/*Advanced Composition for the Humanities*/
/*Course Syllabus*/
*ENGH 302H_
_Spring 2012**_
_Last day to add: 8th February
Last day to drop: 24th February (31st January for no tuition liability)
Selective withdrawal period ends: 30th March*
*_Professor_: Dr. Richard A. Nanian
_Office_: Robinson A417
_Hours_: **MW 12:15-1:15, and by appointment**
_E-mail_: rnanian@gmu.edu**
_Course Website Main Page_:*/
http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/302Hmain.html <302Hmain.html>/
*Section H08
Class times: MW 10:30-11:45
Location: ** Nguyen Engineering Building 1109*
*Section H11
Class times: MW 1:30-2:45
Location: ** Innovation Hall 209*
*Section H14
Class times: MW 3:00-4:15
Location: ** Innovation Hall 209*
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_*Introduction*_*
*This is a course in the craft of writing, specifically the craft of
writing in the humanities. I choose the word /craft/ carefully.
Writing can be art, and the greatest written works are among humanity?s
greatest achievements. Whence the genius for such works derives is an
eternal mystery, and one can no more teach someone to be a great
novelist, dramatist, or poet than one can teach someone to be the next
Joshua Bell or Kevin Durant. But the writing most of us need to perform
in order to achieve success in our academic and professional careers,
communicate with our colleagues, friends, and the public, and clarify
and record our own thinking fortunately does not fall into that
mysterious and lofty category. It is more like carpentry: one learns
to build a table that will stand solidly on its own, support whatever
weight it is supposed to bear, and be aesthetically pleasing. While we
may not all be able to produce a Chippendale, all of us can learn to
make a serviceable and attractive table if we are given the tools and
are willing to apply ourselves. Likewise, we can all learn to write
prose that helps us achieve our professional goals. That is fortunate,
because few skills are as important to your overall success in your
course-work and your life as your ability to take your thoughts and put
them down on paper in such a way that they reach a reader?s mind more or
less unaltered, and that your reader then finds them persuasive. Do
that poorly and you need to prepare yourself for a life of
misunderstandings, frustration, and disappointment; do it well and some
degree of success is nearly certain.
Specifically, this course builds on the general writing skills and
techniques you have already acquired (whether in ENGH101, other
university courses, or elsewhere) to prepare you for completing advanced
level writing, analysis, and research tailored to your major discipline
and possible future workplace. We will therefore practice the various
genres of writing you are likely to encounter. Throughout the semester,
you?ll also learn to recognize the ways that knowledge is constructed in
humanities disciplines, adapt your writing to common purposes and
audience needs, conduct and synthesize research, use computer
technologies as part of your research and writing process, and produce
writing that employs the organizational techniques and genres typical in
your discipline. We will also focus on the professionalism and
professional writing forms and techniques that you?ll need throughout
your career.
As part of /George Mason University?s General Education Program/
, which is designed to
help students prepare for advanced work in their major field and for a
lifetime of learning, this course aims to provide you with skills that
will help you convey your ideas effectively, both in future course-work
and professionally in your chosen field
_*Texts and Materials*_
You must own the following:
/Writing with Style/ (third edition) by John Trimble
/MS Word/ (either the PC or the Mac version) or Apple?s /Pages/
A writer?s handbook
A flash-drive or portable hard-drive on which you keep your
document files
A good dictionary
I use /MS Word/?s Comment function to mark your essays. For that
reason, you must have some version of /MS Word/ ? not /Works/, not an
open-source program that mimics /Word/, though Apple?s /Pages/ is also
acceptable. Patriot Computers (in the Johnson Center) sells /MS Word/
and /MS Office/ to students at a large discount. Meanwhile, anyone who
does not keep copies of his or her work on a flash-drive or portable
hard-drive these days is asking for trouble. (Note: keeping them ?in the
cloud? or online sounds great until you try to access them and for some
reason wireless or internet access is slow or non-existent.)
You must own a good writer?s handbook. When you make grammatical and
stylistic errors, I will point them out and expect you to look them up
in a handbook. Some of the better handbooks are Muriel Harris?s
/Prentice-Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage/, Diane Hacker?s /A
Writer?s Reference/ and /Rules for Writers/, and Andrea Lunsford?s /The
Everyday Writer/. Many others are available. I do not care which
handbook you own, as long as it is relatively recent. If you do not own
any of them, buy one. The primary difference between them is the way
they are organized; the material is mostly the same. Some of you may
own the classic /The Elements of Style/ by William Strunk and E. B.
White, which is wonderfully short and filled with good advice (and some
that is idiosyncratic and even a little weird), but it does not deal
with grammar in any comprehensive way, so you should consider it
supplemental to these others
For this course you also must own a good dictionary. Be careful,
because anybody can call a dictionary ?Webster?s?; the name is now in
the public domain and means nothing. The best reasonably-priced
dictionaries available are the /Merriam-Webster Tenth Edition/, /The
American-Heritage Dictionary/, and /The Concise Oxford English
Dictionary/. /The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary/ is even better,
though more pricey ($175). My favorite inexpensive dictionary is the
/Little Oxford English Dictionary/, which is hardcover but only about
six inches by four inches, quite portable, and about $10 on Amazon. Of
course, the complete /Oxford English Dictionary /is the greatest
dictionary in the world, though unwieldy in its two-volume ?Compact?
edition ($400) and prohibitively expensive ($900-$6000, depending on the
binding) in its full-sized version. You may access the complete /OED/
through the /Mason library databases/
. You may also access
many dictionaries through /OneLook.com /.
Generally, however, dictionaries on CD-ROM and on the web are not as
useful for reading assignments, though they can be handy when you are
writing.
_*Course Requirements *_
**/Exercises/
**These will be short assignments designed to prepare you for the major
essays. You will complete them and bring them ? sometimes multiple
copies of them ? to class, where we will discuss them and work with them
in groups. If you do not attend class that day with the exercise in
hand, you cannot get credit for an exercise. Note that sometimes I
collect exercises, and other times we work with them in class, so I
simply check to make sure you have brought your work with you. I do not
accept exercises late for credit.
*/Peer Responses/
* For every essay assignment, you will receive the works of some of your
peers. Using guidelines I provide, you will offer your help and advice
on each essay, submitting your response both to your peers and to me. I
will grade these based primarily on the apparent effort and attention
given to the paper and their organization, and secondarily on the
quality of advice you offer.
*/Longer writing assignments, Revisions, and Reflective Commentaries/
*You will produce three formal documents of specific types during the
semester. Each will be judged on the basis of how well it fulfills the
assignment, including issues of purpose, structure, tone, audience,
persuasiveness, style, grammar, and format. Initially, you will submit
each essay to a group of your peers for their feedback. Note that this
version of the essay should not be a first draft. Inevitably, you will
improve your own work by revising it on your own, so it is a waste of
everyone?s time to make us do what you could already have done. The
essays you submit should represent the best work you can do, and will be
judged accordingly.
After receiving feedback from your peers, you will then revise this
document and submit this revised version to me for my evaluation I will
evaluate the first two according to a rubric designed specifically for
that assignment; the final research essay receives a grade only. Each
essay must be accompanied by a reflective commentary that describes your
experience writing the paper and details the changes you made and the
reasons for them during the revision process.
Please submit your essays as .doc or .docx files. Also, I insist you
always keep back-up files of your work on a flash-drive or portable
hard-drive; in 2011, claiming a computer glitch destroyed your essay is
like claiming your dog ate your homework.
*/Class Participation/*
I believe that learning requires an active engagement on the part of
both the students and the teacher. You cannot simply sit back and
expect to receive knowledge the way a child receives a tetanus shot. At
the very least, you must participate by paying close attention to
everything that goes on in class. Ideally, you should also ask
questions and risk exposing your ideas to your classmates. A writing
class, especially, is a cooperative venture ? as much workshop as class
? and cannot be conducted via lecture. Excellent class participation
will result in a bonus to your final course grade.
*/The Portfolio, including Final Revisions and Final Reflection/*
At the end of the semester, you will submit an electronic portfolio
containing your research essay with reflective commentary, final
revisions of your first two documents, and a final reflection. At this
point, I will assign each essay a letter grade, and these grades ? in
combination with the final reflective commentary, in which you consider
your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and evaluate your essays ?
will combine to make a final portfolio grade.
_*Attendance *_
A healthy percentage of success in life depends simply on showing up
where and when you are expected. If you are the kind of student who has
trouble showing up, you will struggle in any composition class,
especially mine. On the other hand, students who never miss a class
tend to do well in my classes.
Note that absences or lateness on the days your peer group meets are
particularly disastrous. Failing to attend the class in which a peer
response takes place will result in a 25% penalty to points available
for your peer response, in addition to the penalties for submitting the
responses late if you did not at least e-mail your responses to your
peers before class begins. Being late for class will result in a
penalty between 10% and 25%, depending on the degree of lateness.
Although absences are always bad, if you know ahead of time that you
will be absent, you should tell me. For example, if a commitment
connected with the university ? an athletic trip, a forensics
competition, or something similar ? means you will be away from campus,
talk to me and we can arrange to meet outside of class so that you do
not fall behind. Regardless, you are absolutely responsible for finding
out what happened in class.
*_
_**_Policy on Late Work_*
Much of this course is conducted as a workshop, which means you submit
your work to your peers as well as to me. Your peers depend on you.
For that reason, the penalties for lateness are severe. Assignments are
due when specified. Again, I do not accept exercises late. Submitting
the more formal writing assignments late will result in penalties to two
assignments, the assignment itself and your peer responses. Essay
revisions receive a 10% penalty to the points available per day or part
of a day of lateness, meaning that a revision that you send to me one
day and one hour late will receive a 20% penalty to the available
points. Note that it is your responsibility to examine your message
after you send it to be certain you successfully attached the document.
Consistent lateness will virtually guarantee failure of the course.
If you know your revision of an essay will be late and you make
arrangements with me with me prior to the due date ? not on the day on
which the assignment is due ? you may receive a relatively minor penalty
of 3.3-5.0% per day at my discretion. Note: this presumes that we
discuss it and I agree, not that you send me an e-mail at the last
minute saying, ?My paper will be late, please accept it.?
*_
Conferences_
* One-on-one conferences will replace two classes. This will be your
opportunity to receive my help prior to submitting your research essay
and final portfolio. Arriving at my office on-time for these
conferences is essential. If you are late, I cannot extend your
appointment because that would cut into the next person?stime with me.
Given when in the semester they are scheduled, they cannot be made up in
case of absence.
_*Evaluation*_
The points available in this course are as follows:
Assignment
Points
Exercises
20
Peer Responses
20
Description and Aesthetic Response Essay
10
Close Reading Essay
10
Annotated Bibliography/Review of Current Scholarship
10
Final Portfolio (including Research Essay)
30
Consistently strong in-class participation will earn students up to a
1/2 grade bonus (i.e. 5.0 points) on their final grade. Students may
demonstrate strong in-class participation by joining class discussions,
asking appropriate questions, and taking an active role in class
activities. However, many of the class?s activities depend on your
participation, and failing to contribute fully ? through absence or
lateness, for example ? will affect your scores on these assignments.
Note this comment from the student handbook: ?Students who fail to
participate (by virtue of extensive absences) in courses in which
participation is a factor in evaluation may have their grades lowered.?
Prior to your final course grade, all graded assignments except peer
responses are graded according to a check system. A check-plus (?+)
indicates superior work. Depending on the particular assignment or the
area being scored (formal assignments receive scores in multiple areas),
this can mean an original and provocative focus, an insightful thesis, a
highly persuasive argument, outstanding use of support, clear and
engaging organization, flawless clarity, grammatical correctness, or
concision, or perfect adherence to academic conventions and formatting.
A check (?) indicates that you have fulfilled that specific goal and all
the expectations that go along with it: a clear and appropriate thesis,
a solid argument without logical gaps, effective use of support, clear
organization, or only minor errors in clarity, concision, and so on. A
check-minus (?-) indicates barely adequate college-level writing; your
work has obvious flaws in that specific area, but they are not so
overwhelming that a voluntary reader (meaning one not being forced or
paid to read your work) would throw down your essay in disgust and walk
away. A minus score (-) indicates severe problems: a thesis that makes
little sense, a lack of careful argumentation or support, poor
organization, significant passages that are confusing to a reader, poor
grammar, overwhelming wordiness, an apparent ignorance of academic
conventions regarding citations and formatting, or general carelessness.
For purposes of grade computation, a check-plus counts as a score of
100%, a check counts as a score of 85%, a check-minus counts as a 75%,
and a minus counts as a 70%. Obviously, therefore, the purpose of a
minus is to indicate a problem you must correct, not to put you into an
impossible situation and torpedo your GPA.
Possible final grades in this course include A+ (97.0 points or above),
A (93.0-96.9), A- (90.0-92.9), B+ (87.0-89.9), B (83.0-86.9), B-
(80.0-82.9), C+ (77.0-79.9), C (73.0-76.9), C- (67.5-72.9), D
(60.0-67.4), and F (below 60). Note, however, that if you earn a C- or
worse, you will need to re-take the course.
I grant incompletes only in circumstances beyond the student?s foresight
and control, and only when I have a reasonable expectation that the
student can complete the course successfully. By university regulation,
you must request an incomplete in writing.
*_
_*_*Basic Rules of Conduct*_
A class, like a society, requires that all participants observe a
certain code of civilized behavior. The following are the minimum
standards I ask you observe (some of these are pretty obvious, but
believe it or not every one of them is here as a result of past experience):
Be on time. Arriving late is disruptive. Running a class is
like driving a stick-shift: it takes time to shift up to
cruising speed. When you walk in after the agreed upon starting
time, you interrupt the class and make it start out again in
first gear. It is rude. However, arriving late is still better
than missing the class. If you do arrive late, come in as
quietly as possible and take your seat. If the class is engaged
in a group activity, come to me (of course you should wait a
moment if I am actively talking with students) and ask me to
place you in a group.
The outside world should not intrude on our class. Please
disable any cellular telephones, text messaging devices, pagers,
and devices with alarms, or leave them behind. Reading and
sending text messages, especially, is extremely disrespectful to
the class. Any student who texts during class will receive no
credit for being in class that day.
Laptop computers are acceptable, but only for class purposes.
Reading e-mail unrelated to the class or cruising the web is
also disrespectful and will be grounds for the penalty mentioned
above.
Wait until the class actually ends to pack up. Few things are
more annoying than having to raise my voice at the end of class
because people are sliding their books off the desks and
unzipping and zipping their backpacks.
While I know that you have other obligations, our class is not
the time to fulfill them. Doing work unrelated to the course
during class is not allowed.
Attendance implies body /and/ mind and so requires
consciousness. Putting your head down on the desk or closing
your eyes because you are tired is unacceptable at any level
above nursery school.
At any moment, one of three things will be happening in the
class: either I will be talking, a student will be talking
(asking or answering a question, participating in a class or
smaller group discussion), or everyone will be concentrating
silently on the task at hand. In every case, courtesy demands
that you pay attention, and not engage in your own private
conversations. But please feel free to ask questions and
express your ideas ? that kind of talking demonstrates your
involvement and is generally a good thing.
The class is only seventy-five minutes long. You should seldom,
if ever, need to leave the classroom before the class ends. If
the need arises, and you can?t wait, by all means go in peace.
I trust you will return quickly, and not abuse my patience and
generally kind disposition.
*_H_*_*onesty*_**
George Mason University?s /Honor Code / requires all
members of this community to maintain the highest standards of academic
honesty and integrity. Cheating, plagiarism, lying, and stealing are all
expressly prohibited. In fact, the list of offences is redundant:
cheating is fraud; plagiarism is theft. These are the two clear
felonies of the academic community.
Plagiarism means using judgments, opinions, research, or phrasing from
another source without giving that source credit. Common knowledge does
not fall into this category, but knowledge researched, compiled, or
organized by a particular person does. Writers give credit through the
use of accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation; a
simple listing of books, articles, and websites is not sufficient. This
class will include direct instruction in strategies for handling sources
as part of our curriculum. However, students in composition classes
must also take responsibility for understanding and practicing the basic
principles of good scholarship. To avoid plagiarism, meet the
expectations of a U.S. academic audience, give their readers a chance to
investigate the issue further, and make credible arguments, writers must
1) put quotation marks around, and give an in-text citation for, any
sentences or distinctive phrases (even very short, 2- or 3-word
phrases) that writers copy directly from any outside source: a book,
a textbook, an article, a website, a newspaper, a movie, a song, an
interview, an encyclopedia, a CD, a baseball card ? whatever
2) completely re-write (not just switch out a few words) any
information they find in a separate source and wish to summarize or
paraphrase for their readers, and also give an in-text citation for
that paraphrased information
3) give an in-text citation for any facts, statistics, or opinions
which the writers learned from outside sources (or which they just
happen to know) and which are not considered ?common knowledge? in
the target audience (this may require new research to locate a
credible outside source to cite)
4) give a new in-text citation for each element of information ?
meaning not rely on a single citation at the end of a paragraph,
because that is not usually sufficient to inform a reader clearly of
how much of the paragraph comes from an outside source
5) include a Works Cited or References list at the end of their
essay, providing full bibliographic information for every source
cited in their essays.
While different disciplines employ different citation styles, and
different instructors may emphasize different levels of citation for
different assignments, writers should always begin with these
conservative practices unless they are expressly told otherwise. Writers
who follow these steps carefully will almost certainly avoid plagiarism.
If writers ever have questions about a citation practice, they should
ask their instructor.
All of that said, let me be clear. Any act of academic dishonesty will
result in my reporting you to the honor committee and recommending
failure of the course (not merely the assignment). In every case in
which I have done this, the honor committee has accepted my
recommendation, and in several cases has imposed additional penalties.
This may sound harsh, but you will find similar guidelines at every
college in the country. It does not get any more serious than this. I
will use available online plagiarism-finding tools to check your essays
as I see fit.
_*The University Writing Center
*_Since you will be writing several essays in this course, you may want
to visit the university?s /Writing Center
/, located in Robinson A114, for
assistance. The Writing Center is one of the best resources you will
find on campus. It has an outstanding website that offers a wealth of
online /resources for student writers/
.
You can schedule a forty-five minute appointment with a trained tutor to
help with any phase of the writing process. The Writing Center even
offers some services online, but please plan ahead and allow yourself at
least three days to receive a response.
_*
*__*Note Regarding Students with Disabilities
*_Students with documented disabilities should present me with a contact
sheet from the Disability Resource Center as soon as possible so that
together we may plan appropriate accommodations. If you are a student
with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see me
and contact the Office of Disability Resources at 703-993-2474. All
academic accommodations must be arranged through that office.
*_
_*_*My Responsibilities*_
In this syllabus, I spell out clearly what I expect of you. What may
you expect of me? You have the right to expect that I am knowledgeable
about the subject, that I will be prepared for class, that I will return
your assignments to you reasonably promptly, that I will indicate
clearly where you need to apply yourself in order to improve as both a
reader and as a writer, and that I will give you positive feedback
whenever possible. It also means that you can count on my honest
evaluation of your work. If I say something positive, believe it. If
you perform poorly, I will certainly let you know. However, I will not
chase you: if you are struggling, ask to meet with me. More
fundamentally, you can expect that I want you both to succeed and to
enjoy the experience, and will do everything within my power to help.
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