English 101: Composition

Fall 2012
Contact Information Instructor: Sara A. Leavens E-mail: [email protected] Office: 2011 Wescoe Hall Office Hours: M, W: 1:30-2:30; Th: 2:30-3:30 and by appointment

MWF 11:00-11:50 am 4021 Wescoe Hall

Course Description
Welcome! English 101, Composition, is designed to increase your range of writing abilities and to give you more conscious knowledge and control of the writing choices you can make. Although you already know how to write, we will work to understand writing better so that you can make more knowledgeable choices when you write. You will also practice a method for learning how to write in new situations. Based on national standards, the writing program at KU has established a set of objectives for students in English 101 (elaborated in the Composition and Literature pamphlet). By the end of English 101, you should be able to: Develop your own rhetorical flexibility within and beyond academic writing tasks Analyze how language and rhetorical choices vary across texts and different institutional, historical, or public contexts Revise to improve your own writing

The approach we are taking in this class focuses on the kinds of writing, called genres, that people do in different settings for different purposes. Genres include everyday kinds of writing like tweets, horoscopes, and job application forms as well as academic genres and the literary genres people usually think of when they think of genres. You will develop your rhetorical flexibility through writing consciously in a variety of genres, including but not limited to academic genres. You will learn how to analyze any kind of writing that you want (or are required) to read or write, to see the patterns of those genres, and to understand how their institutional, historical, and public contexts influence the ways they work and the ways individual writers make choices. Then you can write these genres with greater understanding and effectiveness, including revising your drafts with more conscious awareness and deliberate choice. Becoming more consciously aware of genres can also help you make deliberate choices about how much to follow the expectations of a genre and how you might change a genre to serve your own purposes or those of other groups.

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Required Materials

You will need to have all of these materials by the second day of class: Devitt, Amy, Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi. Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with Genres. New York: Longman 2003. Faigley, Lester. The Brief Penguin Handbook. 4th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. Department of English. Composition & Literature. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2012. One college-ruled notebook

Written Work
Because this is a course in Composition, you should expect to be writing constantly. In addition to the three formal papers and final project listed on the schedule of assignments, you will be writing in-class brief writings, a journal, group writings, and homework assignments. Writing Projects You will write four formal projects in this course in addition to daily informal writing. Each project will build on skills and understandings you have gained in previous assignments.
W riting Project #1: Literacy Autobiography Essay Locate your own writing practices within multiple contextual/institutional/personal/cultural influences and try writing a literary essay W riting Project #2: Academic Genre Analysis Paper Locate texts and genres within varied contextual/cultural influences and practice writing an academic analysis paper W riting Project #3: Joining a Conversation Locate an issue within a context/culture and practice choosing and using a genre in response W riting Project #4: Revision of #1 or #2, with supporting materials Demonstrate how your writing and understanding of your writing have developed and try strategies for revising your style

Details on all these projects will be provided as the semester progresses. Other Writings and Class Activities As we work toward each of the major projects, I will ask you to read, write, and talk your way through a series of daily assignments designed to help you succeed in the major projects and achieve other course goals. During class time, you might be experimenting with a new writing task in your

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journal, commenting on or applying some topic from the day's assigned reading, responding to other students' writing, conferring with me, or working in teams to achieve smaller goals. Out-ofclass work will range widely as well, from making lists in preparation for a project to writing summaries of readings, from completing a paper draft to reviewing someone elses draft posted on Blackboard. These writings and activities will be graded with credit for having completed them successfully (checkmarks), rather than with letter grades. Your grade on Other Writings and Class Activities will reflect the percentage of these assignments successfully completed. See the percentage scale below to translate the percentage you completed successfully (for example, 85% of activities successfully completed) into a letter grade (85% = B on Other Writings and Class Activities portion of final grade). Grading Your final grade for the course will be based on the following weightings for your graded work. Project #1 20% Project #2 20% Project #3 20% Project #4 20% Journal, Other Writings and Class Activities 20% I will grade using a +/- letter grading system, both on individual projects and your final grade. To calculate your final grade, your letter grades will translate into numbers according to this scale: A+ = 98.5 A = 95 A- = 91.5 B+ = 88.5 B = 85 B- = 81.5 C += 78.5 C = 75 C- = 71.5 D+ = 68.5 D = 65 D- = 61.5 F = 58.5 and below

Policies and Expectations

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Late Work Unless we have made an arrangement in advance, I will not accept late assignments for this course. According to Department of English policy, you must turn in all four major projects to pass the course, even if a project is late and will earn you an F. Check your schedule for potential conflicts well ahead of due dates, and speak with me ahead of time if you will have trouble meeting a deadline. Classroom Culture This class is designed to foster a culture of community and mutual respect. We will be working together as a community with a common goal, passing this class. As your teacher, I plan on respecting you and doing everything possible to give you my full-attention in class and I expect you to do the same for me as well as your peers. Cell Phones and Other Electronic Communication Devices All cell phones, laptops, iPods, iPads, tablets, and other electronic communication devices should be put away and set to silent before class begins at 11:00 am. Please notify me before class of an emergency that might require your phone to be set on anything but silent, and leave the room to answer that emergent phone call or text message. There will never be an emergency that requires you to text in our classroom. Disabilities The Academic Achievement & Access Center (AAAC) coordinates accommodations and services for all KU students who are eligible. If you have a disability for which you wish to request accommodations and have not contacted the AAAC, please do so as soon as possible. Their office is located in 22 Strong Hall; their phone number is 785-864-4064 (V/TTY). Information about their services can be found at http://disability.ku.edu. Please contact me privately in regard to your needs in this course. Academic Honesty Intellectual property and integrity are important values for the university community, so cheating in any form, including plagiarism, will not be tolerated. Any time a writer uses someone else's idea, words, or work without explicitly citing the source, the writer has been academically dishonest. Some specific examples of actions that constitute plagiarism include pasting together uncredited information or ideas from the Internet or published sources, submitting an entire paper written by someone else, submitting a paper written for another class (and thus not original work), and copying another students work (even with the students permission). In order to avoid unintentional plagiarism and to represent your work honestly, you will need to be meticulous about giving credit to any and all sources, whether directly quoted (even a few words) or paraphrased. Please study the University's description of and rules concerning academic dishonesty in the Student Handbook as well as the English Department's description in Composition & Literature. All incidents of plagiarism will be

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penalized, reported, and kept on file in the English Department, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the University Provosts Office. Policy on Student Academic Creations Since one of the aims of this course is to teach students to write for specific audiences, ungraded student-authored work will be shared with other class members during the semester in which you are enrolled in the class. Please do not submit materials on sensitive subjects that you would not want your classmates to see or read, unless you inform the instructor in advance that you do not want your work shared with others. Other Policies Be sure to read Composition & Literature thoroughly for all other Departmental policies. Writing Center For extra help with your writing, I strongly encourage you to contact the KU Writing Center. At the Writing Center you can talk about your writing with trained tutors or consult reference materials in a comfortable working environment. You may ask for feedback on your papers, advice and tips on writing (for all your courses), or for guidance on special writing tasks. Please check the website at <http://www.writing.ku.edu/students/> for current locations and hours. The Writing Center welcomes both drop-ins and appointments, and there is no charge for their services. For more information, please call (785) 864-2399 or send an e-mail to [email protected].

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