English 1510, Section 121 MWF 8:35-9:30, Ellis 120 Fall 2012

Writing and Rhetoric I

Instructor:
2:00-4:00

Michael D. Johnson

Email: MJ726011@Ohio.edu Office: Ellis Hall 341 Office Phone: 593-2806 Office Hours: TuTh

Required Texts

Writing about Writing, Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs Readings on Writing, OU Composition Committee Other Readings as posted on Blackboard

Introduction

elcome to English 1510: Writing and Rhetoric 1. As the course catalog states, this course is meant to provide practice in composing and revising expository essays that are well organized, logically coherent, and effective for their purpose and audience. In this syllabus, Ill try to explain how Id like us to accomplish that statement (and I hope a lot more!). My main goal for this course is to help you improve your understanding of what writing is, how it functions in various writing/Discourse communities ("ways of being in the world forms of life which integrate words, acts, values, beliefs, attitudes, and social identities as well as gestures, glances, body positions, and clothes" pg 484 WaW), and what you might need to do to successfully make use of writing in the Discourse communities that you need or want to enter. By the end of the semester, I want you to know as much as possible about writing. If you know how writing works, you have a much better chance of developing the tools you need to use it to your advantage. In other words, if writing were a delicious triple chocolate cheesecake with peanut butter ganache, Id be trying to teach you not only the various ingredients and methods for preparing that cake but also the ways to take advantage of and alter the recipe to your own liking (hey, not everyone enjoys cheesecake). But to do that, we need to study writing itself. And in the process of doing so, we should come to recognize and understand the circumstances, events, and obstacles that make writing so difficult and why we writers both novice and experienced have all struggled with or against it some, if not most, of the time. Over the course of the semester, you will read what writing scholars have discovered as they have researched writing; write extensively about your own thoughts on what those scholars argue; research your own writing, both as a process and a product; and conduct your own thorough research of some aspect of writing that you come to think is especially important. Your major course work, or the practice mentioned in the course description, will include four major essays and at least one major rewrite from the first three essays, as well as formal written responses to one peer paper for each major essay. Ill also ask you to write frequent (usually daily) reading responses in which you will write very brief (no longer than a few sentences but no shorter than what is necessary to convey the idea) summaries of each article we read, put the articles into conversation with other previously read texts (both in and outside of our class), respond to assigned questions or exercises that should help you think through (with or against) the arguments presented in the readings, and reflect on your own thoughts about the articles ideas and how they compare with your own experiences; in addition to these reading responses, you may also be asked to complete other informal brief writing activities. We will also engage in frequent group work in class to give you opportunities to further investigate and apply some of the information presented in the readings as a practicing (Discourse) community. See below for further information.

Course Work

Project 1: Questioning Writing Constructs Project 2: Multimodal Collaborative Literacy Histories Project 3: Ethnography: Analyzing a Community Project 4: Reflective Argument & Writing Portfolios (Collected Works and Selected) Regular Informal Writing, Responses to readings, In-class writing, etc.

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For each major project, we will engage in extended processes of writing that will give you opportunities to develop techniques for continuing to work with and improve your texts since one of the most important parts of writing well involves the persistence to keep writing until you have the paper you want (also known as revision). As part of this process, I will ask you to produce a complete and polished paper (this is not a rough draft but a paper that you have carefully written, revised, and proofread until it is of sufficient quality to show to others) along with a cover letter to your reviewer. These papers will be used for in-class workshop, and out-of-class peer reviews. Each of you will respond to one of your peers papers by writing a formal written review; I will assess these peer responses as part of your major coursework (you will provide two copies of the review: one for the author and one for me). I will provide guidelines. I will ask you to use what you learned from in-class workshop and the feedback from your peer reviewer to rewrite and/or revise your paper (once again revising and proofreading it carefully after youve reworked it to your satisfaction) to produce a new paper that you will turn in to me for feedback. I will require that you arrange to meet with me to discuss my feedback outside of class, and, if you choose, you may rewrite or revise each paper once more before you turn it in as part of your final portfolio at the end of the semester. I will require that you dramatically rewrite or revise at least one of the first three papers for the final portfolio. To get credit for your major papers, you will need to complete each step of the process on time and to the best of your abilities. You will also be asked to produce numerous informal texts as responses to reading, group work, in-class writing, etc. These texts will be assessed on a credit/no credit basis. I will give credit to assignments that meet the minimum requirements for the assigned task and show an honest attempt at reflective thoughtfulness (you are thinking about the ideas the assignment asks you to address and applying them to your own experience in order to arrive at your own thoughts and opinions on those ideas). What I want here is your honest thoughts about the ideas we read about and discuss; I dont care if those thoughts are disorganized, informal, or ungrammatical, as long as you show that you are thinking. You will be required to post all "informal" texts to a blog, which you will create using blogger.com. After you have set up your blog, you must email me the url of your blog so I can add it to our class blog. Be mindful that blogs will be available to the class and potentially referenced during class. Also, blogs are due the night before class. All major papers need to be submitted through Safe-Assign on the course Blackboard page. Reflective cover letters should be included in the file with your paper, and they should precede the paper (hence the name cover letter). Papers submitted for feedback need to be .doc, .docx or other compatible file since I, and perhaps your peers, will use track changes in Word to give you feedback. Please note: MAKE SURE TO SAVE OFTEN AND BACK-UP ALL YOUR WORK SINCE YOU WILL NEED EVERYTHING FOR YOUR COLLECTED WORKS PORTFOLIOas part of your final project and your final portfolio. Consider saving your work in multiple locations; technology does fail. WHEN YOU MAKE CHANGES AS PART OF REVISION, SAVE THEM AS A NEW FILE (change the name of the file to include the version number) SO YOU WILL HAVE YOUR ORIGINAL TEXT AND ALL SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS TO SHOW HOW THE PAPER CHANGED. Consider keeping all your work for the class in a single folder for your own convenience when compiling the final portfolio.

Responding to Your Writing

y goal in responding to your writing is to give you feedback that is aimed at 1) helping you get better at navigating writing situations and 2) getting the best paper you can in the current writing situation. Most of my feedback will come in the form of QUESTIONS and SUGGESTIONS, though I will point out 1) problems where the text isnt working for the current writing situation and 2) more general problems that may make it difficult for you to successfully navigate writing situations generally. For the latter, I will usually only point out such problems the first time I see them, explain why they are problems, and suggest ways to avoid them in the future. If the same problem occurs multiple times in a paper, I leave it up to you to read through and notice the subsequent instances. Please note, when I ask questions or offer suggestions, both are just that: questions and suggestions as the author, it is at your discretion to consider your readers' feedback and revise as you think appropriate. My focus in giving feedback is primarily on the major elements and issues of the text, and quite often I might suggest that you need to dramatically rework the text rather than simply trying to fix it. When I do this, it is because I think it will be more difficult and more time consuming for you to keep working with the text you already have than to use what youve learned from the production of that text to produce a better one (sometimes the best papers arise after scrapping the majority of another one, however painful letting go of that first paper may be!). Since I expect most of your papers to change significantly as you continue to work with them, I, for the most part, try to avoid spending too much time marking and commenting on surface features (grammar, punctuation, syntax, style, etc.) because it is not useful to spend time correcting sentences that may be deleted anyway. That, however, in no way means that these issues arent importantI have asked that you edit and carefully proofread all papers before turning them in either to your peers or to me; surface features (also known as local issues) are often vital because so many readers put so

English 1510, Section 121 MWF 8:35-9:30, Ellis 120 Fall 2012
much stock in them; imagine or recall a time that you have read a paper or seen a movie full of small issues and inconsistencies. While this may not have affected the content, it probably annoyed you and caused you to think less of the author/director. In this, I may still point out surface problems, but only for the sake of explaining how to fix them when they happen. None of my feedback should be taken as an evaluation or judgment. Furthermore, I will NOT assign letter grades to papers (see Grading below).

Editing & Proofreading Marks

Yellow Highlight: Im not sure what you are trying to say here, or I dont think this means what you think it means Blue Highlight: Your sentence or paragraph impresses me, and I want you to use more of this excellent style. [Yes!] I find the way you made a point rhetorically effective and want to see you use similar appeals again. Comments: Most of my feedback will be in comments using Track Changes in Microsoft Word.

Grading

o you enjoy grades? Grades often create a high-anxiety atmosphere that impede students from really engaging with the material or enjoying the process of learning a new subject. Grades are primarily used to rank and judge. And, for the most part, grades provide little information about whether or not you actually learned anything Yuck, right? Unfortunately, in US higher education we have a system centered on grades and grade point average, which stifles both you and me; you worry more about getting a good grade instead of learning something useful, and I worry what a grade in my class should be understood to mean (Does a C make you, incorrectly, think that writing is just something you arent good at?) and how the grade I give affects your continued educational progress (Does an A lead you to give less effort to improving your writing?). In short, nothing turns a productive learning environment into a mess of anxiety and stress like a grade. At the end of the term, however, you need a grade, and I am required to assign one to your work in the class. In my opinion, the best solution for removing the anxiety of grades for both of us is by using a grading contract. The gist of the contract is that I guarantee a grade of at least a B to everyone who meets the terms of the contract, and, in return, you promise to fulfill your side of that contract with an emphasis on doing your best to learn what we are trying to learn. Students who violate the contract (1 major violation or 3 minor violations) will find their promised grade reduced to by one letter grade (a B to a C, etc.). This is not to say you can only earn a B in the class; You can improve your grade beyond a B by impressing me with the quality of the work you do both during the semester and in the final portfolio. If you have violated the contract, superior writing and engagement can still raise your grade (if youre down to a C, you could still get a B, etc.). The grading contract, then, largely makes grading automatic, up-front, and, I hope, less stressful, which should allow us to worry less about grades and more about learning how to best take advantage of writing in school, work, and life. Also note, the grading contract makes it incredibly easy to track your own progress throughout the course.

Writing Center
"The Student Writing Center, located in the Alden Library (2nd floor), provides free scheduled and walk-in face-to-face appointments as well as online appointments. Assistance is available at any stage of the writing process, from understanding the assignment to looking at the revised draft. You can get help with developing the thesis or main idea, organized or developing idea, the bibliography, grammatical issues or any other writing concerns" (quoted from the WC home page). Please visit http://www.ohio.edu/writing/ to find out more about the WC or to schedule an appointment.

Course Policies
I use e-mail to communicate important information about the class. You are responsible to check your school
account regularly Your work in this class is always public. Dont submit writing you cant let other students see. All out-of-class work must be typed. Drafts of papers must be polished and ready for classmates feedback on the assigned dates to earn credit I will not accept late assignments. If you know you will be absent, we can make arrangements for you to turn in assignments early.

English 1510, Section 121 MWF 8:35-9:30, Ellis 120 Fall 2012
Plagiarism: Cheatingwhether by claiming anothers ideas or work as your own (fraud) or making up or falsifying
information (fabrication)will result in a course grade of F and a report to Community Standards. You are at all times responsible for handling sources ethically by acknowledging the author and source of directly borrowed ideas and language in your writing. Academic Dishonesty: Plagiarism is defined by the Ohio University Student handbook as a Code A offense (10); this means: [a] student found to have violated any of the following regulations will be subject to a maximum sanction of expulsion, or any sanction not less than a reprimandPlagiarism involves the presentation of some other persons work as if it were the work of the presenter. A faculty member has the authority to grant a failing grade. . . as well as referring the case to the director of judiciaries. Please, if you are not sure how to avoid plagiarizing, see me or a trained writing center tutor. For more information on Academic Misconduct Info for Students, visit:

http://www.ohio.edu/communitystandards/academic/students.cfm

We will use the Safe Assign program on Blackboard for your drafts to help you get a sense of how effectively you
are working with source material and avoiding misappropriation of others words and ideas. Your essay will be analyzed by Safe Assign, a program designed to identify source material in your text; I want this to be a way for you to check to make sure you have used source material ethically and effectively (introduced and cited). If you have concerns, please let me know so we can resolve the issue! ADA: Classroom Accessibility: Please let me know as soon as possible if you need an accommodation in order to work successfully in this class. This classroom strives for full accessibility, and it is not necessary for you to have an official accommodation letter from Disability Services in order to request changes to the classroom that will better serve your needs as a student, although please keep in mind that any requests made must be reasonable and appropriate and may require a conversations outside of class to establish guidelines (see next bullet). Even with this, you are still encouraged to explore the possible supports Disability Services can offer if you are a student with a disability. Furthermore both able-bodied students and students with disabilities are encouraged to suggest any improvements to the learning environment. Self-Advocacy: This classroom strives to be an inclusive space in which all students, both able-bodied and those with disabilities, have the right to expect that their individual needs will be met. To this end, students with specific needs are encouraged to act as self-advocates, actively working with me to identify barriers to your full participation in the classroom. Self-advocates do not wait for someone else to speak for them. They identify deficits in the classroom environment and engage productively with the other members of the classroom to remedy those deficits. Opportunities for self-advocacy might include identifying a need to have class notes made available online, negotiating an extension on a due date, or letting me know I need to speak more slowly and distinctly in lecture (and trust me, I can speak quite quickly at times!). It should be noted that not all requests can be met, and that requests for significant changes to the contract laid out in the syllabussuch as exemptions from the attendance policywill require the self-advocate to make a compelling argument of need, show an ongoing willingness to engage meaningfully in the work of the class, and identify the ways in which the accommodation can be managed without harm to either the student or the classroom community. Everyone in our class, including me, must remain civil and courteous at all times. We will often have opportunity to share our opinions and beliefs, and because the contribution of ideas from each student is critical to the learning process, any behavior that makes other students feel uncomfortable in their learning environment will not be tolerated. This includes interrupting others while they are talking, carrying on conversations separate from class discussion, or making comments that could be perceived as offensive in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, nationality, disability, etc. As a general note, phrases such as That is gay or That is retarded or excessive vulgarity will NOT be allowed in the classroom. Your continued enrollment in this course constitutes your acceptance and understanding of the policies outlined in this syllabus and all attached OU or English Department policies and your commitment to adhere to all policies and employ your best efforts to accomplishing course objectives and outcomes.

Materials Youll Need

English 1510, Section 121 MWF 8:35-9:30, Ellis 120 Fall 2012
Loose notebook paper (8 1/2 by 11) (or a notebook) for in-class writing assignments Flash drives/thumb drives/memory sticks for saving and backing up your work. Writing utensil either pen or pencil (preferably something easy to read, e.g., not fluorescent or neon inks) A folder to organize your writing, handouts, or other course materials Index or Note cards Though NOT required, you may find it beneficial to bring your laptop or tablet to class

English 1510 Course Outcomes Conversation

Understand research as an ongoing process of knowledge production through conversation. Students should be able to:

Discover a relevant and timely issue within a particular writing/Discourse community. Discover databases and other research tools for finding sources from that community. Select sources relevant to an inquiry about the selected issue. Analyze how knowledge is constructed by conversation among source texts.

Understand reading as an active process of generating meaning in conversation with a text (including texts in different modes: audio, visual, digital). Students should be able to:

Read rhetorically, analyzing purpose, audience, and genre. Read and analyze complex texts as part of larger ongoing conversations.

Make important connections between multiple texts within that conversation and identify gaps, contradictions, problems, inconsistencies, etc. that indicate possible writing topics.

Understand writing as the production of meaning within social conversations. Students should be able to:

Summarize the main purpose and reasoning of source texts. Synthesize multiple texts as part of an ongoing conversation. Enter a conversation by articulating their own original contribution.

Understand writing as an open, recursive process. Students should be able to:

Flexibly return to invention and re-thinking at various points in the process in order to revise texts. Take selected writing projects through multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text. Work collaboratively with peers to provide and use feedback for revision. Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proofreading.

Literacy
Understand the acquisition of literacy as a shifting cultural value dependent on economic circumstance, socio-material access, and institutional and cultural sponsorship. Students should be able to:
Analyze the acquisition of individual literacies within a social framework of influence, access, and sponsorship. Synthesize multiple accounts of literacy acquisition among peers.

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Understand literacy as constrained and regulated by writing technologies. Students should be able to:
Differentiate among the affordances and constraints of specific technologies and media to address various audiences. Draft, revise, and edit texts collaboratively with others in electronic environments. Utilize various forms of media and technology to produce a text that creates meaning through the use of multiple semiotic channels.

Writing/Discourse Communities
Understand how writing is constrained and enabled by writing communities. Students should be able to:
Analyze writing/Discourse communities to discover the genres and conventions that enable and constrain writing. Analyze how conventions determine what readers expect regarding who is authorized to write, what topics are relevant, what types of evidence are considered valid, how writers should write (genre, decorum, style, level of formality, grammar, punctuation). Analyze genres to discover their relevant features and relate those features to rhetorical practices in specific communities.

Understand how writers make choices to conform or resist conventions. Students should be able to:
Produce original texts that make conscious choices to conform or resist conventions. Situate arguments within ongoing relevant conversations within specific writing/Discourse communities. Consciously and rhetorically use and/or alter genre features to successfully negotiate writing situations.

Identity & Writing

Understand how identity is always implicated in writing. Students should be able to:
Analyze texts in terms of how authors negotiate identity and difference within the constraints of particular communities. Analyze how certain conventions and genre features may mask, but not erase the performance of identity in writing.

Understand how identity emerges through writing. Students should be able to:
Use writing as a means of exploring identity in the context of conversations within various communities. Strategically transgress or conform to conventions and genre features in rhetorically effective ways that allow for ethical performances of identity.

Understand how writing/Discourse communities encourage and promote or discourage and even exclude certain identities. Students should be able to:
Perform authoritative and rhetorically ethical identities in writing appropriate to particular communities. Recognize connections between normative conventions and genre features and privileged identities. Analyze conventions and genre features for possible embedded and systemic bias toward certain identities.

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Reflection & Meta-knowledge

Understand writing as a reflexive process requiring writers to be conscious of their own writing and to apply meta-knowledge about writing to analyze and improve their writing and writing processes. Students should be able to:
Analyze and critique their own writing for effectiveness in particular writing situations. Apply acquired knowledge about writing to improve writing and writing processes. Articulate their own theory of writing supported by substantive scholarship.