Instructor: Dean Hall Office: Eisenhower 05 Office Phone:
532-0389
E-mail: ddhh@ksu.edu Office Hours: MWF 1:00-2:00 and by appt.
ENGL 100 10410 8:30 MWF Seaton 143
ENGL 100 10510 10:30 MWF GYM 204
ENGL 100 10560 11:30 MWF Seaton 143
CONTACT: You can make an appointment with me before or after class,
by telephone (voice mail is available when I am not in the office),
by e-mail, by leaving a note in my mail box in Denison Hall, or by
leaving a message with the departmental secretary at 532-6716. Be
sure to leave a name and number so I can get back to you.
TEXTBOOKS: The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing by John D.
Ramage and John C. Bean and Expository Writing 100 by Robin
Mosher and Deborah Murray; both texts are available in the Union
Bookstore and from Varney’s. All the basic course materials
including the two textbook, a short guide to using the internet in
research, and a supplementary handout should be bundled together. In
the syllabus below, AB= Guide to Writing and MM = Expository Writing
100.
SUBMITTING YOUR WORK: Place the essay, any assignment sheet handout,
all notes, all drafts, all peer feedback in a manila folder with your
name written on the tab. Supply a title for your essay but do not use
title pages. Do not submit your work in a report folder. Include your
name, date, assignment number and page number in the upper left-hand
corner of each page (see page 11 in MM for a correct example). Paper
clip your pages together (no staples, no creative folding of
corners).
a) In-class essays:
• write in blue or black ink
• use white college-ruled 8 1/2” by 11” paper (not
paper ripped from spiral notebooks)
b) Out-of-class essays:
• must be typed on 8 1/2” by 11” white bond paper (no
erasable bond because it smears and your work will simply disappear
with multiple handlings)
• if you use a word processor attached to a dot-matirx printer,
use the “letter quality” setting for printing final drafts;
the “draft quality” setting on dot-matrix printers makes a
copy too difficult to read.
ATTENDANCE POLICY: University policy requires that students attend
all scheduled classes in which they are enrolled. However, my
experience tells me that there will be times when coming to class is
just not possible. Therefore, you can miss one class without any
penalty whatsoever. Reserve this “free” absence for when
you really cannot come to class because you are too ill or absolutely
have to be somewhere else. You are responsible for finding out what
happens on the days you are absent. If you know ahead of time you
must be gone when an assignment is due, let me know so perhaps we can
make other arrangements.
Attendance counts for 10% of your course grade and is weighted as
follows: 0-1 absence = A, 2 = B, 3-4 = C, 5 = D, 6 = F. With your
sixth absence you will receive an F for the attendance part of the
course. NOTE: If you miss class 9 times, you will receive an F FOR
THE COURSE. This is a standard policy across all expository writing
sections that meet three times a week. I have no choice in this; keep
track of your absences and please don’t fail this course simply
because you didn’t come to class.
Attendance is expected from you every day that the course meets, and
attendance is an important factor in doing well in this class. Look
at attendance this way: you get 10% towards an A if this class if you
do nothing else but come everyday. What easier way is there to
accumulate course credit than simply showing up?
LATE WORK POLICY: All out-of-class writing assignments are due at the
beginning of class on the due date. Late work will lose one letter
grade for each calendar day late meaning that a paper or draft that
is late one calendar day can receive no more than a B; if it is two
calendar days late, it can receive no more than a C. This includes
drafts as well as final versions. This also means that you cannot
revise a paper that is more than two days late (since the highest
grade you could possibly attain is still not passing). Lateness could
fail you for an entire unit, then, and could result in your not
having enough acceptable papers to submit for the portfolio which in
turn would cause you to fail the entire course.
COURSE GRADES: Grades for the course will be determined as
follows:
Attendance = 10%,
Participation (both in class and on listserv) = 10%,
Written Work = 80%. This will be the average of the grades for the
major essays for the course one of which will be written in class.
Major essays will receive a grade of A, B, C or U (for unacceptable).
Unacceptable papers must be revised to an acceptable level for them
to pass; in other words, an unrevised paper with an original grade of
U will be calculated as an F when averaging grades.
Note: Your work must pass the program-wide portfolio examination at
the end of the term for you to pass the course (no matter what grades
I gave the work during the semester). The portfolio examination has
its own machinery which is made clear in MM pages 2-8. We will go
over the portfolio requirements in class, and I will work with each
of you for both the portfolio dry run and for the final
examination.
REVISION RATIONALE: Revision, real revision, is perhaps the most
important aspect of becoming a better writer. I want you to become
the best writer you can given the constraints you are under during
the semester. To improve as a writer, you must be willing to write in
ways you have not written before, be willing to try new things, to
take risks. Successful writers revise their work several times before
they are comfortable that what they have written is the best work
they can produce. I know this from having watched hundreds of
students struggle to write better and from my own experiences as a
professional writer. Remember the goal is to achieve the best
possible written work you are capable of producing.
Grading Week to Week: On each essay you submit, I will indicate only
whether it has earned an acceptable or unacceptable grade. I hope
this method encourages you to concentrate on producing your best work
rather than concentrating on grades. I will also give you feedback in
the margins and at the end of the paper as to what you might do to
improve the essay. Here, then, is where the revision opportunities
come into play (subject to the constraints outlined above under late
work policy). Your final course grade will be determined by looking
at all your work at the end of the semester.
REVISION POLICY: The revision policy is related to the late work
policy above so make sure you know how these
constraints/opportunities are tied together. You must turn in any
revisions no more than one week after I return an essay to you.
In-class writing generally will not be able to be revised.
• I require you to attempt revision on any essay which earns a U
and to keep revising until that essay reaches the acceptable level.
This means that both of us are committed to working together to
getting all of your work up to an acceptable level. If you do not
turn in a revision of an essay that received a U within the week time
limit, that essay will simply receive a permanent grade of U and be
calculated as an F when calculating course grades.
• Though I do not require revisions of essays which earn
acceptable grades when first submitted, I do allow you to revise such
essays once. This is an opportunity you should take advantage of if
at all possible. This is how C papers become B papers and B papers
become A papers.
Revision defined: To be a revision, an essay must demonstrate
significant change in global issues such as focus (what the
paper is trying to accomplish), arrangement (how the paper is
organized), or development (amount and relevance of detail
and/or support for generalizations). If you haven’t actually
changed the original essay, I will simply hand it back to without
other comments. Note: Simply correcting errors in spelling,
punctuation, usage or grammar (though expected in a revision) does
not count as revision because such corrections do not meet the above
criteria.
Revision processes: To receive credit for revising an essay,
you must do all of the following:
• you must mark and explain why you deleted anything in the
previous version.
• you must highlight and explain any additions you included in
the new version
• you must write a separate summary on a separate page(s)
explaining how and why you revised; for example, you need to explain
why and how you changed the essay’s focus or why you rearranged
or added more information and so on.
• you must include with your newly typed revision all the
original materials turned in with the previous version(s) along with
the previous version(s) in a manila folder.
LISTSERV: Get on the Expos 1 listserv and participate in
discussion. A listserv allows all of us to initiate and continue
discussions in that any mail sent to one person via listserv is also
received by everyone else on the list (ie., every other student
taking this class). I periodically download a log of discussions that
accumulate so I can quite accurately assess who is participating and
how much in this part of the course.
Tentative Schedule: So early in the semester I can only guess about
what we will be doing day to day in class. The schedule below is my
best guess at the moment and should indicate to you at least a vision
of what we need to accomplish this semester. But, because we know
already that some changes may need to be made, we all have to agree
to “go with the flow” when necessary. Therefore, you are
responsible for knowing any modifications to the schedule below; pay
attention in class when we agree to modify an assignment or due date.
Also check the listserv regularly; I will also post any changes there
as well.
8/20 M Hello, Introduction to Course, Getting to know Each Other, Are
we all in the right room?
8/22 W Introductions continued; discuss syllabus and general course
policies; discuss diagnostic essay. Discuss concepts of portfolio and
plagiarism contract. Collect contracts. Contract appears on p. 9 of
MM.
Read AB, pp 2-6 and pp. 23-25 and MM pp. 2-10.
8/24 F Discuss Diagnostic Essay
Invention Strategies
8/27 M Write Diagnostic Essay in Class
8/29 Autobiographical Writing Assignment Given Out
9/10 Responses to Workshop. Show your team specifically what you did or didn't do in response to suggestions from your team.
9/12 Turn in Assignment with all rough drafts, workshop notes, and comments on changes and revisions you made. Sign up for individual conference during week of Sept 17th through 21st.