English 111 Course Outline Summer 2011

http://faculty.tcc.edu/ NJolemore/ Instructor Office Hours Office Phone Email Nancy Jolemore Tues/Thur 5:00-6:00 PM Room 2315 822-1146 njolemore@tcc.edu Semester Summer 2011 Section ENG 111-N08N Room 2402 Hours Tues/Thur 6:008:15

Prerequisites: To take this class, you must score in the ENG 111 range on the reading and writing placement test or you must successfully complete course work in any ESL or developmental reading and writing classes you were placed in. If you didn't place in ENG 111 or complete required ESL or developmental coursework, you should drop this class and enroll in an appropriate course. If you're uncertain if you're in the right class, ask me to check. Required Texts St. Martins Guide to Writing, ninth edition, by Axelrod and Cooper The English Department requires the ninth edition of St. Martin's Guide to Writing, by Axelrod and Cooper, but you don't need to get that textbook. I don't use that textbook at all. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. You can get by just fine without it. I suggest you save your money for more important needs. I provide links to online readings that cover the same material as the textbook so you will be learning the same writing strategies that students in other ENG 111 classes learn. If youve already bought the textbook, you can return it for a full refund within the first week of class. The textbook must be in its original condition. You need to take your original receipt with you. If you decide to drop this class within the first 30 days of the semester, you can get a full refund in your original form of payment with proof of a schedule change and your original receipt. The bookstore does not give refunds without the original receipt, and it doesnt give any refunds on unwrapped loose-leaf books or activated eBooks. The Everyday Writer, fourth edition, by Andrea Lunsford I strongly recommend that you get The Everyday Writer. You will need it for the rest of your life. Recommended Texts "They Say/I Say, by Graff and Birkenstein I highly recommend They Say/I Say. It will come in handy for some of the course assignments in the second half of the semester. You'll also find it useful for ENG 112. You can get it at Barnes and Noble in the general collection section.

An abridged college dictionary If you have a thesaurus, burn it. Use a dictionary instead. The last time I checked, the bookstore had Merriam-Webster and American Heritage for about $10.00. Course Description: English 111 introduces students to critical thinking and the fundamentals of academic writing. Through the writing process, students refine topics; develop and support ideas; investigate, evaluate, and incorporate appropriate resources; edit for effective style and usage; and determine appropriate approaches for a variety of contexts, audiences, and purposes. Class sessions will include lecture, discussion, computer labs, and peer reviews. Course Learning Objectives: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to be a better writer? The same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Writing, like music and art, is a craft that can be learned only if you practice on a regular basis. English 111, College Composition I, will help orient you in the world of written, academic language and prepare you for writing in the professional world. In this class, you will learn some of the strategies that successful writers use. English 111 will help you understand that writing is a skill that develops gradually over time. It will take plenty of practice on your part to see improvement in your writing. English 111 will also help you see that writing ability varies from one person to the next. We come into this class with different levels of ability. Your goal is to measure your progress against your own abilities, to aim for your "personal best," rather than compare your skills to the skills of others. English 111 will guide you in learning writing as a process, in composing, revising, and editing your own written texts, in exploring ideas and information, in understanding audience and purpose, sharing your writing with classmates, and reflecting on your progress as a writer. English 111 will introduce you to collaborative writing tasks. You will learn how to analyze, evaluate, and respond to classmates' drafts with constructive feedback and suggestions. English 111 will lead you to discover that reading and writing are integrally linked to one another. You will learn how to apply critical reading strategies in analyzing, evaluating, interpreting, and responding to college-level texts of varying lengths. English 111 will help you develop your ability to explore, analyze, and investigate ideas and information based on personal experience,

observation, research, and reading of selected texts. You will learn how to locate, use, and evaluate outside sources of information, incorporate source material appropriately, document your sources appropriately, and avoid plagiarism. English 111 will improve your ability to create unified, coherent, welldeveloped texts in well-structured prose appropriate to the purpose and audience. You will develop an awareness of rhetorical elements, and learn how to focus your purpose, organize your ideas, and choose the best audience appeal for particular writing situations. To help you achieve the goals of this course, class work will include careful reading of course material, timely completion and submission of writing assignments, written contributions to your own personal weblog, revision and editing responses to your classmates' writing, and one-on-one conferences with me. By the end of the course, you will have gained a great deal of practice in the craft of writing, you will have completed an impressive portfolio of at least 3,500 words of finished text, and you will have, hopefully, gotten a little bit closer to Carnegie Hall. How the Class Works: I maintain three sites for this class: the Blackboard site, the course web site on TCC's server, and the class weblog site at WordPress. The course web site and the Blackboard site are linked to each other. You will find the same information on both sites. I use the course web site as a backup source in case the Blackboard server goes down (which has happened from time to time). The weblog site will contain a blogroll, which is a list of links to other blogs. Our blogroll will link to the personal blogs of everyone in the class (I'll create this semester's blogroll after everyone creates their blog and gives me their login info). Every week, I post assignments in Blackboard's assignment section. Weblog assignments will be due on the Tuesday following the week they are assigned. For example, assignments posted on Tuesday of Week 3 should be completed by Tuesday of Week 4. The work for essay assignments, which go through several stages of development, will be spread out over two to three weeks. Your weblogs and finished essays must be typed. I recommend that you do several things to safe-guard your work: first, create a folder on your computer's hard drive or a portable disk drive to hold all the work you do for this class this semester; second, type all your assigned work in a word processing document before you post it; third, save your word-processing documents in your class folder. When you are ready to post your work, copy and paste it into your weblog. That way, you will have backup copies of all your completed work, plus you won't have to worry about timing out on your Internet connection and losing all your work.
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Course Assignments: For this class, you will write at least five sets of weblog posts, three sets of revision peer reviews, three finished essays, and three writing reflections. The weblog assignments will be based on assigned readings from the Internet and from electronic handouts. They will also be related to the topic of the essays you will write. The essays will be based the weblog assignments. The revision peer reviews will be guided responses to your classmates' writing. The writing reflections will be analyses of some aspect of your writing process. You'll post your reflections on your blog. Weblog Assignments: Because we live in a fast paced information society, I plan to spend several class periods in the computer lab to help you gain proficiency in basic word processing, Internet functions (browsing the Web and using email), and use of your class weblog. A weblog, or blog as the word has come to be used, is a journal-like web page that is updated daily and which includes a mixture of links, commentary, and personal observation. Blogs can serve as a record of your thoughts on issues or topics that hold your attention for a long time or on fleeting thoughts that grab your attention briefly. We'll be using weblogs to post some of our writing assignments. Our weblogs will be located at WordPress, which is a free, web hosting service that allows an individual or community of users to publish, manage, and organize a variety of content. Please do not create your weblog until I give the assignment. I'll give you more information about the weblog assignments in our second week of class. For each weblog assignment, you will post an entry responding to the assignment and you will post comments to two of your classmates entries. When I am satisfied that everyone knows how to use their weblog, I expect everyone to post on their own time, either from home or from the open computer lab in the Roper building. Essay Assignments: The essays will be revisions of the weblog assignments. The work for the essay assignments will go through several stages of development. For the first stage, you'll choose one of your weblog entries to work on. You'll make an outline of your weblog using the topic triage method and revise your outline into a working rough draft. Then you'll bring your rough draft to class for a peer review. Peer Review Workshops: For the peer review workshops, we will gather in small groups during class to listen and respond to each others rough drafts. People who are late will have to wait until more late people show up to give and get a peer review. After the peer review, you will revise your paper based on your classmates revision suggestions and submit the finished draft in a folder that I will

provide. In your folder, youll include all of your prewriting. Essay Format: Your finished essays must be typed, double-spaced, in an 11 or 12-point font, with one-inch margins. Put your name, course number, my name, and the essay number in the top left hand corner of the first page. I want to see all of your work along with your finished draft, including rough drafts, notes, outlines, peer reviews, or any other written material you produced in the process of completing your finished draft. Make extra copies of all your handwritten work for your own records. Essays turned in without any prewriting will not be considered complete, and will be returned to you to finish. You may revise your graded essays for a higher grade; however, revisions will not be merely corrections of your mistakes but a complete reordering of the text at the sentence, paragraph, or theme level. Attendance and Participation: The overall goal of this class is to improve your writing skills. That's not going to happen overnight and it's not going to happen by itself. You'll have to put a great deal of effort into working on your writing both in and out of class and you'll have to maintain a high level of involvement throughout the whole semester. This is not a class for slackers, despite what your friends may have told you or despite what you may have read on Rate My Professor. To do well in this class, you must prepare for, attend, and participate in all scheduled class sessions. You earn three participation points for every class meeting you attend so absences will affect your final grade. The knowledge gained from assignment explanations and in-class discussions cant be recreated, so any classes that you miss will cause you to miss valuable learning experiences. At times, I may ask to see documentation for absences, but not for the purpose of excusing an absence. I don't excuse absences for doctor's notes or other documents that explain your absence. My position is that those who show up deserve the points and those who don't, for whatever reason, must accept the consequences. Some may feel this isn't fair, that I'm penalizing people for being sick or for their car breaking down. Missing a day or two, however, won't hurt your overall participation grade. And you can do some extra credit to make up the lost points. This is not to say that absences are nothing to be concerned about. They are when one episode of illness or one incident of car trouble turns into a chronic condition that causes you to miss week after week of class. You'll soon find yourself in a situation that will be nearly impossible to recover from.
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Missing one day results in you having to double your efforts for a week in order to catch up, so missing several classes will result in you having to double your efforts even more over a longer period of time. Most people don't hold up well in that kind of circumstance. The added stress then leads to more time missed from class. I don't like to see people putting themselves through that kind of suffering. To prevent that as much as possible, I have an additional attendance policies relating to absences. The first policy has to do with absences before the deadline to withdraw without academic penalty. If you miss one class, you must email me before class to let me know you won't be there. If it's not possible to email or call before class, then do so as soon after class as possible. If you miss three classes, you must meet with me before or after class to talk about your absences, and to devise a plan to avoid further absences. If you miss four classes, you're on my Attendance Warning List. An attendance warning means that I might withdraw you from the class. To avoid being withdrawn, you must meet with me to discuss your situation. If I'm satisfied that you are willing and able to catch up, I'll allow you back into the class. If you don't meet with me, consider yourself withdrawn from the class. If you miss six classes, and don't respond to my emails, I will withdraw you from the class. You will earn a grade of W. The W will not affect your cumulative GPA. No amount of pleading will change my mind about withdrawing a student. Here's my rationale: there are 10 days of class before the deadline to withdraw. Six days is more than 50 percent of that time. Missing 50 percent of class meetings means that you have missed valuable experiences that cannot be made up. It also means that the class has moved on without you, that the people in the class have established relationships with each other, that your presence in the class will be disruptive, and that classmates will have to slow down for you, that they will have to find a way to incorporate your presence into the class. It's not fair to classmates to let someone in who hasn't been attending, participating, and contributing. My second attendance policy has to do with absences after the deadline to withdraw without academic penalty. The same rules apply for missing one, three, four, or six. If you miss six classes after the deadline, you've earned an F for the class. If you have vacation plans or other obligations, you should cancel them or

drop the class now. If you can't commit to this class, if you can't participate fully, you should withdraw and try again some other time. My rules for active duty military students are different because their job requires them to leave town on short notice. This is an ongoing condition of their employment. If you are active duty military, and anticipate an extended deployment, please let me know as soon as possible so we can make arrangements for you to keep up. Grading System: I dont give students grades. Students earn their grades. This means that the value you place on this class and the effort you put into it will lead to a particular result for you. It also means that you are responsible for tracking your progress in the class. You can chart your progress in the class by keeping track of how many points you've earned for weblog posts, graded essays, and attendance, and adding up your points at the end of the semester, (I've posted a progress chart in Blackboard that you can use to track your points). There are two kinds of grades for the class: evaluation grades and participation grades. I evaluate essays as a means of assessing your writing skills. I evaluate for development of ideas, consistency, coherence, focus, organization, style, audience appeal, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. You earn participation points for the rest of your work, as long as your work meets the assignment requirements. In most cases, if you do the work, you get the points. If your work doesn't meet the assignment requirements, I will ask you to redo it. For instance, if an assignment asks for a word count range of 300500 words, I expect your work to fall somewhere within or near that range. I can overlook a blog post of 275 words, for instance, but not one of 200 words. In the last case, I would ask you to rewrite your work to meet the word requirement. In some cases, I may make subjective judgments about the word count. Some people may be able to pack a lot of meaning into fewer words, while others pad their prose with lots of flowery phrases and deadwood, so I take those kinds of factors into account. Your completed work should also resemble the assignment description to a certain extent. For instance, if the assignment calls for writing a comparison, and you turn in something that looks more like a process analysis, I will ask for a re-write. In the interest of fairness, Ive established a two-week window of opportunity to ask for re-writes. It wouldnt be reasonable for me to ask you to rewrite something several weeks or months after the due date. Therefore, if I havent requested a rewrite after two weeks past the due date, I cant ask for a rewrite, even if I discover major problems. I might point out a problem you need to be aware of, but you wont have to redo the work.
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Now, if you turn work in late, past the two-week window, and it doesnt meet requirements, you do not get a chance to rewrite. Youll get zero points for the assignment. So post on time and make sure its done right. Its always best to avoid having to rewrite any assignment by doing it right in the first place. I usually give clear, explicit instructions, but even so, some people may have difficulty understanding one or two assignments. In such cases, its best to ask for clarification before you even begin the assignment. If you have any doubts about your completed work, ask me to take a look before you submit it. You have until the last week of regular classes to submit your re-writes, though its better to get that out of the way as soon as possible. If I do ask someone to redo an assignment, and the person doesnt submit a re-write by our last day of class (not the day of our exam), then he or she wont get any points for the assignment. Finally, while grade points reflect the measurable quantity and quality of work you do, I notice other things people do that are not graded. If a students grade point total falls on the border between one grade and another, I'm more likely to nudge the grade upward for a student who shows that he or she has reflected on the assigned readings, listened and responded to other students, and participated productively in the class than for a student who just shows up and does the bare minimum or who doesnt show up much and chronically turns work in late. If you have any questions about your progress in class, please see me during office hours. Here's the breakdown of points for each set of assignments: Four weblog entries Two finished essays Two Attendance and participation 30 points each set 100 points each set 30 points each 3 points each day Total 120 200 60 60 440 points points points points points

Here's the approximate breakdown for final grades: A = 440--420 B = 420 - 400 C = 400 - 380 D = 380 - 360 F = below 360

My grade scale is as follows: A = 91 - 100 B = 81 - 90 C = 71 - 80 D = 61 - 70

Conduct: The college policy requires that all students exercise self-respect and use the common sense necessary to respect the rights of other classmates and their needs for a learning environment free of disruption or distraction. Please do not eat or drink during class, dont come to class under the influence of legal or illegal substances (unless youre taking medication for an illness), dont damage anyones property, and dont use obscene language. In addition, my policy for classroom conduct follows the Golden Rule; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, treat me and your fellow classmates with the same respect you would want others to treat you. In classroom discussions, only one person at a time can have the floor. Everyone else should listen respectfully. When one person is talking, please do not engage your neighbor in a private conversation. No personal verbal or physical attacks are allowed, no unnecessary disruptions or distractions. If you need to exit or enter the classroom during class time, please do so discreetly. Turn your cell phones on vibrate and refrain from text messaging. Do not use audio players or gaming devices when in class. Thanks. Plagiarism: Writers who use the words or ideas of others are obligated to give credit through proper acknowledgment and documentation. Failure to give credit is plagiarism, a serious offence that can result in an F for the assignment and/or an F for the course. If you have questions about how and when to acknowledge sources, please refer to the Everyday Writer or see me for advice. The same rule applies for students who get someone else to write their paper for them or who buy or download papers from a paper writing service. If you need help with your writing, you may ask to have a conference with me in my office or you may go to the writing center for help. DO NOT ask a friend, relative, or neighbor to help you with your writing. Drop policy: A grade of W is awarded to students who withdraw or are withdrawn from a course after the add/drop period but prior to the completion of 60% of the session. After that time, the student will receive a grade of F. Disability Services: Students have varied styles and needs for learning. If you have a specific need and require classroom accommodations because of a disability, or you have medical information to share, please contact your disability services counselor or the District Coordinator at 822-1213, and/or visit the web page at http://www.tcc.edu. Any information about your disability or medical condition that you discuss with your disability services counselor is confidential and will not be shared with anyone. Students who need course adaptation or accommodations because of a documented
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learning disability or medical condition should notify me as soon as possible so I may accommodate your needs. Tutoring: Supplemental instruction beyond the classroom is available to all students at the Writing Center on the mezzanine floor of the library in the Martin Building. Literary Journal: Tidewater Community College has an annual literary publication of student works entitled Channel Marker. Please consider submitting any essay or creative piece of writing you wish. The submission deadline is November 1 for publication in April; however, feel free to submit your entries to your instructor before the deadline.