do not have private conversations in class, do not eat or drink in 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6 7 class, do not make clicking or zipping noises, and do not pack up your materials before class is officially over. 9. Food and drink in the classroom are OK if the wrappers don’t crinkle, the food doesn’t crunch, the tops don’t pop, and your manners are considerate of others. You are always welcome to bring treats for everyone. NSCC ENGLISH DEPARTMENT PLAGIARISM POLICY To take the words or ideas of someone else and present them as your own is plagiarism and is unacceptable in academic life. The nature and causes of plagiarism may cover a range from the accidental to the dishonest. Examples of plagiarism encountered in academic writing may include the following: incorporating into your own writing, without proper acknowledgment, words and sentences from a print, electronic, or oral source; paraphrasing so closely or so extensively from a source that sentences and ideas really belong to the original writer; submitting as your own whole essays or seminar papers written by another person or taken partially or in whole from a printed source, including from the internet; receiving so much help from another person that the work cannot honestly be called your own. submitting assignments produced for one class in another (or previous) class without permission of both instructors (auto-plagiarism). By your attendance here, you’ve agreed to adhere to the Student Code of Conduct which states, in part, that “academic dishonesty, to include cheating, plagiarism, and providing false information to the college” may bring disciplinary action. The policy of the NSCC English faculty is to exercise its professional judgment as to the nature and cause of each case of suspected or proven plagiarism and to respond in a manner suited to the case. Our responses may include the following: requiring that a piece of writing be revised to eliminate the plagiarism; denying credit for a piece of writing in which plagiarism has been found; recording a “0” grade in the student’s class record for this project or paper, thereby lowering the student’s final grade; forwarding the student’s name to the Vice President for Student Services for possible further action. REVISION POLICIES You may revise one essay—Essay #1, #2, or possibly #3—and re-submit it for, we hope, a higher grade. A revision is usually a complete re-vamping of the essay, not merely a correcting of errors. This revision is optional. Essays receiving more than 85 points may not be revised. Only essays of 85 points (3.0) 7 8 or fewer may be revised. Before you begin revising your essay, you must discuss it with me to make a revision plan. I will not accept revisions of essays that we have not gone over together to make a plan for revision. This optional revision is due Friday, March 13, at 12 noon. Submit it through Canvas, to the original drop-box for the assignment. CONSULTING ME ABOUT YOUR ESSAYS I hope you will bring your assignments to my office hours to discuss them with me. I can help you best if you bring early drafts long before the assignment is due. I cannot help you very much if you bring an essay right before it’s due, since there’s not much time then to make changes, or if you bring the same essay several times with only minimal changes between drafts—I want you to be making these small decisions yourself. SAVE ALL YOUR COURSE WORK Save all notes, all assignment sheets, and all your assignments for this class. You may need them to help you with the assignments. In the event of a grade dispute, it’s helpful if you’ve saved them until after the grades are in at the end of the quarter. GRAMMAR COUNTS Surface errors distract from the content of your thoughtful and brilliant writing and misrepresent you to the world. Although English 101 is not a grammar class—beyond a few basics we don’t do much grammar work—your writing must still use conventional English grammar. Therefore, please take advantage of the many available resources: The Page One Writing Center is in the new HSSR building. There you can work one-onone with a writing tutor, and make use of a variety of other learning tools. See Page One website: https://northseattle.edu/tutoring/page-one-writing-center The Quick Access Handbook or another current English Handbook can be helpful. If you don’t understand an explanation, please ask. The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/679/01/ And don’t forget your instructor and classmates of course. COURSE SCHEDULE AND ASSIGNMENT DETAILS The course schedule provided gives you a general picture of the main due dates and reading assignments. The daily details will be filled in as we go. The frequent brief in-class writing experiments are not included in the schedule, as they arise unpredictably in the course of discussions. For each assignment, I will provide a detailed sheet with the topics, due dates, formatting requirements, etc. WELCOME Aside from all that, welcome to English 101. This course will keep all us of very busy. It will 8 9 require a great deal of work outside class as well as in class, and can also give you many rewards. I hope this quarter will bring you not only the fun of playing with language, but also the satisfaction of working hard for the tangible result of saying meaningful things clearly and beautifully. I hope that this class will help to make you confident in your writing, so that you can leave here knowing how to approach whatever new assignments the world provides. 9