Englwrit 112, Section 26, Fall 2009

College Writing

University of Massachusetts Amherst

INSTRUCTOR: David Fleming

CLASS MEETINGS: TTh 1:00 - 2:15 pm, location TBA

CLASS EMAIL LIST: englwrit-112-026-fal09@courses.umass.edu

OFFICE: 305 Bartlett Hall

OFFICE HOURS: W 1:00 - 3:00, Thu 11-1, & gladly by appt.

PHONE: 545-0610 (o)

EMAIL: dfleming@english.umass.edu

Goals

The goal of the course is to help you develop your abilities to write – not only for your classes at UMass but for your career, your responsibilities as a citizen, and your growth as a person. We will look at writing as an activity inextricably embedded in context, examine some important contexts for writing, and analyze the choices those contexts make available to you. Through a variety of assignments, we will work together to improve your ability to:

• write for a variety of audiences and purposes – for example, to explore a topic for yourself, to communicate information to others (fellow students, teachers, general readers, etc.), and to achieve particular rhetorical effects (persuading, explaining, etc.);

• develop your thinking by questioning your own views and considering the views of others – thus becoming better able to write essays that move through a train of thought rather than just defend a static position;

• draw on various sources of information and ideas – for example, your own experiences and observations, conversations with others, and academic research;

• revise your writing in substantive ways by re-thinking and re-seeing your drafts and by experimenting with different ways of communicating your ideas;

• be a more perceptive reader of your own writing and provide constructive feedback to others about their writing;

• manage effectively your writing processes by reflecting on your texts and making choices about them that are appropriate to your audience, purpose, and occasion; and

• carefully and confidently copy-edit your final drafts at every level (word, sentence, paragraph, and text), according to readers’ expectations for grammar, usage, style, mechanics, and other conventions.

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Texts

You are required to purchase the following texts for this course:

• Fleming, David, & the UMass Amherst Writing Program Editorial Collective, eds. Other Words: A Writer’s Reader. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt, 2009.

• Faigley, Lester. Penguin Handbook, Second Custom Edition for University of Massachusetts Amherst. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009.

• The Student Writing Anthology, 2009-2010. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. (This textbook is included with the Penguin Handbook when the latter is purchased new at the Textbook Annex; it can also be purchased separately.)

• Class Magazine(s). At least once during the semester, everyone’s essays will be published in booklet form for the class to read. (You will not, however, need to buy this magazine.)

• A notebook for generative writing, in-class exercises, paper ideas, etc.

Assignments

The assignments in this course are designed according to the following assumptions: that writing is an activity, not a subject matter; that people learn to write by writing and by receiving feedback on that writing; that writers need to be aware of their own writing processes; and that students’ own writing should be the focus of instruction.

Essay Assignments:  You will write five essays in this class, each one around 750-1,500 words long. Most will go through an extensive drafting process, and each will introduce new challenges to you. In all of them, we will focus on readers’ expectations, and we’ll experiment with multiple ways of communicating with those readers. The first essay, the focus of Unit I: Inquiring into Self, will ask you to write about a familiar topic for a close, personal audience. The second essay, the focus of Unit II: Interacting with Texts, will be based on a more scholarly purpose and audience: a critical response to one or more published texts. The third essay, the focus of Unit III: Adding to a Conversation, will build on the second paper, asking you now to locate multiple sources of information and ideas on your own and communicate what you learn with a more public audience. The fourth essay, the focus of Unit IV: TBA (To Be Announced), will differ from section to section: you’ll receive more information about it as the semester progresses. The fifth essay, the focus of Unit V: Final Reflection, will function as a kind of final exam for the course.

Process Writing:  College Writing is based on the belief that writing is a process. In order to grow and develop as a writer, you need to write, write, write – and then write some more. Thus, each major essay in this course will go through at least five steps: 1) generative writing, 2) an initial draft on which you receive feedback from me and your peers, 3) a substantially revised version based on that feedback, 4) a carefully copy-edited “final” draft, and 5) reflective writing about your writing processes and products. The first four steps – generating, drafting, revising, and copy-editing – are designed to highlight how writers focus on different aspects of their texts at different points in the process. They also provide an opportunity for you to receive the feedback that is so important to writers at every point in the process. Some assignments will draw the process out even more with multiple cycles through the drafting stage or ask you to spend more time on the generating stage, while others will compress one or more of the stages a bit. In at least one unit, we’ll also experiment with publishing your writing for a wider audience than the class.

Reflective Writing:  In addition to generating, drafting, revising, and copy-editing, the course will also focus on helping you reflect on and understand the choices available to you during those steps. Becoming aware of the multiple options you have for developing, organizing, and addressing your audience is one of the best ways to improve your writing and begin thinking like a writer. Throughout the writing process, then, you will write several short reflective pieces about the choices you have made and why you’ve made them. The course will end with a much more extensive “Final Reflection” essay that will ask you to assess and reflect on all the writing you’ve done throughout the course. back to top

Writer's Notebook:  Much of what writers produce is never seen by readers – and not just because each successive draft supplants the one that came before. Most writers also keep a log or notebook where they work out their ideas in private: sometimes this is done on a computer; often it’s a handwritten activity. In this course, the phrase “Writer’s Notebook” refers to the various “spaces” we’ll be using for exploratory writing. Much of that writing will be prompted by the generative activities done in connection with the main units of the course; but at other times it will be the result of your own private inquiry and exploration (as in a journal). The expectation is that you will write regularly in this “Notebook” throughout the semester – about 6 pages a week or 80 pages total.

Peer Response:  Your instructor should not be the only reader for your writing; you need to practice writing for a variety of readers, and you need as many readers as you can get, especially readers who are not also evaluating you. For that reason, we’ll be doing a lot of peer response in this class, and that means you need to cultivate good intellectual relations with your classmates. Working in pairs and groups can be difficult, and it’s sometimes tempting to dismiss others’ readings of your work as less helpful than your teacher’s. But your writing is meant to be read by others and only improves when you have many different readers. That’s why it’s so important to learn to trust others’ readings of your work and to provide the kinds of readings for them that you want for yourself.

Portfolios:  Don’t throw anything away!  As you move through the semester, you will be creating a portfolio of all your written work.  The portfolio will include the major essays, all the drafts and preliminary work that accompany those essays, and the written feedback from your readers.  This portfolio is not a separate assignment but will serve as the basis for your Final Reflection.

Best Text Contest and Student Writing Anthology:  Your writing for this course can reach a wider audience than just the people in this class. For example, there are opportunities for your work to be recognized in the Writing Program’s annual Best Text Contest, exhibited at our annual Celebration of Writing (held this year on May 5, 2010), and published in our annual Student Writing Anthology. Information about the Contest, Celebration, and Anthology can be found at http://www.umass.edu/writingprogram/.

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Class Policies & Grades

Please read the following policies carefully and let me know if you have questions about any of them.

Attendance:  Regular attendance in Englwrit 112 is required. The course is designed to provide frequent opportunities for college-level reading, writing, speaking, and listening – activities that are complex and difficult and require time and feedback to do well. Regular attendance means that you are writing regularly, and it means that your instructor and classmates can give that writing the attention it deserves. Attendance is also required so that an intellectual community can form in the class: reading and writing are, after all, social acts. For these reasons, you need to be in class, on time, prepared, for every meeting.

If you need to be absent for a required athletic event, field trip, military obligation, or court appearance; if there is a death or serious illness in your family; if you experience an accident or serious illness of your own; if you are absent because of religious observance; or if there is some other legitimate extenuating circumstance preventing you from attending, you will be excused from class. But note that in most cases you are responsible for prior notification and/or subsequent documentation and for making up all missed work. I will offer reasonable assistance with the latter. For the University’s policies on class absences, go to http://www.umass.edu/registrar/gen_info/class_absence.htm. Be aware that too many absences for whatever reason may make it impossible for you to meet course requirements.

For “unexcused” absences, in which you miss class because of a cold or headache, a pressing deadline in another course, a missed flight or bus back to campus, or some other ordinary reason, the Writing Program allows three such absences without penalty for MWF classes and two absences without penalty for TTh and MW classes. If you miss more than that, your final grade may be lowered: for MWF classes, up to one-third of a letter grade each for the fourth through sixth unexcused absences and up to one-half a letter grade for each absence after that; for TTh and MW classes, up to one-half a letter grade each for the third and fourth unexcused absences and up to three-quarters of a letter grade for each absence after that. Note that missing a scheduled conference may also count as an absence. Turning in papers late and coming to class excessively or frequently late may result in grade penalties as well. Finally, students who miss more than eleven classes on a MWF schedule or seven classes on a TTh or MW schedule, without good reason, cannot in most cases pass this course.

Final grade.  Your final grade for the semester will be based on the following breakdown:

 Final grades will be based on the following numerical equivalents and general definitions:

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Responsibilities to Our Writing Community

Creating a community that enables us to grow and develop as writers depends on each of us fulfilling our individual responsibilities, offering mutual respect to one another, and being receptive readers of one another’s writing. As with any University class, students are expected to adhere to the guidelines for classroom behavior as stated in the “Guidelines for Classroom Civility and Respect” in the Code of Student Conduct.

Participation:  Active, regular participation is a basic expectation of this course. One of the best ways to learn to write, after all, is to talk about the choices available to you as a writer and to share ideas about writing with your classmates. As a result, I expect everyone to participate in class often and to provide respectful responses to others’ contributions.

Conferences and Office Hours:  At least twice during the semester, we will schedule mandatory individual conferences. This is a time for us to discuss more fully both your writing and your progress in the course. I also encourage you to come in during my office hours. A third conference will be scheduled during final examination week and will serve as your final exam for the course. This mandatory conference is a chance for us to go over your portfolio and discuss the progress you have made during the entire semester. Be sure to account for this conference when making your end-of-semester plans.

Plagiarism:  It is fine to use ideas, words, and short passages from the writings of others in your own writing as long as you acknowledge the source. Failure to acknowledge the contribution of others is considered plagiarism, a serious academic offense. You will find a copy of the Writing Program’s statement about plagiarism in the opening pages of The Penguin Handbook, which also contains other information and advice concerning plagiarism. We will go over this issue more extensively in class, but you should know in advance that suspect papers (e.g., those without drafts or works cited pages, or papers which make large departures in style) can be submitted to the electronic plagiarism detection service Turnitin.com as part of the grading process.  For the University’s Academic Honesty Policy, go to http://www.umass.edu/dean_students/codeofconduct/acadhonesty/.

The Writing Center: Located in the Learning Commons of the W. E. B. Du Bois Library, the Writing Center is a free tutoring service for all writers in the university community.  Tutors work with writers to brainstorm, structure a piece of writing, learn strategies for copyediting, and more.  All student writers – whether you love writing, struggle with writing, are mystified by writing, or all of the above – are welcome.  And remember that you can keep using the Writing Center even after you’ve taken College Writing.  To make an appointment, go to http://www.umass.edu/writingcenter/index.html; or you can simply walk in and see if a tutor is available (hours posted at website above).

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