English 112
Ashkenas
TEXTS:
BEDFORD HANDBOOK, 7th
edition.
WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES: A READER FOR WRITERS. 6h edition.
Handouts as provided in class or supplied by
links on my web page.
Office E-mail: dashkenas@nvcc.edu
Web page address: http://www.nvcc.edu/home/dashkenas
Office hours: TBA.
Attendance: Regular
attendance is essential to success in English 112. It’s also essential to choose from among the
allowed topics early, to do the preliminary assignments on time, and to
schedule a conference well in advance of the due date. Any student who can’t meet these requirements
is likely to fail the course. A note concerning grades of “W” and
“I”: I’m no longer allowed to give
the grade of “W” or “I” automatically at the end of the semester to any student
who fails to finish the work for the course or who finds at the last minute
that he hasn’t earned passing grades. If
you don’t want a grade of “F” in the
course, you must plan accordingly. The
grade of “W” will not be given without special permission after the deadline
published as the last date to withdraw without grade penalty in the Schedule of
Classes. The grade of “I” will be given
only in the case of last-minute emergencies, and then only if you meet with me,
if I agree, and if we sign the appropriate forms.
Types of assignments: A ten-page argumentative research paper is the major
assignment for this course. However,
you’ll prepare for the writing of this paper by submitting other earlier
assignments that must be related to your final paper. The earlier assignments will be graded. And you’ll get more than one grade on the
final paper itself—seven grades for seven performance variables. So you’ll have quite a number of grades in
this course. The fact that the major
course work is a single paper does not prevent you from having lots of
grades. Please note: In addition to preliminary graded
assignments, you must have at least one oral interview with me—an interview
that takes place after you’ve done a lot of work and can be expected to show
significant understanding of your topic.
While the interview itself is pass-fail rather than graded, a failing
interview means the student has failed the course. At this interview you must submit
written notes that you’ve taken as preparation for writing the final
paper. It’s not enough for you to talk
about the paper or give me verbal assurances that you’ve been working hard all
semester. At your final conference, I
must see one or more of the following types of research notes:
·
Xerox copies
of web printouts or other articles with extensive marginal notes in your
own handwriting.
·
Traditional
note cards in a file box, with separate facts and opinions on individual cards,
again in your own handwriting, and cards filed under subject headings in the
file box.
·
Handwritten
paraphrases and critiques of five or more individual articles in a composition
notebook.
·
Typed
paraphrases and critiques of five or more individual articles that you have
saved electronically on your computer, together with a brief explanation of
your file headings.
Course prerequisites: You must have taken, completed, and passed English
111 to be enrolled in this class as a fulfillment of degree requirements. The
class assumes you need no review of any issues covered in English 111, or a
non-credit ESL or developmental English course. What are these issues?
(1) You’re presumed to be fluent in English
with reasonably correct grammar, usage, and syntax. You’re also presumed to be
able to write readable English quickly and spontaneously in a class or
conference. You may be called upon to do so at some point, and if you cannot do
so, you may be asked to withdraw from the course, depending on the instructor’s
evaluation of just exactly how influent you are. More details will be given
below when I discuss the major course assignment, the ten-page typed
double-spaced argumentative research paper.
(2) You’re presumed to know the basic
structure of an essay (for example, what a thesis statement is, what the terms
"unity" and "coherence" mean, and how to work toward these
goals). You’re presumed to know some of the fundamentals of persuasive writing,
even though we will review these. For example, I expect you to know what
evidence is and when it must be introduced to bolster a belief, what expert
opinion is, what bias is and what circular arguments are and how to avoid them,
and what the difference is between a fact and an opinion. (See Part IX of your Handbook, pages 468-516;
also see the link titled “Rules for Paraphrase and Critique” at the end of this
syllabus.)
(3) You’re presumed to know some of the
fundamentals of research writing. For example, although you may not remember
all the rules about how to document material from certain specific kinds of
outside sources, you should know that such material requires documentation. You
should know the difference between copying words from a book, magazine, or web
site, and producing your own original writing. In short, you should know the
principles of academic honesty, and should know how to avoid the three types of
plagiarism that require a teacher to deny credit to an essay. These are (1) using information or opinions
from a source without crediting the source, (2) copying sentences word-for-word
from a source without using quotation marks around the copied words, which is
plagiarism even if you credit the source, and (3) half-copying sentences from a
source by making only trivial changes in wording or phrasing, such as changing
verb tenses or word forms or punctuation slightly or substituting synonyms from
a thesaurus. For more information and
examples of the different types of plagiarism, see pages 576-580 and pages
592-6 of your Handbook.
Any form of verifiable plagiarism is a serious
offense. At a minimum you must redo the
work. In some cases plagiarism may
require me to withdraw you from the course.
Even in cases where there’s no verifiable plagiarism, though, papers can
sometimes be bounced (that is, not accepted for credit) because of the writer’s
complete lack of original thinking or because of the writer’s inability to
display, in conference, a reasonable understanding of material he claims to
have written. This follows logically
from the goals of the course. (See
“Purpose of English 112”, “Paper requirements”, and “Rationale for paper
requirements,” below.)
Purpose of English 112:
One purpose of English 112 is to develop
skills in responding critically to what you read, see, and experience. Another
purpose is to develop skills in organizing a complex, original interpretation
of facts and ideas from different sources.
In short, the real purpose of English 112 is to teach you to interpret
the world for yourself—or in other words, to think for yourself about what you
read, hear, and see. There must be a
minimum of ten sources used for this ten-page paper. There is no maximum number of sources, as
long as you use them for some constructive and logical purpose (in other words,
as long as they’re truly relevant to some point you want to make). Sources for your English 112 paper may
include magazine and newspaper articles, television news reports, and
television or film documentaries, in addition to the Internet and web-based
sources, especially articles from computer indexes our library subscribes
to. But your sources need not be limited
only to these traditional sources of factual information. I usually give the highest grades to papers
that mix information from traditional sources with an imaginative use of
alternative sources, such as popular novels, movies, TV shows, popular music,
or original research (for example, doing your own survey on campus or at your
workplace and analyzing the data).
NOTE:
One additional requirement for the 112 paper in my class is that it must
make use of and cite at least three sources your instructor is already familiar
with. These may be essays from your
reader, WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES, or they may be articles I have placed on
reserve in the library in one of my News Scrapbooks for English 112. (The Scrapbooks will be explained in
class.) Yes, this does restrict your
topic choices somewhat, although not as much as you think if you cultivate an
imaginative approach. Anyway, be sure
you can live with this rule; otherwise, please switch to another section of
English 112.
Requirements for the 112 research paper:
In addition to being ten pages long and
largely research-based, the paper must develop an argument. It may not simply provide information about a
topic, or explain what experts say.
Here are the distinguishing features of an argument:
·
The thesis is a
statement of your opinion, not someone else’s, and your opinion must be
one that some rational and informed authorities oppose. It can’t state only the obvious, or what most
people believe, or what everyone would believe if only everyone were as
well-informed as you are.
·
The paper
directly addresses your opponents (as many of them as possible). You respect their views. This means that you explain these views
accurately, without misrepresenting them.
You agree whenever possible, reserving your disagreement for the key
points that explain why you don’t share their position on the topic.
·
The defense
involves logical argument as well as factual evidence. In other words, it involves your original interpretation
of facts and ideas and proposals.
It’s not enough to present different points of view and pick one to
totally agree with and others to totally disagree with. There must be some original contribution from
your own mind.
Rationale
for paper requirements:
There’s a reason for insisting that your
ideas not be identical to some expert’s opinion. Moreover, it’s the same reason why I
encourage you to base your research on a wide variety of sources, including
fiction as well as non-fiction, personal experience or research, and essays
from your reader. What is that
reason? It’s not just to make your life
more difficult (though I do want to make your paper a more complex and
challenging one to write). See my
comments below.
Too many of today's college students are
products of a public education system that emphasizes computer skills more than
writing and thinking skills. As a result, many of the students I teach are much
more adept at finding information than they are at evaluating and interpreting
what they read or see. This means they have real trouble thinking
independently. They too rarely question what they see and hear, especially if
it's from a popular source. They have difficulty envisioning their own original
solutions to problems. And they have a hard time understanding how problems
they hear about in the news really affect human lives. But these are all skills
a college graduate should have. Moreover, this is a persuasive writing course, and
it’s hard for writing to be persuasive if it doesn’t draw on a range of
different kinds of knowledge and experience.
It’s also hard for writing to be persuasive if it simply says the
obvious, or rubber stamps the beliefs or proposals of someone else.
Times being what
they are and dependence on technology being what it is, honesty requires that I
be more direct in my discussion of a growing problem in college writing
courses. Research papers for college
writing courses are offered for sale at various different web sites (for
example Cheathouse.com). For a mere
seventy bucks or so, some students think they can just buy a paper and forget
about doing the work. But if you think
you should try that in this class, then I don’t think you’ve thought about the
requirements listed on this syllabus.
GRADES:
You will have many of them.
Seven of the grades you earn in this class
will reflect aspects of your performance on the major research paper. (Minimum
length of the final paper must be ten typed double-spaced pages, with a minimum
of ten different sources reflecting a spectrum of opinion on a controversial
topic of your choosing). The following variables will receive separate, equally
weighted grades:
BUT NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE PAPER LOOKS, any
and every student in this class must be prepared to DISCUSS the substance of
the paper verbally with me in conference.
Please don’t forget this.
In addition, you’ll have some graded
preliminary research assignments.
(“Preliminary” means “beforehand” or “introductory”, so these are
assignments that will be submitted before the paper itself and will develop
your ideas for the paper. Therefore, to
state the obvious, they must be on the same topic. They will help me track the
progress of your research). See the
class calendar. Note: Assignments are due as soon as the discussion
of the topic has ended; in other words, on the class day immediately
afterwards.
CLASS CALENDAR: This will be distributed in class.
The following links may be helpful. Most of them are samples of the kinds of assignments you’ll have in this class. However, keep in mind that all the sample papers attached to this syllabus (both my samples and those written by students) make use of the 5th edition of your reader, Writing in the Disciplines, rather than the 6th edition, which is the one we now use. The 5th edition didn’t contain exactly the same essays in every case, and even when the essays are the same, they aren’t on the same pages, so the page numbers on the citations in the sample papers won’t match the page numbers of the same essays in this edition of your textbook. This is a minor point, but one that could lead to confusion if you don’t keep it in mind. One copy of each edition of this textbook (5th and 6th) will be on reserve in the library for you to consult.
If a link is printed on this syllabus (below) this tells you that it’s available on my web page. During the course of the semester, I’ll periodically ask you to go to my web page, print a link, and bring it to class. Please don’t ask me to print out these links and Xerox them for all of you invidiaully, as this creates a major expense for the College and will ultimately drive up the cost of your tuition. If you try to get the links and can’t, let me know and I’ll print them for you on an individual basis. Also, the last of the two links below are sample papers written by students. I’ve requested other papers from students, but these are the only ones I’ve received to date. If I were you, I’d check later to see if more come in.
Rules for
Paraphrase and Critique
Paraphrase
and Critique of “Using Our Fear”
Paraphrase
and Critique of “Looking Back at Big Brother”
Paraphrase and Critique of “Cohabitation
Instead of Marriage,” by James Q. Wilson
Paraphrase
and Critique of “The War Against the Poor,” by Herbert J. Gans
Sample
Critique and Synthesis, with Simplified Synthesis Directions
Paraphrase, Critique, and Synthesis on
Surveillance Cameras
Paraphrase,
Critique, and Synthesis on I, Robot
Paraphrase,
Critique, and Synthesis on the Role of Divorce in Destabilizing Society
Paraphrase,
Critique, and Synthesis on Joe the King
Sample Research
Paper on Gattaca
Rules for
Using Movies in 112 Discussions
Suggested
Movie List by Topics
Final Checklist for English 112
Research Papers
Sample
Student Research Paper on Human Cloning