This course aims to be a comprehensive college-level composition course, offering students
• a varied and provocative reading and writing agenda;
• a thorough introduction to grammatical, rhetorical, and stylistic basics of writing in a university community;
• a solid introduction to research using reliable sources from university libraries and the Internet;
• an opportunity to work regularly in groups with fellow students and in conference with the instructor;
• and a forum to share reactions and explore issues in an open and supportive atmosphere.
This is not a “theme” course. Rather than exploring in depth one subject throughout the semester (gender construction, race relations, or sustainability, for instance), this course will offer an eclectic and hopefully engaging mix of readings on politics, race, society, commerce, language, sports, sexuality, drugs, music, and so on. We will also mix and match genres, analyzing speeches, memoirs, short stories, encomia and invective, business memos, and essays galore: expository, analytical, argumentative, some written by professors, some written by students. Perhaps the only constant will be the high quality of the writing. Each piece we read will offer unique lessons in style and clarity, subtlety and depth, construction, correctness, and persuasiveness.
In addition to our regular in-class work of writing in various modes (freewriting, directed writing, collaborative writing, brainstorming, summarizing readings and individual class sessions, etc.), students will submit twenty pages of polished prose (five three-page papers in various rhetorical modes and one five-page research paper); they will workshop each others’ essays, give several group presentations, and take ten quizzes.
Regarding the three-page papers: I’m asking for five concise three-page essays (right to the bottom of page three, but not spilling onto page four). These are due at the beginning of the five classes specified in the tentative schedule. There will be separate prompts for each essay, but all of your essays should incorporate the analyses of the readings that we will have done in class. I strongly suggest, therefore, that you take careful notes on our discussions. We will workshop these essays in order to refine our skills of attentive reading and listening, of giving and receiving feedback. You will turn in to me the improved draft in the next class session.
COURSE WORK
Final grades will be determined by the following criteria:
1. Five three-page papers—drafts and rewrites (30%)
2. One five-page documented research paper (20%)
3. In-class participation: discussion groups, draft response/peer review groups (15%). Students who are absent for their group’s work will lose 3% for each absence.
4. Ten quizzes (25%). Quizzes are given at the beginning of the class; quizzes missed due to tardiness or unexcused absences cannot be made up. A grade of zero is given for missed quizzes.
5. Collected in-class writings (10%)
REQUIREMENTS
• Attendance is required and recorded. Two absences will be automatically excused. Unexcused absences thereafter will lower your final grade by 5 percent per absence. Non-emergency medical appointments are not considered excused absences. In any case, regardless of your numerical average on other course work, if you miss six or more classes, except in cases of medical emergencies attested by a full explanation from a doctor, you will fail the course.
• If you do have medically excused absences and wish to make them up, you must write and turn in a well-written and well-conceived 300-word summary/critique of the readings discussed in each missed class; take a 10-question quiz based that day’s material from our handbook, scoring at least 80 on the quiz; and, finally, discuss with me for 15 minutes for each class period missed your interpretations and observations of the class material.
• You are expected to read the texts closely and to contribute to in-class discussion.
• Since we often refer to our course handbook, please bring that to each class. Failure to do so will negatively affect your grade.
• It is the student’s responsibility to know how to access our Laulima Web site and to check it regularly.
REQUIRED TEXTS
Class readings are available on-line and free at our UH Laulima page under Resources > Class Readings. You are not obliged to print these texts, but if our classroom does not have computer terminals for each student, please bring an electronic device that allows you to access the text.
The Brief Penguin Handbook Fifth Edition is an absolutely required text (available at the campus bookstore and online). This more than 600-page handbook offers chapters on grammar, mechanics, punctuation, style, and writing effective phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs. Some chapters explore the basics of rhetoric, structuring essays, writing drafts, rewriting, and editing; other chapters treat the art of research: finding and evaluating sources, using sources responsibly, integrating them correctly into your prose, and so on. There are also chapters on writing about literature, on writing about business. And, finally, the handbook gives examples of submitted papers in various professional styles of documentation: the MLA, the APA, and the CMS. (We will cover as much of this material as we can in our short semester, but I will regularly encourage you to keep this text throughout your college career so that you may refer to it whenever you have questions about punctuation, usage, grammar, organization, and so on.) We will begin using the handbook the second class, so get one immediately.