Spring 2014 | ENG 101 "Intersecting Foodways: You Are What You Eat"
Pope had likewise genius; a mind active, ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still wishing to go higher; always imagining something greater than it knows, always endeavoring more than it can do. ~ Samuel Johnson
Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little. ~ Tom Stoppard
Course Description
English 101 is an intensive writing and communication course designed specifically to prepare students for whom English is an additional language for the unique communicative challenges they may face both at Emory and in their careers once they leave Emory. Over the course of the semester, we will focus on recognizing, evaluating, and deploying rhetorical principles and techniques as well as on demonstrating mastery of critical analysis, of conducting primary and secondary research, exposition, and argumentation on selected themes and issues by completing practical exercises both in class and outside of it. Specific topics, readings, and assignments will vary between sections; however, the amount of work and the outcomes and skills you attain will be consistent across sections.
The central goal of English 101 is to help you become stronger, more dynamic researchers and communicators across multiple modes. Consequently, you can expect to conduct original research while completing assignments both individually and in groups. These assignments and activities will hone your skills in writing, speaking, listening, and observing. Over the course of the semester, you will familiarize yourself with and participate in the ongoing conversations surrounding the central topic of your section, and you should expect to complete projects that engage in and contribute to ongoing professional and academic discourse.
In this particular section of English 101-03P, You Are What You Eat, while refining our abilities to communicate multimodally, we will focus our attention on “foodways” – “’the customs, beliefs, or practices surrounding the production, presentation, and consumption of food,’ or, more simply, as ‘the intersection of food and culture’” (Latshaw “The Soul of the South” 100). How does food and our relationship to it impact our lives? Our interpretation of culture? Or family ties? There are places in the world where you define family by the people you eat with, and blood relation has nothing to do with it. What does that mean? How do you see that at work in your lives at home? Here at Emory? His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that “food is life. We come from food and we are consumed in the end. We could be consumed by fire, by earth, by anything. But we come from food. Through food, you can see all culture. If you are always sharing family-style food, it means that the culture is about bonding together in so many ways.” The study of foodways focuses our attention on these issues and questions and explores their impact on our lives and culture. Together, we will be doing this exploration as we learn to be more effective communicators.
Domain of One’s Own
This course is part of the Domain of One’s Own pilot project. As part of the Domain of One’s Own project you will author and administrate a personal website, close read multimodal texts for form and theme, and compose with a variety of digital tools. Please explore this page for further information on the Domain of One’s Own pilot project at Emory.
· No prior experience with web design or digital authoring is required for successful completion of course work.
· Student work will be published to the web and available to reading publics beyond the class and university.
· Once you have completed the course, the site you built is yours to continue to develop into a personal cyberinfastructure that may include, but is not limited to, course projects, a professional portfolio, resume/CV documents, social media feeds, and blogs.
Required Texts + Required Access
Textbooks AVAILABLE AT THE BOOKSTORE:
Arola, Kristin L., Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.
Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers. Rules for Writers. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.
Textbooks YOU MUST ORDER YOURSELVES
Dunlop, Fuchsia. Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet and Sour Memoir of Eating in China. NYC: Norton, 2008.
Suggested Apps + Websites:
The following apps and websites are NOT REQUIRED, though after exploring them, you may find them useful.
Online Writing Lab at Purdue (OWL @ Purdue)
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Writing Center Handouts
Using English for Academic Purposes
Corpus of Contemporary American English
Kindle app
Audible.com app
iMovie app
WordPress app
BlackBoard app
SimpleMind+ (mind mapping) app
Idea Sketch app
Outliner app
Evernote app
Dragon Dictation app
Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus app
Cambridge Dictionary app
Merriam Webster Dictionary for English Language Learners app
Grammar Girl app
Oxford A to Z of Grammar and Punctuation app
Idioms app
English Prepositions app
My MLA app
Access:
We will use Blackboard to communicate with one another regularly via the discussion boards and group emails. You will also use it to submit assignments to me, and I will use it to keep, calculate, and disperse grades.
You also need access to your Emory email account. And beyond access, you MUST READ AND RESPOND TO EMAIL! J Communication tools constantly shift, but for the moment email is still the best way for us to communicate with one another when we aren’t in class or talking to one another in person (even though it isn’t the primary way that we communicate more informally with one another electronically). When you email me, please use a descriptive subject and in the initial email of an email chain, please introduce yourselves. I will do my best to respond to you within 24 hours.
Goals
In this section of English 101, you will develop
· Writing skills: Throughout the semester, you will complete writing assignments in stages that build upon and refine one another.
· Reading skills: You will work on developing reading strategies that will enable you to grasp complex ideas and arguments as well as engage those arguments and ideas critically.
· Oral skills: You will actively participate in class discussions and oral presentations by expressing and defending opinions and giving presentations.
· Aural skills: You will also participate in class by actively listening to, understanding, and interacting with one another during class discussion and presentations.
· Formal English grammar: You will focus on grammar regularly throughout the course by keeping a log of the grammatical errors that you make in each formal written assignment. You will include this log with each assignment and then turned in at the end of the semester. You will also complete ten different “language spots” that focus your attention on specific grammatical conventions.
· Vocabulary: Finally, you will build your vocabulary and improve your ability to deduce the meaning of new words from a given context by focusing on the language used by others and then by using the most dynamic, compelling, and clear words to express your meaning in writing and verbally.
In addition to the above goals, you can expect to demonstrate proficiency in six key areas of knowledge: rhetoric; research; critical reading, thinking, and writing; the process of composition; the conventions of communication; and composition and communication in digital environments. Your mastery of these goals will be based on the understanding you gain in these essential components of understanding language and communication.
Rhetoric
Philosophers and students of language and communication have provided us with different definitions of “rhetoric.” Plato defined it as “the art of winning the soul by discourse,” while Aristotle defined it as “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” Cicero and Quintilian both aligned rhetoric with speaking, while Andrea Lunsford recently synthesized twentieth-century rhetoricians’ definitions in her own deceptively simple one: “[r]hetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication.” Over the course of the semester, we will compose numerous work products – some written, some spoken, some visual, some electronic, and some nonverbal – that require and test our understanding and use of rhetoric. By the end of the semester, you will have acquired the habits of mind that enable you to be clear, effective, convincing communicators regardless of the situation and audience you face.
Research
Emory University tremendously values original student research. Consequently, we will work together both inside and outside our classes to foster and develop a culture of undergraduate primary and secondary research and original thought. To help accomplish this goal, you will conduct research and practice creative intellectual engagement with primary and secondary sources in nearly every class. With worlds of information immediately available to us online – literally at our fingertips – as well as a world-class research library just yards away, we will work to foster intellectual curiosity not only by approaching topics and issues in our courses from a place of inquisitive questioning but also by exploring questions that we have through immediate, sustained, deep, and broad research in the library, in the classroom, and outside of it.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
“The ability to think critically […] involves three things: (1) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires [the] ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life.”
These claims about critical thinking essentially ask us to be mindful and curiously engaged with the people, images, and arguments we encounter, whether inside or outside of the classroom. Our dedication to intellectual curiosity, engagement, and research in both our class discussion and our assignment sequence will help us model critical thinking, reading, and writing for and with one another so that this type of intellectual engagement becomes second nature to us all.
Writing is/as a Process
Writing is not fast. It is not instantly gratifying. It rewards careful thought at every step of its development. With time and attention, we can all devise compelling arguments that engage us and convince our audience. As successful communicators, however, we do not simply spend this time waiting for an idea to emerge; rather, we use this time to actively participate in the writing process.
In this course, we will strive to craft writing that matters, both inside and outside of the classroom. The most direct route to creating writing that matters is to find a topic that matters to you personally, to identify other scholars to whom your chosen topic matters, and to join the ongoing scholarly conversation on your topic by creating thoroughly considered, well-researched projects. Each of these steps, from invention to research to drafting to revising, makes up the writing process, and we will each become masters of the writing process by practicing all of these steps as we complete the components of our assignment sequence.
Conventions of Communication
When we communicate with a given audience, that audience has certain expectations. Considered most broadly, those expectations are based on the standard conventions for communication in English. While these conventions may shift slightly depending on the rhetorical situation in which we find ourselves – are we speaking to our friends on Facebook? to our parents in an email? to our classmates or professor in class? to our employer? in person? in writing? on a personal or professional website? in a newspaper opinion piece? – central, accepted conventions such as punctuation; spelling; grammar; and sentence, paragraph, and argument organization continue to mark the strongest examples of clear communication. This semester you will hone your skills in these and other conventions of communication through practical application in the assignments you complete as well as in your everyday practice of communication within and outside of class.
Composition and Communication in Digital Environments
In the world outside of our classroom, we do not communicate solely through the written word on the page and certainly not solely via the scholarly essay. Consequently, we will complete a sequence of assignments that acknowledges, incorporates, builds on, and hones the global, collaborative communications skills that we all use every day in the Web 2.0 world that we live and work in. By using the electronic mode and incorporating similar technological innovations into our communications habits inside the classroom as we do outside of the classroom, our work gains immediacy and more readily connects to the broader world in a way that was nearly impossible before. This semester, we will use various communications technologies, possibly including blogs, image manipulation software, personal websites, prezis, creativist projects, etc. as tools to enrich and enliven the communicative products we create.
Outcomes
Over the course of the semester, as you become comfortable evaluating and implementing your own and others’ rhetorical decisions; conducting research; thinking, reading, and writing critically; and communicating and composing in digital and non-digital modes, you will achieve the following outcomes:
· Recognize and evaluate a communicator’s message, purpose, and audience;
· Assess and synthesize the diverse needs of your own audiences, whether within our classroom, within the Emory community, or within the broader scholarly conversation you will engage throughout the semester;
· Identify, differentiate between, and characterize various rhetorical situations;
· Recognize and formulate responses appropriate to these rhetorical situations by creating artifacts that reflect invention, research, drafting, and revision;
· Construct compelling and dynamic artifacts (more here on “artifacts”) that incorporate clear and specific arguments, effective organization and structure, smoothly incorporated and well-researched evidence, strong and impactful transitions, and convincing conclusions;
· Demonstrate your mastery of the conventions of formatting, structure, voice, and tone appropriate to the rhetorical situation you are responding to;
· Analyze the impact of form and genre on the experience of reading and writing;
· Synthesize the implications of genre and form as you construct your own research and arguments; and
· Communicate in several genres and modes across multiple communicative platforms.
Class Participation
You should expect to attend and participate actively in every class. Since the achievement of our course objectives depends on active participation, each student is responsible to strive to create an environment of lively critical questioning and analytical discussion. You can achieve this through frequent verbal and non-verbal communication. I envision our classroom as one in which each of us works together in an open forum in a respectfully questioning manner. To help facilitate this, here are a few ground rules.
· First and foremost, we cannot create the sort of classroom environment we want without your presence in class. You should come to class thoroughly prepared to participate actively. Excessive absence and unpreparedness will result in a penalty in your final grade at the discretion of the instructor.
· If your phone disrupts class in any way, you’ll be warned and then counted absent for that period, so don not let your cellphone interrupt class. Cellphones are extremely disruptive, so be respectful of your fellow students and me and either leave them in your room, put them on silent mode, or just turn them off.
· Active class participation depends on everyone being completely engaged in what is going on in class, so do not spend time in this class on activities that are not related to this course. If you are working on non-101 things, you aren’t focusing on the discussion.
Again, the level of success we achieve together will depend to a great degree on each of you; we can’t function well as a class without participation from everyone. Engage actively in all aspects of class activities, and be respectful of others’ ideas, thoughts, and expression.
While this policy may seem strict, part of 101 is about initiating you into the academic discourse community and your future workplace discourse communities, so I will hold you to similar standards that you will encounter in the future. When you do not show up to class, you show disrespect to your classmates, to me, and to yourself. You are all adults, and adults have responsibilities that do not disappear because they were sick, because they overslept, or because they overindulged the night before. I realize that those things will happen, but class attendance and participation should be your top priority.
Assignments + GRADEs Grades will be calculated based on the following weighted assignments:
Weekly Blog Posts: 10%
Participation (including attendance, participation, vocabulary wiki, Writer/Designer assignments, and the Language Upgrades and Editing + Revision Logs): 10%
Learning Curve Assignments: 5%
Writing Workshops: 5%
Major Written Project V1: 2%
Major Written Project V2: 8%
Multimodal Project Proposal Paper + Annotated Bibliography V1: 2%
Multimodal Project Proposal Paper + Annotated Bibliography V2: 8%
Multimodal Project Pitch Ignite Presentation: 10%
Major Digital Project Script + Story Board V1: 3%
Major Digital Project Script + Story Board V2: 12%
Major Digital Project Presentation: 10%
Final In-Class Writing: 5%
Portfolio Website: 10%
The grading scale for the course is as follows and is subject to change at my discretion:
93 and above A
90-92.99 A-
87-89.99 B+
83-86.99 B
80-82.99 B-
77-79.99 C+
73-76.99 C
70-72.99 C-
67-69.99 D+
60-66.99 D
0-59.99 F
Late formal assignments will automatically lose one letter grade for each day that they are late, but there is no reason for this to occur. J You will have numerous opportunities to work on drafting your assignments leading up to the date that they are due. You will complete peer reviews of your formal assignments with your classmates before each assignment is due, and besides having access to your classmates’ feedback, feel free to contact me with any questions or problems you have along the way.
Resources
Please make good use of the following FREE services:
Tutoring for Multilingual Students
If you are a multilingual student and English is not your first language, you may benefit from working with trained ESL Tutors. These tutors are undergraduates who will support the development of both your English language and writing skills. Like Writing Center tutors, ESL tutors will not proofread your work. Language is best learned through interactive dialogue, so come to an ESL tutoring session ready to collaborate!
ESL tutors will meet with you in designated locations on campus for 1-hour appointments, and they will help you at any stage of the process of developing your written work or presentation. You may bring your work on a laptop or on paper.
In Spring 2014, a new scheduling system called ASST will replace TutorTrac for ESL tutoring appointments. For instructions on how to schedule an appointment, links to ASST, and the policies for using the service, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/tutoring/index.html
If you do not have a scheduled appointment, you may use the Academic ESL Skills Lab, located in Room 422 of Woodruff Library (next to the Language Center). Here, you may have less time with a tutor if other students are waiting, but you can find drop-in support just when you need it. To view the lab hours for the current semester, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/lab.html .
For information about other ESL services available to undergraduates, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/index.html
or contact Jane O’Connor, Director of ESL Services ([email protected] ) or Denise Dolan, Assistant Director of ESL Services ([email protected] ).
Academic Fellows
Every student in ENG 101/ESL has the opportunity to work with an Academic Fellow throughout the academic year. These peer mentors are experienced students who can help you develop the skills you need to succeed in ENG 101 and other classes. You can ask your mentor for help with a variety of academic tasks, such as using the library and other university resources, talking to professors, planning your work, and managing your time. For more information about participating in this program, contact Tammy Kim ([email protected]).
Emory Writing Center
The Emory Writing Center offers 45-minute individual conferences to Emory College and Laney Graduate School students. Our discussion- and workshop-based approach enables writers of all levels to see their writing with fresh eyes and to practice a variety of strategies for writing, revising, and editing. The EWC is a great place to bring any project—from traditional papers to websites—at any stage in your composing process. EWC tutors can talk with you about your purpose, organization, audience, design choices, or use of sources. They can also work with you on sentence-level concerns (including grammar and word choice), but they won’t proofread for you. Instead, they’ll discuss strategies and resources you can use to become a better editor of your own work.
The EWC is located in Callaway N-212. We encourage writers to schedule appointments in advance as we can take walk-ins on a limited basis only. We require hard copies of traditional paper drafts and encourage you to bring a laptop if you're working on a digital or multi-modal text. Please bring a copy of your assignment instructions, too. In addition to our regular conferences in Callaway, we host Studio Hours every Tuesday from 7-9 pm in Woodruff Library 214. Studio Hours provide a supportive, focused workspace and are open to all students. EWC tutors circulate to encourage writers, provide resources, and address questions. For more information about the EWC, or to make an appointment, visit http://writingcenter.emory.edu.
Academic Honesty
The Emory Honor Code is in effect in this class and will be strictly enforced. The Honor Code states: “academic misconduct is an offense generally defined as any action or inaction which is offensive to the integrity and honesty of the members of the academic community. This offense includes, but is not limited to, the following:
(a) Seeking, acquiring, receiving, or giving information about the conduct of an examination, knowing that the release of such information has not been authorized:
(b) Plagiarizing;
(c) Seeking, using, giving, or obtaining unauthorized assistance or information in any academic assignment or examination;
(d) Intentionally giving false information to professors or instructors for the purpose of gaining academic advantage;
(e) Breach of any duties prescribed by this Code;
(f) Intentionally giving false evidence in any Honor Council hearing or refusing to give evidence when requested by the Honor Council.”
You can find the Honor Code here: http://www.college.emory.edu/current/standards/honor_code.html.
You bear primary responsibility for understanding the nature of academic honesty and avoiding plagiarism. The English Department Plagiarism Guidelines, written by Dr. Barbara Ladd and available on the Writing Center website at http://www.writingcenter.emory.edu/laddplagiarism.html, defines plagiarism and explains students’ responsibilities to avoid it:
Plagiarism is copying the words and/or the ideas of another person or agency or institution […] without acknowledging that you got those words and those ideas from that source. Changing a word or phrase or two in a passage does not change the reality of plagiarism. If you paraphrase a passage using the same basic vocabulary, maintaining the same order of ideas, and/or if your paraphrase is approximately the same length as the original, and basically retains the thought, spirit or language of the original, then you are plagiarizing. […] And remember that you must still cite the source of an idea even if you have summarized the idea in your own words. (Ladd “English Department Plagiarism Guidelines”)
In other words, if you didn’t think of it on your own, don’t claim it as your own. Just give credit where credit is due, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Discrimination + Harassment
Emory University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran. This class adheres to those guidelines. Alternative viewpoints are welcome in this classroom; however, statements that are deemed racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory toward others in the class will not be tolerated. No form of harassment, bullying, or discrimination is allowed in this class. No harassment of any kind is allowed, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, color, age, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation and identity, gender, marital status, ability, and/or status as a U.S. veteran.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities + Special Services
Emory University complies with the regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and offers accommodations to students with disabilities. If you are in need of a classroom accommodation, please make an appointment with me to discuss this as soon as possible. All information will be held in the strictest confidence. For more information, please visit http://www.ods.emory.edu/ or contact the office by phone at (404) 727-9877 [voice] or TDD: (404) 712-2049.
Changes to the Syllabus
This syllabus is a general plan for the course. This syllabus—especially the required reading and assignment schedule—may be modified as the semester progresses to meet course outcomes and address the needs of members of the class. In the event changes are necessary, I will make them in consultation with the rest of the class.
Pope had likewise genius; a mind active, ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still wishing to go higher; always imagining something greater than it knows, always endeavoring more than it can do. ~ Samuel Johnson
Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little. ~ Tom Stoppard
Course Description
English 101 is an intensive writing and communication course designed specifically to prepare students for whom English is an additional language for the unique communicative challenges they may face both at Emory and in their careers once they leave Emory. Over the course of the semester, we will focus on recognizing, evaluating, and deploying rhetorical principles and techniques as well as on demonstrating mastery of critical analysis, of conducting primary and secondary research, exposition, and argumentation on selected themes and issues by completing practical exercises both in class and outside of it. Specific topics, readings, and assignments will vary between sections; however, the amount of work and the outcomes and skills you attain will be consistent across sections.
The central goal of English 101 is to help you become stronger, more dynamic researchers and communicators across multiple modes. Consequently, you can expect to conduct original research while completing assignments both individually and in groups. These assignments and activities will hone your skills in writing, speaking, listening, and observing. Over the course of the semester, you will familiarize yourself with and participate in the ongoing conversations surrounding the central topic of your section, and you should expect to complete projects that engage in and contribute to ongoing professional and academic discourse.
In this particular section of English 101-03P, You Are What You Eat, while refining our abilities to communicate multimodally, we will focus our attention on “foodways” – “’the customs, beliefs, or practices surrounding the production, presentation, and consumption of food,’ or, more simply, as ‘the intersection of food and culture’” (Latshaw “The Soul of the South” 100). How does food and our relationship to it impact our lives? Our interpretation of culture? Or family ties? There are places in the world where you define family by the people you eat with, and blood relation has nothing to do with it. What does that mean? How do you see that at work in your lives at home? Here at Emory? His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that “food is life. We come from food and we are consumed in the end. We could be consumed by fire, by earth, by anything. But we come from food. Through food, you can see all culture. If you are always sharing family-style food, it means that the culture is about bonding together in so many ways.” The study of foodways focuses our attention on these issues and questions and explores their impact on our lives and culture. Together, we will be doing this exploration as we learn to be more effective communicators.
Domain of One’s Own
This course is part of the Domain of One’s Own pilot project. As part of the Domain of One’s Own project you will author and administrate a personal website, close read multimodal texts for form and theme, and compose with a variety of digital tools. Please explore this page for further information on the Domain of One’s Own pilot project at Emory.
· No prior experience with web design or digital authoring is required for successful completion of course work.
· Student work will be published to the web and available to reading publics beyond the class and university.
· Once you have completed the course, the site you built is yours to continue to develop into a personal cyberinfastructure that may include, but is not limited to, course projects, a professional portfolio, resume/CV documents, social media feeds, and blogs.
Required Texts + Required Access
Textbooks AVAILABLE AT THE BOOKSTORE:
Arola, Kristin L., Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.
Hacker, Diana and Nancy Sommers. Rules for Writers. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2012.
Textbooks YOU MUST ORDER YOURSELVES
Dunlop, Fuchsia. Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet and Sour Memoir of Eating in China. NYC: Norton, 2008.
Suggested Apps + Websites:
The following apps and websites are NOT REQUIRED, though after exploring them, you may find them useful.
Online Writing Lab at Purdue (OWL @ Purdue)
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Writing Center Handouts
Using English for Academic Purposes
Corpus of Contemporary American English
Kindle app
Audible.com app
iMovie app
WordPress app
BlackBoard app
SimpleMind+ (mind mapping) app
Idea Sketch app
Outliner app
Evernote app
Dragon Dictation app
Advanced English Dictionary and Thesaurus app
Cambridge Dictionary app
Merriam Webster Dictionary for English Language Learners app
Grammar Girl app
Oxford A to Z of Grammar and Punctuation app
Idioms app
English Prepositions app
My MLA app
Access:
We will use Blackboard to communicate with one another regularly via the discussion boards and group emails. You will also use it to submit assignments to me, and I will use it to keep, calculate, and disperse grades.
You also need access to your Emory email account. And beyond access, you MUST READ AND RESPOND TO EMAIL! J Communication tools constantly shift, but for the moment email is still the best way for us to communicate with one another when we aren’t in class or talking to one another in person (even though it isn’t the primary way that we communicate more informally with one another electronically). When you email me, please use a descriptive subject and in the initial email of an email chain, please introduce yourselves. I will do my best to respond to you within 24 hours.
Goals
In this section of English 101, you will develop
· Writing skills: Throughout the semester, you will complete writing assignments in stages that build upon and refine one another.
· Reading skills: You will work on developing reading strategies that will enable you to grasp complex ideas and arguments as well as engage those arguments and ideas critically.
· Oral skills: You will actively participate in class discussions and oral presentations by expressing and defending opinions and giving presentations.
· Aural skills: You will also participate in class by actively listening to, understanding, and interacting with one another during class discussion and presentations.
· Formal English grammar: You will focus on grammar regularly throughout the course by keeping a log of the grammatical errors that you make in each formal written assignment. You will include this log with each assignment and then turned in at the end of the semester. You will also complete ten different “language spots” that focus your attention on specific grammatical conventions.
· Vocabulary: Finally, you will build your vocabulary and improve your ability to deduce the meaning of new words from a given context by focusing on the language used by others and then by using the most dynamic, compelling, and clear words to express your meaning in writing and verbally.
In addition to the above goals, you can expect to demonstrate proficiency in six key areas of knowledge: rhetoric; research; critical reading, thinking, and writing; the process of composition; the conventions of communication; and composition and communication in digital environments. Your mastery of these goals will be based on the understanding you gain in these essential components of understanding language and communication.
Rhetoric
Philosophers and students of language and communication have provided us with different definitions of “rhetoric.” Plato defined it as “the art of winning the soul by discourse,” while Aristotle defined it as “the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.” Cicero and Quintilian both aligned rhetoric with speaking, while Andrea Lunsford recently synthesized twentieth-century rhetoricians’ definitions in her own deceptively simple one: “[r]hetoric is the art, practice, and study of human communication.” Over the course of the semester, we will compose numerous work products – some written, some spoken, some visual, some electronic, and some nonverbal – that require and test our understanding and use of rhetoric. By the end of the semester, you will have acquired the habits of mind that enable you to be clear, effective, convincing communicators regardless of the situation and audience you face.
Research
Emory University tremendously values original student research. Consequently, we will work together both inside and outside our classes to foster and develop a culture of undergraduate primary and secondary research and original thought. To help accomplish this goal, you will conduct research and practice creative intellectual engagement with primary and secondary sources in nearly every class. With worlds of information immediately available to us online – literally at our fingertips – as well as a world-class research library just yards away, we will work to foster intellectual curiosity not only by approaching topics and issues in our courses from a place of inquisitive questioning but also by exploring questions that we have through immediate, sustained, deep, and broad research in the library, in the classroom, and outside of it.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
“The ability to think critically […] involves three things: (1) an attitude of being disposed to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences, (2) knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning, and (3) some skill in applying those methods. Critical thinking calls for a persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends. It also generally requires [the] ability to recognize problems, to find workable means for meeting those problems, to gather and marshal pertinent information, to recognize unstated assumptions and values, to comprehend and use language with accuracy, clarity, and discrimination, to interpret data, to appraise evidence and evaluate arguments, to recognize the existence (or non-existence) of logical relationships between propositions, to draw warranted conclusions and generalizations, to put to test the conclusions and generalizations at which one arrives, to reconstruct one's patterns of beliefs on the basis of wider experience, and to render accurate judgments about specific things and qualities in everyday life.”
These claims about critical thinking essentially ask us to be mindful and curiously engaged with the people, images, and arguments we encounter, whether inside or outside of the classroom. Our dedication to intellectual curiosity, engagement, and research in both our class discussion and our assignment sequence will help us model critical thinking, reading, and writing for and with one another so that this type of intellectual engagement becomes second nature to us all.
Writing is/as a Process
Writing is not fast. It is not instantly gratifying. It rewards careful thought at every step of its development. With time and attention, we can all devise compelling arguments that engage us and convince our audience. As successful communicators, however, we do not simply spend this time waiting for an idea to emerge; rather, we use this time to actively participate in the writing process.
In this course, we will strive to craft writing that matters, both inside and outside of the classroom. The most direct route to creating writing that matters is to find a topic that matters to you personally, to identify other scholars to whom your chosen topic matters, and to join the ongoing scholarly conversation on your topic by creating thoroughly considered, well-researched projects. Each of these steps, from invention to research to drafting to revising, makes up the writing process, and we will each become masters of the writing process by practicing all of these steps as we complete the components of our assignment sequence.
Conventions of Communication
When we communicate with a given audience, that audience has certain expectations. Considered most broadly, those expectations are based on the standard conventions for communication in English. While these conventions may shift slightly depending on the rhetorical situation in which we find ourselves – are we speaking to our friends on Facebook? to our parents in an email? to our classmates or professor in class? to our employer? in person? in writing? on a personal or professional website? in a newspaper opinion piece? – central, accepted conventions such as punctuation; spelling; grammar; and sentence, paragraph, and argument organization continue to mark the strongest examples of clear communication. This semester you will hone your skills in these and other conventions of communication through practical application in the assignments you complete as well as in your everyday practice of communication within and outside of class.
Composition and Communication in Digital Environments
In the world outside of our classroom, we do not communicate solely through the written word on the page and certainly not solely via the scholarly essay. Consequently, we will complete a sequence of assignments that acknowledges, incorporates, builds on, and hones the global, collaborative communications skills that we all use every day in the Web 2.0 world that we live and work in. By using the electronic mode and incorporating similar technological innovations into our communications habits inside the classroom as we do outside of the classroom, our work gains immediacy and more readily connects to the broader world in a way that was nearly impossible before. This semester, we will use various communications technologies, possibly including blogs, image manipulation software, personal websites, prezis, creativist projects, etc. as tools to enrich and enliven the communicative products we create.
Outcomes
Over the course of the semester, as you become comfortable evaluating and implementing your own and others’ rhetorical decisions; conducting research; thinking, reading, and writing critically; and communicating and composing in digital and non-digital modes, you will achieve the following outcomes:
· Recognize and evaluate a communicator’s message, purpose, and audience;
· Assess and synthesize the diverse needs of your own audiences, whether within our classroom, within the Emory community, or within the broader scholarly conversation you will engage throughout the semester;
· Identify, differentiate between, and characterize various rhetorical situations;
· Recognize and formulate responses appropriate to these rhetorical situations by creating artifacts that reflect invention, research, drafting, and revision;
· Construct compelling and dynamic artifacts (more here on “artifacts”) that incorporate clear and specific arguments, effective organization and structure, smoothly incorporated and well-researched evidence, strong and impactful transitions, and convincing conclusions;
· Demonstrate your mastery of the conventions of formatting, structure, voice, and tone appropriate to the rhetorical situation you are responding to;
· Analyze the impact of form and genre on the experience of reading and writing;
· Synthesize the implications of genre and form as you construct your own research and arguments; and
· Communicate in several genres and modes across multiple communicative platforms.
Class Participation
You should expect to attend and participate actively in every class. Since the achievement of our course objectives depends on active participation, each student is responsible to strive to create an environment of lively critical questioning and analytical discussion. You can achieve this through frequent verbal and non-verbal communication. I envision our classroom as one in which each of us works together in an open forum in a respectfully questioning manner. To help facilitate this, here are a few ground rules.
· First and foremost, we cannot create the sort of classroom environment we want without your presence in class. You should come to class thoroughly prepared to participate actively. Excessive absence and unpreparedness will result in a penalty in your final grade at the discretion of the instructor.
· If your phone disrupts class in any way, you’ll be warned and then counted absent for that period, so don not let your cellphone interrupt class. Cellphones are extremely disruptive, so be respectful of your fellow students and me and either leave them in your room, put them on silent mode, or just turn them off.
· Active class participation depends on everyone being completely engaged in what is going on in class, so do not spend time in this class on activities that are not related to this course. If you are working on non-101 things, you aren’t focusing on the discussion.
Again, the level of success we achieve together will depend to a great degree on each of you; we can’t function well as a class without participation from everyone. Engage actively in all aspects of class activities, and be respectful of others’ ideas, thoughts, and expression.
While this policy may seem strict, part of 101 is about initiating you into the academic discourse community and your future workplace discourse communities, so I will hold you to similar standards that you will encounter in the future. When you do not show up to class, you show disrespect to your classmates, to me, and to yourself. You are all adults, and adults have responsibilities that do not disappear because they were sick, because they overslept, or because they overindulged the night before. I realize that those things will happen, but class attendance and participation should be your top priority.
Assignments + GRADEs Grades will be calculated based on the following weighted assignments:
Weekly Blog Posts: 10%
Participation (including attendance, participation, vocabulary wiki, Writer/Designer assignments, and the Language Upgrades and Editing + Revision Logs): 10%
Learning Curve Assignments: 5%
Writing Workshops: 5%
Major Written Project V1: 2%
Major Written Project V2: 8%
Multimodal Project Proposal Paper + Annotated Bibliography V1: 2%
Multimodal Project Proposal Paper + Annotated Bibliography V2: 8%
Multimodal Project Pitch Ignite Presentation: 10%
Major Digital Project Script + Story Board V1: 3%
Major Digital Project Script + Story Board V2: 12%
Major Digital Project Presentation: 10%
Final In-Class Writing: 5%
Portfolio Website: 10%
The grading scale for the course is as follows and is subject to change at my discretion:
93 and above A
90-92.99 A-
87-89.99 B+
83-86.99 B
80-82.99 B-
77-79.99 C+
73-76.99 C
70-72.99 C-
67-69.99 D+
60-66.99 D
0-59.99 F
Late formal assignments will automatically lose one letter grade for each day that they are late, but there is no reason for this to occur. J You will have numerous opportunities to work on drafting your assignments leading up to the date that they are due. You will complete peer reviews of your formal assignments with your classmates before each assignment is due, and besides having access to your classmates’ feedback, feel free to contact me with any questions or problems you have along the way.
Resources
Please make good use of the following FREE services:
Tutoring for Multilingual Students
If you are a multilingual student and English is not your first language, you may benefit from working with trained ESL Tutors. These tutors are undergraduates who will support the development of both your English language and writing skills. Like Writing Center tutors, ESL tutors will not proofread your work. Language is best learned through interactive dialogue, so come to an ESL tutoring session ready to collaborate!
ESL tutors will meet with you in designated locations on campus for 1-hour appointments, and they will help you at any stage of the process of developing your written work or presentation. You may bring your work on a laptop or on paper.
In Spring 2014, a new scheduling system called ASST will replace TutorTrac for ESL tutoring appointments. For instructions on how to schedule an appointment, links to ASST, and the policies for using the service, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/tutoring/index.html
If you do not have a scheduled appointment, you may use the Academic ESL Skills Lab, located in Room 422 of Woodruff Library (next to the Language Center). Here, you may have less time with a tutor if other students are waiting, but you can find drop-in support just when you need it. To view the lab hours for the current semester, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/lab.html .
For information about other ESL services available to undergraduates, go to: http://college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/esl/index.html
or contact Jane O’Connor, Director of ESL Services ([email protected] ) or Denise Dolan, Assistant Director of ESL Services ([email protected] ).
Academic Fellows
Every student in ENG 101/ESL has the opportunity to work with an Academic Fellow throughout the academic year. These peer mentors are experienced students who can help you develop the skills you need to succeed in ENG 101 and other classes. You can ask your mentor for help with a variety of academic tasks, such as using the library and other university resources, talking to professors, planning your work, and managing your time. For more information about participating in this program, contact Tammy Kim ([email protected]).
Emory Writing Center
The Emory Writing Center offers 45-minute individual conferences to Emory College and Laney Graduate School students. Our discussion- and workshop-based approach enables writers of all levels to see their writing with fresh eyes and to practice a variety of strategies for writing, revising, and editing. The EWC is a great place to bring any project—from traditional papers to websites—at any stage in your composing process. EWC tutors can talk with you about your purpose, organization, audience, design choices, or use of sources. They can also work with you on sentence-level concerns (including grammar and word choice), but they won’t proofread for you. Instead, they’ll discuss strategies and resources you can use to become a better editor of your own work.
The EWC is located in Callaway N-212. We encourage writers to schedule appointments in advance as we can take walk-ins on a limited basis only. We require hard copies of traditional paper drafts and encourage you to bring a laptop if you're working on a digital or multi-modal text. Please bring a copy of your assignment instructions, too. In addition to our regular conferences in Callaway, we host Studio Hours every Tuesday from 7-9 pm in Woodruff Library 214. Studio Hours provide a supportive, focused workspace and are open to all students. EWC tutors circulate to encourage writers, provide resources, and address questions. For more information about the EWC, or to make an appointment, visit http://writingcenter.emory.edu.
Academic Honesty
The Emory Honor Code is in effect in this class and will be strictly enforced. The Honor Code states: “academic misconduct is an offense generally defined as any action or inaction which is offensive to the integrity and honesty of the members of the academic community. This offense includes, but is not limited to, the following:
(a) Seeking, acquiring, receiving, or giving information about the conduct of an examination, knowing that the release of such information has not been authorized:
(b) Plagiarizing;
(c) Seeking, using, giving, or obtaining unauthorized assistance or information in any academic assignment or examination;
(d) Intentionally giving false information to professors or instructors for the purpose of gaining academic advantage;
(e) Breach of any duties prescribed by this Code;
(f) Intentionally giving false evidence in any Honor Council hearing or refusing to give evidence when requested by the Honor Council.”
You can find the Honor Code here: http://www.college.emory.edu/current/standards/honor_code.html.
You bear primary responsibility for understanding the nature of academic honesty and avoiding plagiarism. The English Department Plagiarism Guidelines, written by Dr. Barbara Ladd and available on the Writing Center website at http://www.writingcenter.emory.edu/laddplagiarism.html, defines plagiarism and explains students’ responsibilities to avoid it:
Plagiarism is copying the words and/or the ideas of another person or agency or institution […] without acknowledging that you got those words and those ideas from that source. Changing a word or phrase or two in a passage does not change the reality of plagiarism. If you paraphrase a passage using the same basic vocabulary, maintaining the same order of ideas, and/or if your paraphrase is approximately the same length as the original, and basically retains the thought, spirit or language of the original, then you are plagiarizing. […] And remember that you must still cite the source of an idea even if you have summarized the idea in your own words. (Ladd “English Department Plagiarism Guidelines”)
In other words, if you didn’t think of it on your own, don’t claim it as your own. Just give credit where credit is due, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Discrimination + Harassment
Emory University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran. This class adheres to those guidelines. Alternative viewpoints are welcome in this classroom; however, statements that are deemed racist, sexist, classist, or otherwise discriminatory toward others in the class will not be tolerated. No form of harassment, bullying, or discrimination is allowed in this class. No harassment of any kind is allowed, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, color, age, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation and identity, gender, marital status, ability, and/or status as a U.S. veteran.
Accommodations for Students with Disabilities + Special Services
Emory University complies with the regulations of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and offers accommodations to students with disabilities. If you are in need of a classroom accommodation, please make an appointment with me to discuss this as soon as possible. All information will be held in the strictest confidence. For more information, please visit http://www.ods.emory.edu/ or contact the office by phone at (404) 727-9877 [voice] or TDD: (404) 712-2049.
Changes to the Syllabus
This syllabus is a general plan for the course. This syllabus—especially the required reading and assignment schedule—may be modified as the semester progresses to meet course outcomes and address the needs of members of the class. In the event changes are necessary, I will make them in consultation with the rest of the class.