Bateman

1 ENG 101-018: Critical Reading and Composition MWF 10:10 - 11:00, BA 363 Instructor: Cynthia Bateman

Contact Information: Office: Humanities Classroom Building, Room 001 Email: cynthiaabateman@gmail.com Office Hours: M 2:30 4:30, W 11:00 12:00, and by appointment Required Texts: Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Ways of Reading: An Anthology For Writers. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print. Hairston, Maxine, John Ruszkiewicz, and Christy Friend. The Scott Foresman Handbook, 9th ed. Prentice Hall, 2010. Print. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic Press, 2008. Print. Required pdfs posted on our class website. Our class website http://birdsnest7.wordpress.com/ Bookmark this site, subscribe to the blog, and visit it often (I suggest daily)! You are responsible for any and all information posted on the website. A Dropbox account (https://www.dropbox.com/). You will also need access to a college-level dictionary. Course Description English 101, the first half of the First-Year English program, is designed to help you learn to read a variety of texts with insight and write about them with skill and understanding. To that end, Ill provide you with instruction and feedback to help you advance as an effective writer and as a thoughtful reader and researcher. You will learn theories of argumentation and analysis and will practice generating and developing ideas on your own. Through drafting and revision, you will construct both analytical and expository essays. This kind of study can awaken you to the uses of language, the structure of texts, the ideas that shape our culture, and the interrelationship between ideas and language. In short, I hope this course will help you learn to think critically and creatively and to express those thoughts clearly. During this semester you will: Encounter a variety of challenging texts representing a range of literary and non- literary genres. Learn and practice strategies for reading carefully, closely, and critically. Work through a full range of writing processes including invention, planning, drafting, revision, and editing in order to produce effective college-level essays. Develop, organize, and produce effective expository and analytical essays. Become acquainted with conventions for summarizing, paraphrasing, and documenting reading material in accordance with MLA guidelines. Develop a clear, effective writing style, free of major errors, and appropriate for academic audiences.

Bateman 2 You will learn these skills not by listening to me lecture about them, but through frequent and intensive practice. The sequence of carefully planned activities challenges you to improve your abilities with every new task and will prepare you for English 102 and for other classes and situations that require writing. Throughout the semester, we will: Compose frequent short pieces that reinforce close, critical reading processes and thoughtful composing processes. Short assignments will give you a range of opportunities to compose both informal and formal documents and to write during class time and outside of class. Compose 4 longer essays that include: an analytical essay that develops a close reading of a text; a second analytical essay focused on a text that differs from the first; an essay that considers two texts in relation to each other, and an essay that draws on contextual material to analyze a text. Submit and receive feedback on prewriting materials early in the process of developing an essay. Participate in peer revision activities and incorporate peer feedback before submitting final versions of the essays. Course Policies: Daily Preparation: Come to class each day having read the required reading(s) for that day (bring the readings to class), a notebook, and a writing utensil. Attendance and Tardiness: This is not a lecture course. We will be working together to improve your writing and to critique your work in progress, and this means that you will need to come to class regularly and participate actively in discussions and exercises. In accordance with university policy, I will penalize your course grade if you miss more than 10% of our class meetings. Please note the following schedule of penalties: o If you miss more than 10%, you will lose 1 letter grade. o If you miss 20%, you will lose 2 letter grades. o If you miss 25% or more, you will fail the course automatically. o If you find yourself needing to do the math, you should put the calculator away and come to class. o Failure to attend scheduled conferences will count as one absence. Class begins at 10:10. I will be on time, and I expect you to be on time. Assignments are due at the beginning of class. Late work will not be accepted! Participation: This is a discussion-based class. Participation in class discussions, group work, and conference appointments is essential for your growth as a student taking this class and your overall success in this course (why would you not want to participate?). Let me be clear: participation in class discussion is not optional. Students should come to class prepared to ask critical questions and comment on assigned readings, films, etc. Classroom Conduct: Because this is a discussion-based class it is necessary for you to speak with the instructor and with one another. Please speak freely and often, i.e., it is not necessary to raise your hand and wait to be acknowledged in order to speak. Having said that, I do expect that you will exercise common courtesy when

Bateman 3 communicating with the instructor and your classmates. Such common courtesy includes not interrupting other speakers and refraining from the use of profanity and intentionally inflammatory and/or insulting language. Simply put, while you are always free to disagree with the instructor and one another, you will do so respectfully or you will be dismissed from class for the day and marked absent. (Refer to the Carolina Creed for additional information on appropriate campus behavior: http://www.sa.sc.edu/creed/). Plagiarism: Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. If you use someone elses words or thoughts without crediting them, you are guilty of plagiarism. Evidence of plagiarism will result in a failing grade for this course and a report filed with the Provost. Please visit the following link for a thorough explanation of USCs honor code: http://www.sc.edu/policies/staf625.pdf Email Etiquette: The best way to reach me is via email. In order to receive the fastest response possible, please format your email as followsinclude a topic in the subject line, a greeting, and sign the message with your first and last name (I may have three Amys in class. Which one are you?) I will respond to emails received between the hours of 8:00am and 7:00pm Monday-Friday the same day I receive them. I will respond to emails received outside of this window the next day. Emails sent after 7:00pm on Friday will be returned the following Monday.

How to Submit an Assignment: All documents for this course will be submitted electronically unless otherwise noted. Students are required to sign up from a Dropbox account (there is no cost for this service). All assignments will be submitted via individual shared folders in Dropbox. Instructions for creating and sharing folders in Dropbox are located under the Assignments tab on our website. We will also go over these instructions at length in class together. Grading: A C is the lowest passing grade in English 101. I grade on a 10-point scale (A=90100; B+=88-89; B=80-87; C+=78-79; C=70-77; D+=68-69; D=60-67; F=50). Ill specify more detailed essay requirements in each paper assignment. If you have a question about a grade you receive on an assignment, please feel free to discuss it with me. The weights for grading are as follows: Essays (60% total): During the course of the semester, you will write four formal essays (of about 4 to 6 pages each) in which you will write arguments about texts we have read. Here are the details: v Essay 1: close reading of Freires The Banking Concept, 3-page minimum (10%) v Essay 2: critical cultural analysis of The Hunger Games, 5-page minimum (20%) v Essay 3: close reading of a visual text (text TBA), 3-page minimum (10%) v Essay 4: comparative analysis of Bartleby the Scrivener in conversation with any of the other essays weve read over the semester, 5-page minimum (20%) Short Writing Assignments (20%): Occasionally you will be asked to respond to the reading. These responses, which should follow the same submission guidelines as do your essays, will be graded as short writing assignments. The Letter of Reflection component of your final portfolio counts as a short writing assignment also. Participation (20%): This includes all in-class writing, peer review, attendanceboth physical and mentalgroup exercises, quizzes*, and contributions to class discussions.

Bateman 4 *Pop quizzes will be given if class participation is lacking.* Revision Policy: You will turn in a typed draft of each of the four formal essays. Youll get feedback from me and from one or more of your classmates. You will use the feedback to revise the paper and turn in a final draft, which I will assign a letter grade, in your portfolio at the end of the semester. You may revise an essay and resubmit for further evaluation as many times as you like throughout the semester with the stipulation that you must meet with me during office hours (or another mutually agreed upon meeting time) to discuss your paper prior to each revision. I will accept revisions of essays one, two, and three up to Friday, November 30th. You must resubmit all previous drafts with your revisions; if you dont, I will not grade them. Note: revising does not mean correcting surface errors or adding a few sentences here and there; a revision is literally a seeing again, a rewriting of the paper based on feedback. Additional Resources: Disability Support Services- If you need special assistance in this class due to a physical or learning disability, please contact Disability Support Services at (803) 777-6142, sasds@mailbox.sc.edu USC Writing Center- The Writing Center offers help in developing, organizing, proofreading, and clarifying your papers. Their services are free to university students so take advantage of them! The Writing Center is located in Byrnes Building, room 703. Please call (803) 777-2078 or visit http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/write/ to make an appointment. USC Counseling Services provides students with confidential access to speak with trained counselors for any number of reasons including stress, anxiety, depression, etc. This service is available at no cost to registered students. Counseling Services is located on the seventh floor of Byrnes Building. Please call (803) 777- 5223 to make an appointment. OWL- The Purdue Online Writing Lab (or OWL) is a great resource for a variety of writing issues such as MLA and APA format and guides to avoiding plagiarism. Please visit OWL at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ ***This syllabus may be altered at any time throughout the semester at the instructors discretion. Changes will be announced in class and on our website.***