Writing 049 Blogspace

Introduction to Composition

Three laws
The more you know, the more you CAN know.
Half the secret of success is simply showing up.
Luck favors the prepared mind.

Welcome!

The goal of this course is to assist you in developing and improving your writing skills in a college setting. You will write about your experiences and things you read. Our approach will be practical, focusing on types of writing you might find in everyday life as well as in college.

Indeed, we can learn much about writing by “going after it with a club” in Jack London’s words. While the English language involves quite a variety of rules, your task in this class will not be boring memorization of these rules, but rather actual writing practice that will help you to discover and replicate the common patterns of the English language. The rules should become clear in the process. This course focuses on the paragraph and shorter essays. As a result, you will begin to learn sentence-related terminology that will come in handy for other writing courses. In addition, you will be able to model the effective writing of others, increase your vocabulary, and develop the ability to read for information and understanding.

Everyone will compose a range of writings from informal writing and reflections to more formal writings that are based on the readings. You will be expected to revise major writing assignments so that you will never turn in a final draft that has only been written once. In our class, then, writing will be a process of discovery and a powerful tool to help you clarify your thinking.

Contact Information
Dr. Roger Sauer
e-mail: rsauer@cp.chemeketa.edu

A special BLOG for this course has been set up at http://www.wr049blog.blogspot.com/. Our use of this resource will be discussed during the first week of class.

Required Texts:
Bailey and Denstadt- DESTINATIONS McGraw-Hill

By the second class please have with you the following items:
A 3-ring binder with clean sheets of lined paper for journaling during the term. This binder will also be used for you to keep all of your assignments, in other words, a Portfolio. When we meet in conference, you will need to bring this binder with you.
A flash drive for you to carry your documents electronically and to transfer documents from computer to computer. These can be purchased for $10 to $20 depending on device memory size. You need no more than a 256MB drive for this class.
Pick up a dictionary and a thesaurus for your use in the class.

How I Can Help You
It is my role to help you become a better writer so you can succeed and excel in you college studies. All activities in the class are designed to help you achieve this goal. The only way to improve your writing is to write and write often for different purposes and for different audiences. My task will be to correct, to encourage, to suggest alternatives, and to model writing in a way that HELPS YOU meet the objectives of this class. These goals are described below.
I encourage you to visit with me outside of class to discuss your work.

My Expectations for You
Attendance and Participation: Woody Allen once said, “Half the secret of success is simply showing up.” In other words, you need to be in class. We can improve our writing by sharing our work and discussing it with a community of learners. We have a limited number of classes in ten weeks so each one will be valuable. If you feel you cannot attend every session, consider an online class. More than three absences may be a cause for you to fail the course or receive a lower grade.
Be prepared each day with readings completed and ready to discuss a reading or your own completed piece of writing. Your participation is vital for the class and your fellow students. Together we can to develop the skills and writing level outlines in WR 049’s learner outcomes.

Assignments: All written assignments should be turned in or prepared on the due date specified in this syllabus. Some will be collected at the start of class while others will form the basis of that day’s work group or individual activity. Be prepared and on time. Late assignments are not accepted. If there are extenuating circumstances that may cause your work to be late, you need to contact me. Similarly, if you are unprepared to discuss reading, your final evaluation may suffer.

Conferences: You are required to meet with me once during the term to go over your work or to focus on a specific issue. As a professional who publishes occasionally, I find it not only helpful but necessary to get someone else’s feedback on my work.

Writing Assignments:
Journal: You will do various informal writing in and outside of class. The journal will be a major part of this more casual, informal writing. I will give you instructions concerning the journal and a prompt for each journal assignment. You will be writing in your journal almost weekly, but I will collect it only once and not before the fifth week of the term. Often, you will need your journal ready for in-class work. Please remember to bring the journal to every class, and be prepared to hand it in when specified.
Formal Assignments: In addition to your journal entries, you will be writing various paragraph and essay assignments. We will work on each one together as we respond to one another and revise. All of the assignments are designed to help you better understand and use the skills you will be developing in these classes.

Assignment #1: The Value of School

Assignment #2: My Favorite Something/Description
Assignment #3: Solving a Problem/Process
Assignment #4: An Important Event/Narration
Assignment #5 Illustration and Example
Assignment #6 Comparison and Contrast
Assignment#7: Opinion and Argument
Each of these assignments will go through multiple stages of drafting.

Format: Please hand in all essays double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and stapled in the top left-hand corner. Each essay should have a title. In the upper left-hand corner, please put your name, Writing 049, and the date. Finally, when you turn in the polished version of each essay, please hand in all drafts and revisions along with it. Attach the tracking sheet to each copy.


Final Exam: There will be one final exam during the last week. The quizzes will cover what we have gone over in class, and the final exam will be created from the quizzes.

Online Tutorial: Every week you will work on an online writing tutorial Allwrite 2.0. This resource is available to you off campus on your own computer, computers in the computer lab, or in the tutoring and Writing Center at the main campus. The tutorial will allow you to work on skill development individually whether the skill be sentence structure or essay development. Its website URL is http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/allwrite2/content/toc.html. There is an online guide to the program with detailed instructions on navigation on the site. You may consider printing this and putting it in your portfolio.

Final Portfolio/Binder: Toward the end of the term, you will submit to me your binder/portfolio for my review. Your effort in collecting and organizing all the work of this class will contribute to the Attendance and Participation part of your grade.

All reading and writing assignments are listed on their due dates. Bring your
WR 049 binder including journal entries and other assignments every day.

Again, thanks for being a part of our collective writing experience.




PLEASE NOTE: Many assignments change hands during the term. Papers can get lost (fewer are eaten by family pets.) It is not only wise, but necessary, for you to keep archived copies of your major assignments. Keep drafts as separate documents (e.g. "Assignment 1.draft", "Assignment 1.final"). Keep documents in multiple formats (floppy, zip drive, hard copy).


HOW YOU WILL BE EVALUATED
IN OUR COURSE


Attendance and Participation 10%
Journal and Class Activities 10%
Assignment #1: The Value of School 10%
Assignment #2: My Favorite Something/Description 10%
Assignment #3: Solving a Problem/Process 10%
Assignment #4: An Important Event/Narration 10%
Assignment #5 Illustration and Example 10%
Assignment #6 Comparison and Contrast 10%
Assignment#7: Opinion and Argument 10%
Final Exam 10%

Please note that the writing assignments including journals make up 80% of your grade. Participation and the Final Exam make up another 20% of your grade.

Incompletes: An incomplete grade may be given IF the student has attended 80% of the class, has finished the majority of the assignments, and has made an agreement with the instructor. You must make arrangements for making up missing assignments and tests by a specific due date.


Academic Honesty in our Class
Chemeketa Community College English Program Policy

Academic honest is an indispensable value as students acquire knowledge and develop skills in college. Students at Chemeketa Community College are expected to practice academic honest by not cheating, plagiarizing, or misrepresenting their coursework in any way. Students are ultimately responsible for understanding and avoiding academic dishonesty whether such incidences are intentional or unintentional. Violations may result in failure of an assignment or failure of the course.

Plagiarism, collusion, and other forms of misrepresentation hurt the student and run counter to the goals of education. The English faculty at Chemeketa is committed to educating students regarding academic honesty. If at any time you are not sure about the legitimacy of your writing in this course, ask your instructor for clarification.

Chemeketa Statement of Special Needs: If you feel you may need an accommodation for any type of disability, please call or stop by to see me at the beginning of the term. Contact the office of Services for Students with Disabilities (399-5192) in Bldg. 2.

Second Language Issues: Students for whom English is not their first language can get assistance from a variety of Chemeketa programs, especially the English as a Second Language Office on the Main Campus of the college. Regrettably there are no ESL services during the term on this campus. See the accompanying Assistance for College Writers handout for contact information.


Chemeketa Diversity Statement: We are a college community enriched by the diversity of our students and staff. Each individual and group has the potential to contribute to our learning environment. Each has dignity. To diminish the dignity of one is to diminish the dignity of us all.


Learner Outcomes for Writing 49

Writing Situations
1. Write coherent pieces of writing with a beginning, middle, and end (comprising 2,000 words per term of revised, edited drafts). Throughout the term, student work should comprise 3,000 words, including revised and edited drafts, reading responses, submitted invention strategies, informal journaling, etc.
2. Use variations of the writing process (invention strategies, drafting, revising, proofreading and editing) to produce paragraphs and essays that meet the college community’s expectations for entry into Writing 90.
3. Recognize and state a controlling idea, both in paragraphs and essays
4. Develop body paragraphs with detailed, specific examples and explanations
5. Interpret and integrate feedback in revision.

Organization and Coherence
6. Understand and employ simple organizational patterns at all stages of the drafting and revising processes
7. Acknowledge an audience in own writings and address this audience appropriately

Writing Skills and Conventions
8. Estimate and allocate the time needed to utilize invention strategies, read and write reading responses, draft, revise, proofread and edit
9. Recognize and work at revising errors in subject-verb agreement, singular-plural agreement, verb tenses, syntax, pronouns, articles, prepositions and idioms, commas, missing words and word choice
10. Recognize and correct repeated errors in apostrophe usage, commonly confused words, sentence boundaries (eliminate most fragments, fused sentences, comma splices)
11. Use a dictionary and spell-check effectively

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
12. Apply prior knowledge to new situations, audiences, lexicons, and skills
13. Analyze the organizational and rhetorical choices made by published and student writers regarding non-fiction pieces
14. Show a developing ability to complicate and question assumptions or beliefs
15. Challenge, broaden, deepen and/or radically alter initial interpretations of pieces of writing based on re-reading and discussion
16. Analyze and give useful, clear feedback/recommendations about the effectiveness of a peer’s work during peer-review and peer-editing
17. Analyze one’s own work and revise based on self-assessment
18. Demonstrate basic written, critical reading (marking, note-taking, paraphrasing, outlining, re-reading), summary, and paraphrasing skills
19. See connections between one’s own ideas and experiences and an author’s, character’s and/or narrator’s ideas and experiences