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, folklore, 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
below 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:
• Five
three-page papers—drafts and rewrites
(30%)
• One
five-page documented research paper (20%)
• 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.
• 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.
• Collected
in-class writings (10%)
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 With Exercises
(Includes 2009 MLA Updates) 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, etc. 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
week of classes, so get one immediately.