Overview of Day 1
 Introduction of Instructor, Roll, Short Writing
Exercise
 Textbooks
 Course Overview/Expectations
 Assignments /Grading
 Raider Writer /E-Handbook Site
 BA 1
Introduction of Instructor,
Roll, Writing Exercise
 When I call your name, please correct me on any
mispronunciation, preferred names, major/intended major,
year, and favorite song, artist, or genre of music.
 For the first few weeks of class, please write your name on a
piece of paper (large enough for me to see) and display it on
your desk. This way I hope to learn all of your names
quickly!
 While I am calling roll, please write a short response to
these questions: What role do you anticipate writing to take
in your major? What types of writing will you have to do?
Textbooks
 First-Year Writing: Writing in the Disciplines. 9th Custom Ed Texas Tech
University. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2015. *Must be 2015-2016
edition!
 The St. Martin’s Handbook (TTU E-Custom Edition).
 The first textbook must be bought at a Tech-affiliated bookstore (B&N
at the Sub, Varsity, Red and Black, etc.). Amazon and other online
booksellers will not have this textbook and if you are able to buy one
via Amazon, it will most likely be an older text.
 These texts are required and we will be using them throughout the
semester. If I think that you are not reading the assigned chapters
out of the texts I will enact surprise quizzes and book checks. So
bring the hardcopy Writing textbook to class every week.
Course
Overview/Expectations
 ENGL 1301 is your introduction to the major writing challenges
at Texas Tech. It is designed to start the process of making you
critical readers, thinkers, and writers and to think about the
implications of communicating in a global landscape.
 First Year Composition at Texas Tech is scaffolded, meaning that
all of the assignments will work towards the end goal of making
you competent writers and comfortable with the writing
challenges in your respective major.
 In 1301, the major paper is the rhetorical analysis and all of the
Brief Assignments (BAs), will work towards this analytical paper
as the final product.
Course
Overview/Expectations
Con’t.
 My expectations of you: to be conscientious of yourself and
others, be attentive towards the work of the class and time
management, and be open to new ways of writing and
examining texts.
 This course is designed to challenge you, both as a writer
and critical thinker. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that
this is an English class and will not help you in your major
because it will challenge you to start developing your own
voice and style, think about your audience, and the
appropriate rhetorical choices you need to make in order to
reach and convince your audience.
Assignments

As mentioned previously, all of the assignments are scaffolded towards the end goal of
the rhetorical analysis. BA 1 (due at the end of this week) asks you to start thinking
about audience, purpose, and rhetorical choices. The following BAs start to develop
your tool kit of summary, paraphrase, identifying rhetorical choices, crafting working
thesis statements, and utilizing quotes.

Ideally, by the time the first draft of the rhetorical analysis is due, you have completed
about 2/3 of components needed for this draft.

In 1301, you will also be working on peer critiques and revision, allowing you to gain
experience at working through composition problems and the ways to help others with
specific constructive feedback.

Most assignments will have a word count, you have to make the minimum word count
otherwise you will be docked points. Try to get the assignment as close to the maximum
word count as you can if you go over. I will address the word count for future
assignments later on in the semester.
Grading

Grading in First Year Composition is conducted through Raider Writer. You
will submit your assignments online and then an anonymous grading group
will go in and grade your assignments (your submissions are anonymous to
this group).

The grading group is normalized, i.e. I tell the graders what we have covered
and the areas that they need to focus on when grading your assignments.
There are four of us and all of us are experienced instructors and graders, so
don’t think that I have pulled in random people to grade your work.

If you have questions about grades or comments, feel free to contact me via
email to look the assignment over. I do not guarantee that I will change any
grades unless there is a major problem and you have an equal chance of the
grade being lowered if I am seeing that the grader missed problematic areas.
Raider Writer/E-Handbook
 Will be demonstrated in live view for a hands-on
approach.
 The E-Handbook is required, you can buy it at any of
the campus bookstores and they will give you the
online log-in certificate.
BA 1
 For this first assignment, you will be examining two different
areas of composition.
 Part 1: your personal writing experiences and history. I am not
going to go point by point, but answer the questions and be
specific! Be specific about the types of writing you have already
done and at what level. What are your strengths in terms of
writing a paper – research, pre-writing, detail-oriented work,
global view of the issue at hand? What are your weaknesses? Do
you have problems pinning down a topic, getting off track in your
writing, coming up with a thesis statement (is it too broad or too
narrow), finding sources, summary/paraphrase/quotations, are
you not sure of your voice and strength as a writer in terms of
clarity, etc.
BA 1 Con’t.
 Part 2: Analyzing the letter. Make sure to look at the one that
corresponds to the beginning letter of your last name! Read the
letter at least twice.
 Identify the audience and purpose. Be specific! For some, the
audience may be easy to identify, but on others you may need to
think about what type of relationship is there between the writer
and the recipient. Think about the purpose and critically think
about what the writer is doing in the letter. Is it just reporting
information? Does the writer have ulterior motives, i.e. does the
writer discuss some events first before other more serious
problems? If so, make sure that you incorporate that into your
discussion of purpose. Keep in mind that the purpose may be
multi-faceted or pointing the audience away from certain results.
BA 1 Con’t.

Finally, in the Part 2 paragraph, discuss critical choices that the author makes. This is
your introduction to what you need to look at during the semester.

The author constructs the letter in a certain way in order to advance their purpose and
try to sway their audience to support this purpose. For example, what type of diction
would you use if you were talking to your friends? What type of diction would you use
when addressing the President of Texas Tech, queen of England, etc.? I’m sure that you
will choose different registers, i.e. types of language use and words for these different
audiences. This is one type of critical choice that a writer has to make in order to write
to a specific audience. Think about the structure of the letter, tone, use of evidence and
types of evidence, etc. Basically, the critical choices are limitless in terms of what the
author does in order to advance their purpose.

NOTE: There is a different between appeals and choices. For this assignment, you want
to look for choices, not appeals. ETHOS, PATHOS, and LOGOS ARE APPEALS NOT
CHOICES.

WORD COUNT: 400-600 WORDS.
Homework for Next
Tuesday
 Read Robert MacNeil, “Do You Speak American?” (306), John
Simon, “Why Good English is Good for You,” (332), and Douglas
McGray “Lost in America” (351) on top of the other readings for
Week 2.
 Please write a ½ page response on each of the above essays. Discuss:
the strengths and weaknesses of these essays, what you thought of the
author’s overall argument, what did you agree with, what did you
disagree with, did you learn anything that you weren’t already aware
of, what is the intended audience of each essay, what are some of the
arguments against the author’s main points? You don’t have to answer
each question point by point, but make sure to touch on all of these
issues in your response.
 You will turn in the responses in class on Tuesday.