SAMPLE SYLLABUS Queensborough Community College, CUNY EN101-­‐ English Composition I – Technology in Our World Professor Leah Anderst Email: LAnderst@qcc.cuny.edu Office: Humanities 455 Course Description: English 101 focuses on writing and reading as interactive skills that develop critical thinking. This course approaches writing as a process, an activity with many steps – invention, composition, revision – steps which often come in different orders than you may expect. Here are some questions we will be exploring together over the course of the semester: Why write? To whom are you writing? Must we know the answer to the previous question before we write? After? Is it unimportant? As a reader, what do you bring to the texts you read? Should reading offer us pleasure? Information? Both? I hope that you will all bring more questions to the table as the semester unfolds. Description of Course Theme: Our readings and writing will be linked by their focus on technology: a word with many more meanings than today’s contemporary and cutting edge technologies that we all rush out to buy. Technology is much more than our computers, cell phones, and televisions. Walter Ong wrote that “technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness.” The word “technology” derives from ancient Greek roots that together mean the study of craft or skill. It has become a term at once more limited than this and more expansive, and we will consider this term throughout our readings and writing. Our semester is divided into three distinct units each with a different take on technology: writing as a technology for thinking; technology, the body, and identity; and cyber culture and cyberspace. I encourage you to allow the readings from the different units to “talk to” each other and to think about our readings cumulatively. Course Objectives: After completing the course, students will be able to: • Identify an intellectual question or problem worthy of further study • Use reading and writing for inquiry, thinking, learning, and communicating • Articulate a focused argument or line of thinking appropriate to the particular genre the writing is working in • Utilize relevant evidence throughout their writing tasks • Use a variety of writing and revision strategies • Utilize logical structures and stylistic approaches appropriate to a form or genre of writing (transitional language, progressive development of ideas) Required Texts/Supplies (available in QCC bookstore) They Say/I Saw: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (They/I) Rules for Writers with 2009 MLA and 2010 APA Updates, Diana Hacker (Rules) Course Pack – Provided on Day 1 – All readings not in They/I or Rules will be here. A Flash Drive or a free Dropbox account for storing and saving your files SAMPLE -­‐ EN 101 Syllabus Assignments Four Graded Papers – 60% (broken down as follows – DUE dates in bold in schedule) 1. 10% -­‐ Personal Narrative: My Life as a Writer (600 words) 2. 15% -­‐ Critical Review (800 words) 3. 15% -­‐ Expository Profile (1000 words) 4. 20% -­‐ Argument Essay (1200 words) Final Exam – 15% Participation – 10% (divided into midterm and final grades – 5% each) Informal Writing – 15% (divided into midterm and final grades -­‐7.5% each) -­‐Informal Writing: You will write many responses outside of class. The focus of these assignments will vary with the majority being free responses to readings. Other times I will provide you with specific questions, worksheets, quotations from the reading, or topics related to an upcoming assignment. These are listed in the schedule, and they must be turned in at the beginning of class when they are due. We will also do a lot of writing together during class time, which will contribute to your informal writing grade. -­‐Late Work: Informal writing will not be accepted late. For formal writing (papers 1-­‐4), turning in late work will result in deductions on your grade -­‐ one grade step per day late. (For example: A paper that received a B turned in one day late will receive a B-­‐) I will not accept formal papers more than one week late. -­‐Portfolios: Your four formal writing assignments will be turned in as a portfolio. This means that what you turn in must include all of the following: 1. Final essay 2. Works Cited page in MLA Style 3. Any drafts 4. Any peer review question sheets 5. Author Letter. The Author letter that accompanies your final paper must be typed, one page long, and in it you describe your process writing the paper. You may consider these questions as you compose these letters: How did you approach the assignment? What was your strategy? What questions did you struggle with along the way? What answers did you find? -­‐Revisions: Revision is, in many ways, the heart of good writing. I encourage you to revise your papers when you can. I allow revisions for the first three formal assignments (papers 1-­‐3). Revisions are due no later than two weeks after I return the graded paper back to you. Keep in mind that a revision is much more than fixing errors on your papers. I expect a significant reworking of the essay’s ideas and/or structure. All revisions require either an office hour meeting with me to discuss your revision plan or evidence of a visit to the writing center, as well as an additional “author’s letter” of 1 page turned in with your revision describing the steps you took to revise as well as an explanation about why this new version is superior to the earlier version. You must also turn in the earlier paper that includes my comments and grade. Note: Completing a revision does not in itself guarantee a grade increase. Grading – regularly updated on our Blackboard site A – Excellent Overall (A-­‐=90-­‐93, A=94-­‐96, A+=97-­‐100) B – Mostly Adequate with some Excellent Aspects (B-­‐=80-­‐83, B=84-­‐86, B+=87-­‐89) C – Adequate (C-­‐=70-­‐73, C=74-­‐76, C+=77-­‐79) SAMPLE -­‐ EN 101 Syllabus D – Mostly Adequate, some Unacceptable aspects (D-­‐=60-­‐63, D=64-­‐66, D+=67-­‐69) F – Unacceptable Overall (anything below 60%) Course Policies: • Class Comportment: You must silence your electronic devices prior to coming to class and put them inside your bag. You may not take calls, text, or search the internet during class. There will be no eating in class. •
Attendance and Lateness: Writing is a craft, best learned through constant practice. That is why your consistent presence is crucial to your success in this class. I allow two “free” absences, the third and fourth absences will result in a deduction to your course grade, and a fifth absence will automatically result in a grade of F for the course. Please note that no distinction will be made between excused and unexcused absences. It is up to you to be smart and save your allowed absences for a time when you really need them. Lateness is disruptive and disrespectful – please come to class on time. Students who are more than 20 minutes late or who leave before the end of the class period will be considered absent for that day. Please do not ask me for permission to leave class early. Finally, full class attendance entails your mental as well as physical presence. Students who nap and/or keep their heads on the desk will be marked as absent. •
Email Etiquette: We will write in a variety of writing styles throughout the semester from informal, in-­‐class writing to polished, formal essays. Email to your professors will fall somewhere between those two styles. ALWAYS: include a greeting (Hello… Hi… Dear Prof …, etc.), write your name somewhere in your email, write your course number (En101) (I’ll know your names very early on, but this really helps me), LOOK in the syllabus first if you’re emailing to ask a question. NEVER: attach an assignment and hit send without indicating what you’re sending and why. Never use texting abbreviations. •
Academic Integrity: Academic dishonesty is a very serious matter and will not be tolerated. I assume that everything you hand in is your own work – conceived, researched, and written by you. Anything in your process that does not belong to you (work, ideas, data from others, sources) must be properly documented. Failure to do this is plagiarism – which QCC treats very severely. We will discuss research methods and proper citation throughout the course. Any plagiarism in any assignment will result in an automatic 0 for that assignment and possibly for the entire course. If you are unsure about documentation or have questions about plagiarism, please ask me. •
Extra Help: I am available for extra help during my posted office hours. You may drop in to my office hour, but setting up a time in advance guarantees I’ll save the time just for you. The Writing Center offers free help as well, and I encourage you to make use of their services. (Library, First Floor, 9am-­‐9pm Mon-­‐Th and shorter hours on Fridays and Saturdays). SAMPLE -­‐ EN 101 Syllabus Special Services: Any student who feels that he/she may need an accommodation based upon the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss specific needs. Please also contact the office of Services for Students with Disabilities in the Sciences Building, Room 132 (718 631 6257) to coordinate reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. •
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Honors Contracts: If you are interested in receiving “Honors Credit” for this course, please come and see me outside of class to discuss. Honors Contracts require more work for each formal assignment as well as an additional assignment in the course – a speech, say, of one of your papers. Semester Outline UNIT I -­‐ Writing and Technology (Personal Narrative and Critical Review) Readings: David Raymond “On Being 17, Bright, and Unable to Read” Frederick Douglass, excerpt from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Helen Keller, excerpt from Story of my Life Phillip Lopate, “On Turning Oneself into a Character” Malcolm X, excerpt from The Autobiography Lamott “Shitty First Drafts” Plato, excerpt from the Phaedrus Dennis Baron “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies” Anne Trubek, “Handwriting is History” UNIT II: Technology, Objects, and Identity (Expository Profile) Readings: Sherry Turkle, “The Objects of our Lives” Verlager “The Prosthetic Eye” Pollock “The Internal Cardiac Defibrillator” “How to Write a Profile Feature Article” Two secondary sources from a QCC library database UNIT III: Space and Society in Cyberspace (Argument Essay) Readings: Jonathan G.S. Koppell “No “There” There” Esther Dyson’s “Cyberspace: If You Don’t Love It, Leave It” Nicholas Carr “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Heller, “I Like That You Like What I Like” Articles on Amazon.com reviews by Garth Hallburg and David Streitfield Gerald Graff “How to Write an Argument” Two Secondary Sources of your choosing.