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ENGLISH 101: ENGLISH COMPOSITION I

Syllabus, Fall Quarter 2014
10:30-11:35AM | Room 1605
Cara N. Stoddard
carast@bigbend.edu | Office # 1618
Office Hours: 1:00-3:00 Mon-Thurs, or by appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course is an introduction to college-level reading and writing and is designed to improve your critical
thinking, reading, and written communication skills. In this course you will learn strategies for critical reading
and analysis, drafting and revising essays, performing academic research, and properly attributing your
sources using MLA citation.


LEARNING OUTCOMES:
By the end of the course, you should be very good at doing the following:
1. Comprehending college-level and professional prose and analyzing how authors present their ideas in
view of their probable purposes, audiences, and occasions.
2. Presenting your ideas as related to, but clearly distinguished from, the ideas of others (including the
ability to paraphrase, summarize, and correctly cite and document borrowed material).
3. Identifying rhetorical appeals in texts and advertisements and assessing their effect on an intended
audience.
4. Developing a central claim (thesis) that follows one of the four ways to respond:
Agreeing with the thesis of the orig. text, but with a difference (adding something new)
Disagreeing based on factual merit (by poking holes in the support used in orig. text)
Disagreeing because of holes in the orig. argument (and adding neglected info)
Taking a middle ground by agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, favoring one or the other
5. Supporting/illustrating your central claim (thesis) clearly and logically.
6. Gathering and evaluating information using the library resources and using your sources in service of
persuading your audience.
7. Using a variety of strategies during the prewriting or invention process including making a formal
outline and using a Research Log.
8. Revising holistically in an attempt to re-see how to best achieve what it is you are trying to
communicate to an audience in any given assignment.
9. Accurately proofreading your own work in order to produce writing that maintains the conventions of
published English.
10. Giving and receiving constructive feedback during peer review.

Of course, I expect that you are able to carry out some of these tasks already.


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REQUIRED BOOK:

They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Third Edition
by: Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein | ISBN # 9780393935844




DEADLINES FOR MAJOR ASSIGNMENTS:
Thursday, September 25 LAST DAY TO ADD A CLASS
Monday, October 6 Essay 1 First Draft Due** (@10:30AM)
Wednesday, October 15 Essay 1 Final Draft Due** (@10:30AM)
Tuesday, October 28 Essay 2 First Draft Due** (@10:30AM)
Wednesday, November 5 Essay 2 Final Draft Due** (@10:30AM)
Tuesday, November 25 LAST DAY TO DROP A CLASS
Tuesday, November 25 Research Essay, First Draft Due** (@10:30AM)
Friday, December 5 Research Essay, Final Draft Due** (by midnight)

**All writing assignments are to be typed and correctly formatted according to MLA standards (see the Purdue OWL website for details).

COURSE TRAJECTORY:
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Mon Sept 22Intros
Tues Sept 23Rhetorical appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos
Wed Sept 24Point, illustration, explanation (PIE) paragraph organization model (meet in library computer lab room 1802)
Thurs Sept 25Rhetorical appeals & persuasion strategies cont.
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Mon Sept 29PIE practice (meet in 1801)
Tues Sept 30Consumer reports (meet in 1801)
Wed Oct 1Consumer reports cont.
Thurs Oct 2Writing day (meet in 1801)
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Mon Oct 6Peer review
Tues Oct 7Intro to annotations (meet in 1801)
Wed Oct 8Revision workshop (meet in 1801)
Thurs Oct 9Summary practice
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Mon Oct 13RadioLab activity (meet in 1801)
Tues Oct 14Works Cited practice
Wed Oct 15Essay 1 Final Draft due; Affirmative action Intro
Thurs Oct 16No Class, Cara in Michigan, see Canvas for homework due Monday
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Mon Oct 20Tal Fortgang Checking My Privilege (meet in 1801)
Tues Oct 21Socratic seminar
Wed Oct 22Socratic seminar cont.
Thurs Oct 23Writing day (meet in 1801)
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Mon Oct 27Agreeing, disagreeing, & taking the middle ground
Tues Oct 28Peer review
Wed Oct 29Summary & in-text citation practice
Thurs Oct 30Writing counterarguments (meet in 1801)
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Mon Nov 3Midterm review Jeopardy
Tues Nov 4begin DamNation documentary
Wed Nov 5Essay 2 Final Draft due; DamNation
Thurs Nov 6 Midterm Exam (on Canvas) due; finish DamNation; Michael Brown shooting and Ferguson riots
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Mon Nov 10Michael Brown and Ferguson riots cont. (meet in 1801)
Tues Nov 11No Class, Veterans Day
Wed Nov 12immigration reform
Thurs Nov 13immigration reform cont.
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Mon Nov 17Research day 1 (meet in 1801)
Tues Nov 18Research day 2 (meet in 1802)
Wed Nov 19Research day 3 (meet in 1801)
Thurs Nov 20Writing day (meet in 1801)
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Mon Nov 24Counterarguments and concessions review
Tues Nov 25Peer review
Wed Nov 26No Class, Thanksgiving Break
Thurs Nov 27No Class, Thanksgiving Break
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Mon Dec 1Summary & in-text citation review
Tues Dec 2Revision workshop (meet in 1801)
Wed Dec 3Essay 3 Q & A (optional class, no attendance, meet in 1801)
Thurs Dec 4Reflection Letter, last day of class (no exam or class during exam week)
Fri Dec 5No class; Essay 3 Final Draft due (by midnight)

ATTENDANCE:
Attendance in English 101 is mandatory. More than eight absences (two weeks) from class is grounds for
failing the course. After 5 absences, your grade will be negatively affected. Anywhere from 6-8 absences
will result in a 10% deduction from your overall score in the class. 9 or more absences equals an F (0.0) in
the course. Thus, plan for unforeseen illnesses or travel plans later in the quarter. Only absences for
bereavement, hospitalization, jury duty, or previously scheduled college Sponsored Events or Activities (see
Student Handbook for definition) are considered excused absences. Whenever possible, please notify me
before the excused absence to be sure to get any handouts you might miss in class. Every other kind of
absence including illnesses and doctors appointments are considered unexcused and count toward your
eight allowed absences.

In the case of a personal or family emergency, please be in contact with me via email about the situation, and
I will do my best to accommodate you. In the case of bereavement leave or a mental/physical health
emergency for you or one of your dependents requiring you miss more than one day in a row, you will be
expected to keep up with your coursework via Canvas. Arrangements will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Being in attendance means being physically present, awake, coherent, and fully prepared for class with the
readings completed. If you do not meet all of these conditions you will be marked absent for the day. Coming
in more than 10 minutes late, leaving early, and inappropriate use of cell phones, laptops, or tablets in class
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will result in an unexcused absence. You are responsible for making up all of the work that you missed during
an absence. Please see me during office hours or schedule an appointment before the next scheduled class.

LATE WORK:


Homework and essays are due at the beginning of class. I do not accept late homework. You will receive a
zero on the assignment if you do not have it with you or submitted on Canvas by the time class starts on the
day it is due. The one exception to this no late work policy is when using your Stuff Happens coupon
distributed on the first day of class. You may only use this coupon once per quarter, and it is only applicable
on homework assignments (not on essay drafts). For the three major essays in this course, I strongly
discourage you from submitting them late.

In the case of a late 1
st
Draft:
if turned in within 24 hours, you will receive a 0/10 on Peer Review but can still receive up to a 20/25
(40/50 for Essay 3) on your draft, based on completeness & word count.
after 24 hours you will receive a 0/25 (0/50 for Essay 3), but I encourage you to still submit it for
written feedback from me.

A late final draft will be graded as follows:
Within 24 hours = 10% point reduction
2 days late = 20% reduction
3 or more days late = 30% reduction

Note: Because of the extensive and time-consuming nature of the comments I make on each student essay I read, I usually take 2 weeks (8 class
periods) to grade and return essays. So thank you in advance for your patience. Know that I will never require you to turn in revisions of a draft
(for a grade) before youve received your feedback from me. If you have questions on a draft while you wait for formal feedback, dont hesitate to
come by my office during office hours (or email me a time) and we can look through your essay together. Due to grade deadlines, I cannot accept
your Research Essay (Essay 3) after Wednesday of exam week (it is due Fri, Dec. 5
th
by midnight and late point deductions will apply). Any research
essay submitted after Wednesday, December 10
th
at midnight will receive a zero.

COURSE ETIQUETTE:
Classroom citizenship. The classroom is a learning community. Any behavior that disrupts this community will
not be tolerated. This includes speaking to other students while I am talking, sleeping in class, passing notes,
being rude or belligerent to me or other students, etc. This is a discussion-based course, and I expect you to
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treat each other with dignity and respect. We may be discussing sensitive topics and reading each others
personal writing in this course. Please be considerate of others ideas and beliefs and do not discuss the
content of others papers with students outside of this class. In accordance with Big Bends Discrimination
Policy, disrespect or discrimination towards students based on race, color, national origin, ethnicity, citizen
status, sex, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or chosen gender, veteran status, age, or religion will
not be tolerated. If you feel your well-being is being jeopardized or you have observed someone else being
treated disrespectfully, please come speak to me about it privately after class or during my office hours.

Readings. In accordance with Big Bends mission statement to encourage multiculturalism, this class has been
intentionally designed to include readings that represent a diverse set of cultures and peoples and express
points of view on controversial contemporary social and political issues. In this class we may discuss, read,
write about, or view texts that you disagree with or find offensive. Such texts are not necessarily condoned,
but rather used to prompt discussion and explore ideas that may be outside of our individual preferences and
comfort levels. In this college classroom you are required to engage maturely and academically with all texts,
regardless of their content or rating. Please email or see me privately during office hours if you have any
questions about this policy.



Technology. In order to promote habits and skill-sets unique to scholars of the 21
st
century, this course has a
heavy emphasis on the use of technology. You will be expected to check our Canvas page every day for a
detailed description of the homework, and you will be submitting your homework and essays on Canvas and
receiving important margin notes and feedback on your writing from your instructor on Canvas. It is my
expectation that you purchase and use Microsoft Word for all typed assignments in this class. If you cannot
get Word on your personal or home computer, you will need to schedule at least an hour per day and several
hours over the weekends to spend on campus using the computers in the library.

Having said that, more often than not, during class time, technological devices serve as distractions to you and
the people around you, so please silence and put away your phones at the start of class. There will certainly
be exceptions to this rule, when I will allow you, even encourage you, to use your smart phone or device in
class, but I will notify you when it is appropriate to take out your phone. Texting, taking calls, and checking the
time on your cell phone is not permitted in class. Unless you have been given explicit permission to use your
laptop in class, all laptops should be shut and stowed away. Any use of technology in class, including receiving
audible texts or calls, will result in an unexcused absence for that day.

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Email etiquette. I certainly welcome your emails if you have questions about the course, your work, meeting
times, etc., please dont hesitate to message me on Canvas or at carast@bigbend.edu. However, you should
treat this as professional correspondence: that is, it should have a greeting, complete sentences, and your
name at the bottom.

PLAGIARISM:
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that you will do honest work and that you will work
with me on improving writing that is your own. But plagiarism is a serious matter, and incidents of it have
been on the rise both at Big Bend and nationally. So I feel that it is important to explain what the
consequences are.

The two basic kinds of plagiarism:
1. Malicious or intentional. This is the most serious kind of academic theft. It involves using someone
elses work as your own without citing the source, including direct copying, rephrasing, and
summarizing, submitting someone elses paper as your own, or re-submitting your own work from a
different quarter or different course.
2. Plagia-phrasing or mosaic plagiarism. Not indicating directly quoted passages or ideas within your
essay even while citing the work as a general source at the end of the essay in a Works Cited. This
involves taking someone elses idea and putting it in different words without citing in the sentences /
paragraphs themselves where the idea came from. Even if several different sources were copied or
combined, it is still plagiarism.

The consequences of plagiarism:
If a 1
st
draft involves plagiarism of the first kind (malicious or intentional) you will receive a 0 on that draft and
will be required to come to my office hours to work on re-writing the plagiarized portions before I will accept
your final draft.

If a 1
st
draft involves plagiarism of the second kind (mosaic plagiarism with missing in-text citations) you will
be required to come to my office hours to work on accurately summarizing and using in-text citations. Then
you will have 24 hours from this meeting to rewrite and re-submit the paper using correct forms of
documentation in order to receive credit.

If a final draft involves either type of plagiarism, you will receive a 0 on the assignment, and I will not accept a
re-write for partial credit. Additionally, if a final draft involves plagiarism of the first kind (malicious or
intentional), I am empowered by the Student Code of Conduct to assign a grade of F for the course, a penalty
that may be imposed in particularly serious cases and I will also make a complaint to the Vice President of
Student Services, who is responsible for enforcing the regulations in the Student Code of Conduct. So, in
addition to the academic penalty of receiving an F in the course, you may also be subject to other disciplinary
penalties, which can include suspension or expulsion. Although such severe penalties are rarely imposed for
first-time offenders, the Vice President of Student Services Office maintains disciplinary records as part of a
students overall academic record.

A final word on plagiarism: I understand the occasional temptation to use copy-pastebut I am surprisingly
good at recognizing plagiarism. My basic message is Do Not Do It. When you need to take something from
another persons workan idea, a powerful statement, a set of facts, or an explanationcite your source.
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GRADING:
The majority of the points for this course come from daily assignments and participation, so be sure to keep
up with the daily readings and homeworks. Simply turning in final papers will not result in a passing grade in
this class. Your percentage in the class is based out of 840 points (subject to change). You must turn in all 3
final essays and receive at least 500 points to pass this class. In order to receive a 2.0 (the grade required for
this course to count at most 4-year colleges), you will have to receive a minimum of 609 points.

The points are distributed as follows:

Unit 1The Art of Persuasion (235)
Commercials Notecatcher (10)
Commercial Explication (10)
Rhetorical Appeals Quiz (10)
Discussion Board 1 (10)
PIE Practice (10)
Article Annotations (10)
First Draft (25)
Peer Review (10)
1
st
Draft Annotations (10)
TSIS Ch. 1 Quiz (10)
TSIS Ch. 2 & 3 Quiz (10)
Unit 1 Journals (10)
Final Draft (100)

Unit 2Checking Your Privilege (235)
RadioLab Notecatcher (10)
Does Aff. Action Punish Whites Quiz (10)
New Republic & NYT Quiz (10)
Discussion Board 2 (10)
Fortgang Annotations (10)
Strauss Quiz (10)
First Draft (25)
Peer Review (10)
Discussion Board 3 (10)
TSIS Ch. 4 Quiz (10)
TSIS Ch. 6 Quiz (10)
Unit 2 Journals (10)
Final Draft (100)
Unit 3Research Essay (370)
Midterm (50)
Dam Removal Quiz (10)
Michael Brown Quiz (10)
Immigration Quiz (10)
Article Annotations (10)
Discussion Board 4 (10)
First Draft (50)
Peer Review (10)
Unit 3 Journals (10)
Final Draft (200)


Grading Scale:

A
% = GPA
B
% = GPA
C
% = GPA
D
% = GPA

95-100 = 4.0
94 = 3.8
92-93 = 3.7
91 = 3.6

89-90 = 3.5
87-88 = 3.4
86 = 3.3
85 = 3.2
84 = 3.1
83 = 3.0
82 = 2.9
81 = 2.8
80 = 2.7

79 = 2.6
78 = 2.5
77 = 2.4
76 = 2.3
75 = 2.2
74 = 2.1
73 = 2.0
----------transfer cut-off-----------
72 = 1.9
71 = 1.8
70 = 1.7
69 = 1.6
68 = 1.5
67 = 1.4
66 = 1.3
65 = 1.2
64 = 1.1
63 = 1.0
62 = 0.9
61 = 0.8
60 = 0.7
<60 = 0.0 (F)
A
Represents achievement that is outstanding or superior relative to the level necessary to meet the requirements of the
course.
B Represents achievement that is significantly above the level necessary to meet the requirements of the course.
Grades of A or B are honors grades. You must do something above and beyond the min. requirements in order to earn an A or B.
C
Represents achievement that meets the basic requirements in every respect. It signifies that the work is average, but
nothing more.
D
Represents achievement that meets some but not all of the basic requirements. It signifies that a significant amount of
coursework is either missing or received not-passing grades.
F
If you receive less than 500 points in the course or fail to hand in one of the 3 major writing assignments, you will
automatically earn an F. If your average grade is a D but you did not complete one of the major components of the
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Re-doing Final Drafts. I will allow you to re-submit Essays 1 (Consumer Report) and Essay 2 (Checking Your
Privilege) again after the Final Draft due date if you received a D or F (except in the case of a grade reduction
for tardiness, plagiarism, or academic dishonesty), and I will average the two Final Draft grades. All revised
Final Drafts must be turned in on or before Tuesday, November 25
th
.

A Note on Transferring. While any grade above a .7 (60%) is considered passing at Big Bend, many programs
and colleges require a 2.0 or higher in order to transfer credits earned in a class. In addition, students who fall
below a 2.0 are particularly likely to struggle in other classes that require academic writing. Speak to your
advisor or transfer colleges for details about this issue.

RESOURCES:
English Skills Lab: If you would like another reader for any of your essays or if you would like help on an essay
in between your first and final drafts, you may schedule an appointment with a tutor at the English Lab. The
English Skills Lab is Located the 1800 Building, Room 1832.
Fall Quarter Hours:
Monday - Wednesday....8:00am - 8:00pm
Thursday........................8:00am - 4:00pm
Friday.............................9:00am - 4:00pm

The English Skills Lab can help with all stages of the writing process and all levels of writers, so it is not always
necessary to have a completed draft prepared for your appointment. You can also receive e-tutoring and
online feedback on your writing. Visit http://academics.bigbend.edu/library/Pages/lab-hours.aspx for more
info.

Student Success Center: If you need to use a computer, to check out a laptop, or if you are struggling in any of
your classes, you can sign up for peer mentoring or supplemental instruction, contact Diana Villafana at
509.793.2369. The Student Success Center is located in the 1400 Building and is open Mon-Thurs 8am-5pm
and Fri 8am-2:30pm.
Accessibility & Disability Services: Big Bend Community College is committed to providing accommodations in
academic programs to ensure maximum participation by all students with disabilities and to minimize the
functional limitations their disabling condition has on their education. Proper procedures are in place to obtain
equal access wherein the student and college staff work together to facilitate reasonable accommodations.
The Disabled Student Services Office is located in the 1400 Building. Loralyn Allen is the disabled students
liaison. Her office, located inside the Counseling Center, is open Monday - Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m. and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. To schedule an appointment contact her at 509.793.2027.
For the hearing impaired TDD is available in the Registration/Admissions Office for incoming and outgoing calls
at telephone number 509.762.6335.
course (one of the 3 major papers or the Midterm exam), you will automatically earn an F in the course. Accumulating
more than eight absences also will result in an F. There is no reason for receiving an F in this course unless you simply
fail to submit the required work.
I
Stands for Incomplete. Under very unusual circumstances you could be assigned an Incomplete in the course if
something happened to you within the last two weeks of the quarter that made it impossible to complete the course
(a serious accident or illness that left you hospitalized and very significant personal tragedy, etc.)