Instructor: Dr. Stephen doCarmo
Office: Main Hall 417
Hours: T/Th 2:00-3:30
Phone: 2220
E-mail: snd3@lehigh.edu
Required
Texts
Trimbur, John. The Call to Write.
New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999.
Rosen, Leonard J. Decisions:
A Writer's Handbook. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon,
1998.
You should buy both of these books immediately and bring them to every class meeting.
Course
Description
As the official course description says,
English 120 is meant to teach you "skill in organization and awareness
of audience, style of writing, and levels of usage for college and post-college
writing." This means the course will help you learn to write not
only for university professors and university-educated people but for those
in the larger, "real-word" professional sphere you'll be entering soon
enough.
The type of writing that earns respect from university audiences, and the type you'll consistently be practicing in this course, is "academic discourse." This is a somewhat formal, grammatically sophisticated style of language that demonstrates good organization and a strong command of whatever subject matter it deals with. Since almost nobody uses this style when just opening their mouths and talking, it takes practice to understand and write effectively in it and to communicate your own thoughts and ideas with it.
To make things more complicated, there is no one absolute type of academic writing. It can take on a number of different tones, or styles, coming across as anything from witty and opinionated to scholarly, impartial, and factual. The tone that academic writing adopts depends on what its purpose is, or who its audience is, and this course will help you learn a number of different academic styles appropriate to a number of different audiences and purposes. The practice you get here at writing academically will ideally help you communicate more effectively in both your future university courses and in whatever profession you someday enter. Effective academic writing is a way of achieving understanding, respect, and power; thus your own achievement of understanding, respect, and power is the final and deepest purpose of this course.
Methods
You'll be doing lots of writing, naturally
-- and you'll be "workshopping" on your writings-in-progress both with
me and with your classmates. You'll also be reading a fair amount
of stuff by professional authors, because 1) you need good models
to emulate when you write, and 2) your skills as a writer will increase
radically, I believe, as your reading skills increase. Lastly, you'll
be involved in plenty of discussion about writing methodology, about your
own and other students' writings, and about the professionally authored
essays we'll read. This will by no means be a lecture course, thus
you should come to every class prepared to share questions, comments, and
ideas with others.
Requirements
1) You'll need to write five
polished essays, each in a different academic "genre," or style, and
each demonstrating a strong sense of audience, organization, and purpose.
Each of your first three essays should be about three pages long, while
the fourth should be about four, and the last should be about five.
Each of the first three will be worth 10% of your final grade, while the
fourth will be worth 15% and the fifth 20%. I'll give you topics
for these essays, but my prompts will be decidedly broad and loose so that
most of the work of coming up with subject matter and presenting it in
an organized, interesting way will fall to you.
Your essays must be typed in twelve-point font and double-spaced, and they should have your name and a good, interesting title at the top of the first page. No cover sheets, please. Also, your polished essays should, of course, be polished -- that is, they should have very few spelling, punctuation, and grammar problems.
When you turn in a polished essay to me, it must come with all the drafts, outlines, conference notes, and freewrites that helped you produce it. In this class we'll be all about helping you develop a writing process, so I'll constantly be looking for evidence that you do have a process and aren't just pumping out "polished" essays in a single writing session. Unless you're freakishly talented, you'll never produce good work that way. Failure to turn in developmental materials with your final drafts will radically diminish your grades on your essays -- a full letter grade at least.
I'll grade your polished essays on an A to F scale, with "plus" and "minus" gradations possible. Due dates for your essays -- and for rough drafts, which we'll be workshopping on in class -- are on the schedule at the end of this syllabus.
2) You can expect to take eight to ten unannounced reading quizzes that will together count for fifteen percent of your final grade. These quizzes, which will almost invariably be five questions long and will require short written answers, will test your factual knowledge of the assigned readings. I'll give each quiz a grade of between one and five, five being good (the equivalent of an "A," earned by getting all five questions right) and one being lousy (an "F," the result of getting only one answer right, or none at all). At the end of the semester I'll drop your lowest quiz grade and average all the others.
3) You'll have an in-class, two-hour final essay exam that will be worth 10% of your final grade.
Every West Chester freshman taking English 120 takes the same exam. During the last week of class, I'll provide you with a brief "essay prompt" on a topic of note in current public discussion. The exam itself will require you to write an essay on your choice of one of three broad questions linked to the issues raised in the essay prompt. You can bring an annotated copy of the essay prompt, but not a prewritten essay of your own, to the exam, plus a dictionary and thesaurus if you like. We'll spend time during the last week of class preparing for the test.
4) You'll need to participate in discussions and activities. Class participation will count for 10% of your final grade. As long as you 1) come to every class, 2) work in groups when I ask you to, 3) do in-class freewrites when I ask you to, 4) regularly share your thoughtful ideas and questions during class discussions, 5) bring rough drafts to workshops on the days you're supposed to, and 6) come to at least two draft-developing conferences with me, I'll happily give you an "A" for this portion of your final grade.
When you do come to draft-developing conferences with me, please bring a draft, and be prepared to direct my attention to parts of it you think need work. Please know, though, that my job during conferences isn't to "fix" your paper so it gets an "A" no matter what; my job is simply to help you improve whatever you do bring to me.
5) You'll need to turn in at the end of the semester a folder portfolio containing the following items:
Your portfolio doesn't have any grade
value, per se, but failure to turn it in at the end of the semester with
all the required materials means you'll wind up with an "NG" in the course
-- that is, a "No Grade," West Chester's version of an incomplete.
Portfolios aren't unique to this section of English 120; every freshman in every 120 class has to turn one in. Your portfolio will be available for your retrieval in the English Department office any time after the 12th week of the Spring 2001 semester.
So that's it. But here, again, is your final grade distribution:
Essay 1.................................................10%
Essay 2.................................................10%
Essay 3.................................................10%
Essay 4.................................................15%
Essay 5..................................................20%
Reading Quizzes................................15%
Final Exam............................................10%
Participation.........................................10%
Attendance
Policy
You can have three penalty-free cuts.
After that, your final grade in the course will drop a third of a letter
grade (from a "B" to a "B -," say) with each additional absence.
Don't squander your cuts. You might need them for illnesses, family
emergencies, etc.
In the event you go over three absences and need to have additional absences excused, I'll do so only if you present me with an M.D.'s note, a note from another professor or coach who needed you during class time, or a memo from the Dean of Students saying your absence was absolutely necessary and is officially excused by the university.
Late
Work
Penalties are as follows: one letter grade
per class period for polished essays, and one "number" grade per class
period for late journal entries. I won't accept late rough drafts
since turning them in late defeats the purpose of having them there for
workshop activities the days they're due.
Plagiarism
You're plagiarizing if you...
If you're ever unsure if something you're doing might be plagiarism, ask me. You certainly don't get in any trouble for finding out before an assignment is due if what you're doing is questionable.
Support
Services
If you ever want help with something you're
working on, you can either come to me or you can go to the Writing Center,
Main Hall 203. Tutoring services aren't for morons. Exceptional
students are sometimes the only ones who seem to have sense enough to use
them.
Special
Accommodations
Such accommodations as extended deadlines
or added time for exams will naturally be given to anyone with a documented
learning problem. If you have such needs, and such documentation,
please talk to me about it soon.
Course Schedule
All page numbers in reading assignments refer to Trimbur's The Call to Write, unless otherwise noted.
Tuesday Aug. 29: Introduction to the course. Questions about the syllabus. I'll have you do an in-class freewrite that I'll collect but won't grade.
Thursday Aug. 31: Discussion of Trimbur's introduction to the "Memoirs" unit of The Call to Write (155-57) and of Gary Soto's "Black Hair" (158-65). We'll also do some in-class writing to get you started on your first polished essay, and I'll bring you the paper topic for it.
Tuesday Sept. 5: Discussion of Amy Tan's "Lost Lives of Women" (165-69), Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "In the Kitchen" (169), and of chapter two of Rosen's Decisions (pgs. 17-41).
Thursday Sept. 7: Rough draft of essay 1 due. Workshopping on your drafts. We'll also spend some time discussing Frederick Douglass's Narrative -- your summer reading assignment from WCU. I'll want you to do some writing about it before you come to class, and I'll tell you what, specifically, to do in that writing before this date.
Tuesday Sept. 12: Class nixed so you can attend actor Fred Morsell's presentation on the life of Frederick Douglass on either this day or Wednesday Sept. 13th. Presentations on both days are at 11:00 a.m. in the Asplundh Concert Hall on campus. Attendance at one of the two presentations is mandatory.
Thursday Sept. 14: Final draft of essay 1 due, along with all preliminary drafts, conference notes, freewrites, outlines, and anything else that helped you get to your final draft. Also, discussion of Fred Morsell's Frederick Douglass presentation, of Trimbur's introduction to the "Profiles" unit of his book (232-35), and of Molly O'Neill's "A Surgeon's War on Breast Cancer" (235-42).
Tuesday Sept. 19: Nothing due this day: it's set aside for you to fill out a survey that'll help out WCU's General Education program. Attendance is mandatory.
Thursday Sept. 21: Discussion of Mike Rose's "I Just Wanna Be Average" (242-46) and Jon Garelick's "Kurt Cobain 1967-94" (246-250), and of chapter 18 of Rosen's Decisions (pgs. 243-48). I'll also bring you the paper topic for your second essay on this day.
Tuesday Sept. 26: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your second essay. I'll have brought a sign-up sheet to class before this date. Bear in mind you should have at least two conferences with me over the course of the semester.
Thursday Sept. 28: Rough draft of essay 2 due. In-class workshopping on drafts. Besides spending time critiquing drafts in small groups, we'll also look collectively at a couple of lucky student volunteers' drafts.
Thursday Oct. 5: Final draft of essay 2 due, along with all drafts, freewrites, conference notes, outlines, etc. Also, discussion of Trimbur's introduction to the "Reviews" unit of his book (416-20), of Peter Keough's "Goon Squad: Evita Bludgeons, but Seduces" (420), and of Anthony Lane's "Immaterial Girls" (421-24). We'll also do some in-class writing to get you started on your next essay, and I'll bring you the paper topic for it.
Tuesday Oct. 10: Discussion of Alan Stone's "Report and Recommendations Concerning the Handling of Incidents such as the Branch Davidian Standoff in Waco, Texas" (424-28), Stephen King's "Blood and Thunder in Concord" (428-34), and of chapter 13 of Rosen's Decisions (pgs. 199-209).
Thursday Oct. 12: Rough draft of essay 3 due. In-class workshopping. Besides spending time critiquing drafts in small groups, we'll also look collectively at a couple of student volunteers' drafts.
Tuesday Oct. 17: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on essay 3 drafts. I'll have brought a sign-up sheet to class before this date.
Thursday Oct. 19: Final draft of essay 3 due, along with all drafts, freewrites, conference notes, outlines, etc. Also, discussion of Trimbur's introduction to the "Proposals" unit of his book (367-71) and of Christopher Dodd's "National Service: Yes or No?: Yes, for the Sake of Renewal" (377-80). We'll also do some in-class writing to get you started on your fourth essay.
Tuesday Oct. 24: Instead of meeting at our regular class time, we'll be watching a film together on this evening, most likely at 6:00. I'll give you more details about what we'll be watching and when and where we'll be watching it before this date. One way or the other, attendance at the film will be required.
Thursday Oct. 26: Discussion of Nicola Clark's "How to Draft a National Service Plan" (380-83), of Iris Marion Young's "Making Single Motherhood Normal" (383-92), and of the film we watched Tuesday evening. We'll be doing some in-class writing, too, to help you advance your fourth essay, the topic question for which I'll bring you on this day.
Tuesday Oct. 31: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on drafts of essay 4. I'll have brought a sign-up sheet to class before this date.
Thursday Nov. 2: Rough drafts of essay 4 due. In-class workshopping. Besides spending time critiquing drafts in small groups, we'll also look collectively at a couple of student volunteers' drafts.
Tuesday Nov. 7: Final draft of essay 4 due, along with all drafts, freewrites, conference notes, outlines, etc. Also, discussion of Trimbur's introduction to the "Commentary" unit of his book (328-31), of Anonymous's "Sadness and Shame at the Citadel" (331), and of Susan Faludi's "Shannon Faulkner's Strength in Numbers" (332-34). We'll also do some in-class writing to get you started on your fifth essay.
Thursday Nov. 9: Discussion of Capt. Erin Dowd's "Ex-Cadet's Actions Didn't Match Her Words" (334-36), Lundy Braun's "How to Fight the New Epidemics" (336), James Carey's "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph" (340), and of chapter 22 of Rosen's Decisions (pgs. 266-79).
Tuesday Nov. 14: Instead of meeting at our regular class time, we'll be watching a film together on this evening, most likely at 6:00. I'll give you more details about what we'll be watching and when and where we'll be watching it before this date. One way or the other, your attendance at the film will be required.
Thursday Nov. 16: Discussion of our film. We'll also do some more in-class writing to help you advance your fifth essay, the topic for which I'll bring you on this day.
Tuesday Nov. 21: Rough draft of essay 5 due. In-class workshopping on your drafts. Besides spending time critiquing drafts in small groups, we'll also look collectively at a couple of student volunteers' drafts.
Tuesday Nov. 28: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your fifth drafts. I'll have brought a sign-up sheet to class before this date.
Thursday Nov. 30: Final draft of essay 5 due, along with all drafts, freewrites, conferences notes, etc. Also, dispersal of the question for your final exam and in-class writing to prepare you to take it.
Tuesday Dec. 5: In-class practice essay to prepare you for your final exam.
Thursday Dec. 7: Portfolios
due. Also, assessment of your practice in-class essay from earlier
in the week and continued preparation for your final exam.
Assignment for Essay One
Compose an at least three-page memoir describing an important event in your life -- an event that might ultimately be as meaningful to your reader as it is to you.
Additional Pointers & Requirements
You're free to define "event" pretty loosely. For Gary Soto, it was an unpleasant job that apparently lasted a whole summer; for you, it might be an argument with a friend that lasted fifteen minutes. Whatever your "event" winds up being, though, you should be able to express it as a story that advances chronologically and has some sense of beginning, middle, and resolution.
Be sure to use lots of specifics when you write. Names of people and places will give your writing a sense of consequence. Sensory details will give your reader the feeling s/he's actually, in a way, there. This is the stuff that'll bring your writing to life. Strive at every turn to be concrete rather than abstract.
Avoid sentimental Hallmark card language. Make the concrete specifics and details you provide express your emotions for you.
Be sure that there's some lesson, some message, some meaning to your story that can be shared by another person. If your essay is only about your parents' divorce, your reader won't be very interested. But if it's about how your parents' divorce taught you that nothing in life is absolute, permanent, or totally dependable -- then you've got a message, or a lesson, that other people can share in, identify with, and learn from.
Despite the above bit of advice, avoid, if you can, coming right out and announcing, "So the moral of the story is...." Again, make that "moral" be implicit in the details and specifics of your memoir. Try to suggest that moral to your readers, but leave it to them, if possible, to figure it out and articulate it for themselves.
Be sure to double-space your final
draft, and to do it in 12-point font. One-inch margins all around
will be fine. And be sure to save everything you do as you
work on the paper -- even if it's stuff you ultimately discard or don't
wind up using in the final version at all.
Assignment for Essay Two
Choose some person or small group of people and write an (at least) three-page profile of him/her/them. Whomever you write about, make it clear why that person may be of as much interest to your reader as to you.
Additional requirements & pointers:
Be sure to try out some of the profiling techniques Trimbur describes: "real-time" writing, creation of a "dominant impression," observation, and interview. (In fact, unless you're facing strange circumstances totally preventing it, doing some interviewing will be mandatory.)
Your subject (i.e. the person you're writing about) can have either social or personal significance. That's up to you. Even if your subject interests you mainly for personal reasons, though, your profile should still give a clear sense of why s/he deserves your reader's attention as well as your own.
Be very careful again to avoid overly sentimental or clichéd language – especially if you're writing about someone close to you.
Also, be sure once again to be vivid, descriptive, and to appeal to your reader's senses. "Observation," as Trimbur calls it, is the profiling technique most likely to call on your descriptive powers.
As you write, bear in mind the difference between a profile and a biography; see Trimbur’s definitions if you’re confused about it. Provide only as much background biographical information about your subject as you really need (and you probably will need some).
Be sure, same as last time, to double-space
your final draft and to do it in 12-point font. One-inch margins
all around will be fine. And be sure to save everything as
you work on your profile – even if it's stuff you ultimately discard or
don't wind up using in the final version at all.
Assignment for Essay Three
Write an at least three-page review of something your own background and interests will allow you to assess intelligently and effectively.
Additional Requirements and Pointers:
There’s almost no end to what you can review: a movie, a book, a CD, a car, a sporting event, a university class, an employee, a boss, a government program, a building, a painting, a play.... Whatever you review, though, make sure it’s specific – i.e., something with clearly identifiable, non-abstract parameters in space or time. Writing a review of “architecture” wouldn’t make a lot of sense, because architecture is a concept you can’t see, hear, observe, or – for those reasons – assess. Writing a review of a particular building is fine, though, because a building is a specific, singular entity you can see, touch, and form an opinion of.
Be sure to keep in mind Trimbur’s elements of a successful review: 1) description & background information, 2) clear criteria (whether they’re explicit or implicit), 3) evaluation, and 4) recommendation (optional). Remember that these things don’t have to appear in your review in that order.
That you’re writing a review doesn’t mean you have to affect a scholarly, journalistic, or “objective” tone. While being glib or goofy won’t be any more permissible in this essay than in your previous ones, you can continue to write in the first person, drawing intelligently on your own experiences and opinions whenever you like.
Be sure not to lose the powers of description and specificity you’ve been developing in your last essays. As you describe whatever it is you’re reviewing, be vivid, concrete, and appeal to your reader’s senses. Let him or her really see, hear, or feel whatever you’re writing about.
As per usual, your final draft should be
double-spaced and done in 12-point font.
Assignment for Essay Four
Write an at least four-page proposal on a topic of your choice, being sure to follow one of the two formats we’ve established in class for “curative” and “creative” proposals.
Additional Requirements and Pointers:
The problem you propose to solve or thing you propose to create might be of interest to either huge national-size communities or smaller local ones, but one way or the other it should be of some social interest. In other words, make sure whatever you’re writing about stands to interest some group of people – not just yourself.
Pick a topic sufficiently complex for a four-page paper. Writing about how West Chester should build a new exit off of Route 202 might not burn up the required amount of space. Writing about how WCU should provide a better campus lifestyle for its students, on the other hand, just might, since this is a complex issue likely to have several “sub-problems” you can explore.
Though Trimbur didn’t really provide any good examples of writers drawing on their own personal experiences to create good proposals, I want you to know that option is open to you – in fact, it might be all but necessary for you to tell good first-person “memoir” style stories pertinent to your subject matter to get yourself through this thing. You don’t have a lot of time to do research or dig up history lessons the way most of Trimbur’s writers did. Instead of making yourself persuasive with numbers and data and facts, then, it might help to make yourself persuasive with good, vivid, first-person stories instead.
If you’d like to do some rudimentary research to bolster your proposal, that’s fine – and you could even conceivably wind up with a topic where it would be really helpful for you to do some. The web, at this point, is an excellent place to find statistics and numbers on almost anything, though you should always be wary when you use it, since anybody can publish anything out there. There’s a whole lot of garbage you shouldn’t necessarily trust.
If you do hit the web – or anything else – for information or help of any kind as you write your proposal, be sure to give me a short, relatively informal “works cited” page telling the web sites you used or the names of the authors whose facts or ideas you’ve borrowed. And be sure if you do borrow other people’s facts or ideas to make it clear in the body of your essay that you’re doing so. Talk to me if you’re not sure how to do this.
As per usual, double-space it, do it in
12-point font, and keep one-inch margins all around. And hold onto
everything you do preparation-wise, including the in-class exercises I
gave you.
Assignment for Essay Five
Write an at least four page-long commentary on an event or trend of particular interest to you.
Additional requirements and pointers:
A commentary, remember, does a number of things. It 1) clearly names the event or trend it’s about, 2) explains what that event or trend demonstrates or teaches us about those people involved with it, 3) takes a moral stand on the lesson it learns from its subject, and 4) tries to influence public opinion, whether subtly or overtly.
Whether it’s on an event or a trend, a commentary needs to be about something of social significance; in other words, it needs to be on an event or trend pertinent to a number of people’s lives, not just the writer’s.
Just because a commentary needs to be on something pertinent to a number of people’s lives, though, doesn’t mean it needs to be pertinent to everyone’s lives. Writing about something important to only a small or localized community is certainly permissible.
Continuing with that previous thought: not only is writing about a local event or trend “permissible,” it might even be advisable, since these are the sorts of events or trends you’re mostly likely to have seen up close and be intimately familiar with.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t write about national (or world) events and trends if you feel able. If you have a really great idea, for instance, about what the tied-up election in Florida teaches us about America and Americans, run with it. But don’t feel like national headline events or trends are the only worthwhile ones: you could easily write just as good (or better) a commentary about how so many of your WCU cohorts are wearing Abercrombie & Fitch.
Remember – and use – the skills you’ve learned writing your previous essays. You know from writing a memoir how to tell vivid stories about your own experiences. You know from our profile unit how to describe and characterize other people. You know from writing a review how to describe and assess an event or a thing. You know from your proposal essay how to solve a problem or create something useful. Don’t forget these skills. Put to use any of them that might help you come up with a good commentary.
Double space your essay. Do it in 12-point font. One-inch margins all around. Give it a good title. And save everything that gets you to your final draft – even stuff that gets discarded. It was still part of your process, and I’ll want to see it.
That’s it. Make me proud.