WR
122 ENGLISH COMPOSITION Michael Dembrow, Instructor
CRN 13194 Office
-
M 10-11:30 TH 109 Telephone
– 503-978-5213
11:30-1 TH
204 Email
- mdembrow@pcc.edu
Office Hours:
M 1-2 and by appt. Web: http://spot.pcc.edu/~mdembrow/wr122.htm
WR
122: WR 122, the second term of English
Composition, carries on with the noble task you began in WR 121: to make yourself a more confident, capable,
and thoughtful essay-writer. As in WR
121, the central premise of the course is that thinking, reading, and writing
are all tied up inextricably with one another, and that effective writing is
intimately connected with a good grasp of audience, context, and purpose.
WR 122, however, also has a special emphasis: on
working with arguments and persuasive writing.
You will be encouraged to
question your own assumptions and those of others. You’ll be encouraged to try to escape from
the strait-jacket of your preconceptions and try to imagine and understand why
others believe as they do. As you’ll
see, if you can find common ground with your readers (especially those that
think very differently from you), then you can develop positions and proposals
that are compelling and convincing to them.
That will be our goal here: to
use writing first as a means of inquiry (to decide where you stand on issues of
importance, and why) and then as a means to argue the correctness of your
positions and persuade others to join you in moving to action.
Specifically, in this class, you'll be doing the
following:
a. Analyze
and evaluate the writings of professional writers, academics, and journalists
(and even politicians!), to understand how and when they are able to write
convincingly;
b. Develop
your ability to read critically--to dialogue with a piece of writing so that
you will be able both to incorporate and to challenge its assumptions;
c. Learn
ways to set up and write convincing arguments and counter-arguments of your
own, arguments that recognize and reach out to those who might think
differently, and which seek to find common ground with them;
d. Come
to an understanding of how writers on various points of the political spectrum
(both here and abroad) are writing arguments, particularly with respect to the health-care
crisis in this country;
e. Learn
to recognize the arguments (explicit and implicit) that underlie various forms
of popular culture;
f. Work
on your individual sentences to make them more concise, precise, and graceful
(i.e., give them some style), to help you to be more persuasive;
g. Become
proficient at doing light research and synthesizing findings into a documented
report, with appropriate use of reference conventions;
h. Continue
to work on improving your skill at writing exam essays;
i. Get
rid of any grammatical problems still lingering in your otherwise perfect
writing (not much in-class time will be spent on this, though);
j. Have
fun while learning a tremendous amount in 11 short weeks.
TEXTS: No
Primary Textbook
LB Handbook, Second Edition
I’m trying a little experiment this term. In an effort to cut back on the
ever-increasing burden of textbook expense, I’m going to be teaching this
course without a primary text. Instead,
I’ll be relying on the internet (via the class website) and handouts for most
of the class readings. The website will include (or have links to) numerous
essays, articles, Letters to the Editor, reviews, and other forms of
argument/persuasion. You’ll find essays
by other students, as well as essays by me and by other professionals. In addition, there will be various kinds of
information on rhetoric, the art of effective argumentation.
I will ask you to purchase the LB Handbook if you do not already have
it. It is the standard handbook for all
our Writing courses at PCC-Cascade, so you most likely have it already. If you already have another handbook, see
me, and I’ll let you know if it will work as a substitute. Your
grammar handbook will be your source of information
on grammar/mechanics and a backup for my lectures and handouts on style. Ideally, you have one already.
I’ll also be giving you handouts that focus on
the nuts and bolts of writing clearly, gracefully, and freshly. They will give
you examples of good and not-so-good writing, and then ask you to do various
writing and editing exercises.
PAPERS: You
will be doing three long essays during this ten-week period. The first will be a
personal-narrative/argument essay; the second will be a position paper
related to the healthcare crisis, in particular the debate over public vs.
private financing of healthcare; the third essay will be a proposal
argument related to health care—where you will be making a concrete proposal
for improving some aspect of the healthcare system.
Don't panic--I'll be giving you detailed
instructions for each paper. And I’ll
have extensive internet resources that will help you understand the background
of the problem and the nature of the debate over it.
Both the rough draft and the final version must
be typed. If you don’t have a computer
at home or at work, we have various resources here that you can use.
We'll have an in-class rough-draft workshop for
each of these essays, and I'll also be giving you some feedback on them,
helping you to develop them into superb final products. You will need to have a
draft ready for the workshop in order to get full credit (not having a draft
can cost you as much as a full grade).
You should hand in all drafts of each essay with
the final version--I like to see the process by which you attain
perfection. I'll get your essay back to
you as soon as possible with comments, suggestions, and corrections.
HOMEWORK
JOURNAL: I’d like you to keep your homework assignments
together in a journal of some sort. For
the most part, these assignments will be the “Text Analysis” that you’ll be
doing each week. Using the analysis form
that I’ll be providing you (also available on the class website), you’ll be analyzing many of the essays that you’re
assigned, as well as argument texts of your own choosing. These can be essays, editorials, letters to
the editor, advertisements, reviews, sales letters, etc. I’d like you to try analyzing a different
kind of argument each week.
I won't have you turn in the individual
assignments, but you should have them done as assigned. I'll be checking them from time to time. (Also, you should keep copies of the
articles, advertisements, editorials, and other texts that you are analyzing,
so that I can look at them as well.)
IN-CLASS: We'll be doing the following in class: We'll discuss readings and your responses to
them. I'll talk with you about the basic
"elements of argument," discuss ways to make your arguments more
appealing and effective, and warn you about traps to avoid, such as
"logical fallacies." We'll
analyze various kinds of persuasive writing (including speeches,
advertisements, letters to the editor, editorials, proposals, etc.). We'll work on particular stylistic
points. We'll discuss essays by you or
by your co-sufferers (i.e. your classmates or your teacher); analyze, as a
group, a particular essay exam question; and, from time to time, get hands-on
experience in the fine art of exam-taking:
i.e., you'll write in class a brief response to a question based on one
of the readings.
The class will be broken up into two parts, with
the first part meeting in TH109, and the second part meeting in TH204. The latter is a computer writing lab, and
that’s where we’ll be doing internet projects, in-class writing, and various
other exercises.
An important element of the course is the
feedback that you give to other students in your response groups. Not only will this help them, but it will
help you as you try to formulate what works and what doesn't work in
their essay. You'll be getting response
sheets from me, which you'll be using to formulate your responses to your
group-mates. They'll hand them in with
their drafts. To keep you motivated,
I'll be grading your feedback (not on its content, but on the effort that you
put into it).
ATTENDANCE: I hope
to run this class as a workshop, and I expect a lot of class
participation. So, regular attendance
really is essential, especially since this class meets only once a week. DO NOT MISS CLASS SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU DON'T
HAVE AN ASSIGNMENT READY ON TIME. See
me, and we'll work things out. You will
lose points for a late paper, but that will be the case whether you are in
class or not.
Two absences will automatically result in a
lowered grade. More than two absences,
and I will ask you to withdraw from the class, or I will drop you myself.
Remember--if you find yourself slipping, losing
your grip on reality (i.e., this course), come and see me immediately. We’ll figure out a way to deal with it.
CONFERENCES:
Individual conferences are extremely important in a writing class, so
I'll be asking each of you to see me in my office at least twice for a 20-minute
conference. (I'll be circulating sign-up
sheets so that you can make an appointment ahead of time.)
During the first conference we'll discuss your
plans for the first essay. During
subsequent conferences we'll discuss your writing, evaluate your progress, and
work on any sticky points on which you're unclear.
In any case, if you have ANY questions that you
don't want to ask during class, please don't hesitate to ask me after class or
come on up to SC209. Also, feel free to
email or telephone me at my office. If
I'm not there when you call, or if I'm on the phone, you can leave a message
(at any hour of the day or night, weekday or weekend) on my voice mail. Leave your number and I'll try to call you
back. But, to be honest, email is better for me, as
I check it incessantly throughout the day and evening. If you can, send me an email.
Sometimes you'll find yourself totally stumped
by a paper assignment, or you find yourself going around and around in circles
without knowing where you're heading.
That's the time to come and talk to me.
You'll probably find that "the wall" is really not so solid
after all--talking it over with me just might allow you to slip through to
success.
Also, don’t forget that the Writing tutors in
the
EXAM: The
final exam will be on Wednesday, March 22.
It will include short-answer responses, stylistic revisions, and an
analysis of a piece of writing which you'll be given ahead of time.
FINAL
GRADE: At this point, I plan to base your final
grade on the following percentages:
50%
essays
20%
homework exercises and journal
10%
final exam
10%
in-class writing
5% feedback in draft workshops
5% class participation
The
above reflects my plans for the course at this point. Depending on how things go, we may decide to
change some of these percentages. If I
do decide to make any changes, I'll be sure to let you know ahead of time.
By
the way, since I am primarily concerned with your development as a
writer, I tend to place more emphasis on the grades that come later in the
term. I am looking for improvement.
If
you are interested in taking this course on a Pass/No Pass basis, please let me
know by the fourth week of class. I
should warn you, though, that many colleges and universities will not allow
transferred Pass/No Pass Grades to meet distribution requirements.
If
you have any special needs that I should know about, please let me know. If you have a disability and need an
accommodation, please make an appointment to meet with me outside of class, so
that we can make arrangements for your success.
Finally,
let me say that we will spend a lot of time in the class discussing issues that
may be sensitive, complicated, and difficult.
(Few of them will have simple answers or "correct" answers.) That's a very good thing. It's what helps us to grow as thinking,
feeling human beings, to make our understanding of the issues more
sophisticated. But that can only happen
in an environment of active listening and respect for the viewpoints of others. Although I'll be guiding most of these discussions,
it's everyone's responsibility to make sure that we work to maintain an
atmosphere of mutual respect and a commitment to solving problems when they
arise. If you feel that we're falling
short of this goal, please talk to me about it.
OK,
let’s have a great term together!