ENGL 1302: College Composition II
Dr. John Harris h: 903-566-4985
Office: BUS 207aw: 903-565-5701
Fall 2016 Office Hours: MWF: 10:05-11:10
TTh: 10-10:55
Required Texts/Materials
Reading and Writing about the Disciplines: A Rhetorical Approach, Hui Wu and Emily Standridge.
A short PDF of supplemental texts has also been posted on Blackboard, and additional texts may appear at this same venue (free of charge) during the semester.
Course Description
Intensive study of and practice in the strategies and techniques for developing research-based expository and persuasive texts. Emphasis on effective and ethical rhetorical inquiry, including primary and secondary research methods; critical reading of verbal, visual, and multimedia texts; systematic evaluation, synthesis, and documentation of information sources; and critical thinking about evidence and conclusions.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to do the following:
1) demonstrate knowledge of individual and collective research processes;
2) develop ideas and synthesize primary and secondary sources within focused academic arguments, including one or more research-based essays;
3) analyze, interpret, and evaluate a variety of texts for the ethical and logical uses of evidence;
4) write in a style that clearly communicates meaning, builds credibility, and inspires belief or action; and
5) apply the conventions of style manuals for specific academic disciplines (e.g., APA, CMS, and MLA).
Student Rights and Responsibilities
An updated statement concerning absences for religious observance or university-supported trips, services for students with disabilities, grade replacement policies, course-drop policies, and so forth may be found at
These policies are also stated at the end of this syllabus.
Required Work/Grading
Below are the requirements and criteria to be used in determining your grade, with the relative importance of each item indicated in parentheses. For the record, I assign letter-grades according to the conventional “decade” system (60-69=D, 70-79=C, 80-89=B), with the “A” range running from 90 to 100. All assignments will receive a percentage grade; there will be no mysterious “points system” whose percentage value cannot be explained until the semester ends.
Class Attendance and Participation (20%)
After struggling with many policies and achieving mixed results, I have decided to promote common sense in this critical area even if I cannot reduce everything to neat, precise statistics. ATTENDANCE is obviously essential for participation: it is the sine qua non for everything else we do in class (because this is not an online course, much as some students might want it to be). I am therefore not going to award X% points for attending #Y of classes attended. I will begin, rather, in the declaration that TEN (10) classes missed for any reason is too many to receive a passing mark for this portion of the grade. If you’re ill or have exigent family or athletic obligations, then you should be able to take such needed time off, still have a few “play days” left, and not approach missing one out of every three classes. Hence whatever else you do regarding the duties below, your 20% of the total grade is an F if you reach ten absences. Period.
Now, if you miss no classes at all or only one, that will impress me and will count in your favor; but an A for this 20% should represent more than merely showing up with a pulse. As it happens, you will likely have more opportunities to participate actively in this class than in most others during your college experience, because learning to confer usefully with others is an important part of writing professionally. From the semester’s first week and continuing through December, you will be involved in group work. You will discuss readings, share ideas, correct grammar, pool resources, and so forth. Specifically, for the first seven weeks of the semester, I will deliberately place students in interdisciplinary groups as we all become accustomed to different kind of academic writing. Then, in the second half of the semester, your groups will be completely reshuffled so that your colleagues share the same or similar academic interests with you. These intradisciplinary groups are intended to assist you in preparing the term’s major project, involving research into scholarship and sources belonging to your professional area.
PARTICIPATION in both of these groups is something I can measure fairly well through observation. I will take notes regarding whether you attend class (again, that’s the first rung of the ladder), whether you contribute to group discussions (or sit like the proverbial bump on a log), whether your contributions are productive or distracting and disruptive (you can laugh, but don’t go on about the weekend for ten minutes), and whether you participate in presenting the group’s findings to the class as a whole (on occasions when that’s applicable). In short, I’ll have a lot of information about you. Your performance in these groups could work very strongly in your favor; and if you don’t like to speak publicly, you should still be able to contribute within your particular group, for you will probably have a mere three or four colleagues looking at you.
I am adding, as well, a more objective factor into the calculation. I will ask everyone to keep a kind of notebook (not to be handed in—just something from which you may later draw information) throughout the semester regarding the successes and failures of group activities. Eventually, at the term’s end, you will submit a Group Activity Assessment (GAA) reflecting upon these experiences collectively. Your reflections in the paper should be honest. If the activity of both groups tended to lead nowhere, then say so. If the interdisciplinary group fared better (or worse) than the intradisciplinary, then explain the problems. Were other students not taking tasks seriously, or did most tasks not lend themselves to a collaborative effort? (No other student, by the way, will ever see your reflections, so you needn’t worry about “ratting out” anyone. As you’ve already been informed, I shall be making my own observations.) Of course, I also hope to see some positive entries. Explain what progress you made, and how you made it. Ideally, the exercise will alert you as a future professional to the pros and cons, the assets and liabilities, of working with others.
The GAA paper should run from one to two pages,condense your experiences into generalities while dropping a few particular references to things well or poorly done, and reach a conclusion about the utility of group work in your area. Overall, what appear to be the benefits of collaboration in your field, and what the drawbacks?
In the past, I have decreed that this paper would be worth a certain percentage of the total grade… but this seems absurd to me now. Instead, I wish to weigh it together with your actual participation in such a way that a really strong performance in one area will not be sabotaged by a really weak performance in another. As a rough figure, however, I will say that an excellent GAA could count roughly as much as my notes about your group participation. I want you to succeed, and I know that students have different talents and ways of expression.
There will also be occasional unique exercises or tasks thatcount in this portion of the grade. An oral presentation of your comparative research paper’s outline to the entire class is scheduled late in the semester. I will award this exercise either a Thorough, an Adequate, or an Inadequate: not a major stumbling block, even if you bring it off poorly—but every little bit helps!
Finally, I request that you submit a WRITING PORTFOLIO on the last class day. This folder is to contain every bit of writing done throughout the semester that has been returned to you by December. I’m pegging the portfolio’s value at roughly half that of the GAA. It should be a gift to you: just keep track of your stuff. If you have emailed assignments that are returned, then print them out and keep the hard copies. I haven’t the time to tally up every paper in every folder; so, once again, the grade here will be either a Thorough, and Adequate, or an Inadequate (or a zero for non-submission).
Writing Exercises(80%)
N.B. Good grammar is essential to all effective academic writing. While we shall do few exercises formally and specifically dedicated to grammar, you are expected to submit papers without sentence fragments, comma splices, errors in case and agreement, and other egregious errors.
ONE-PAGE PAPERS (35%, 5% each): Each of these papers will integrate your response to a particular reading assignment with a particular writing skill or matter of rhetorical awareness. All papers should have at least two paragraphs unless you are otherwise instructed; in other words, you will almost always begin by creating some kind of introduction or, if appropriate, stating a thesis. Do not simply ramble as if you were making a journal entry.
A summary and an abstract are included in the seven papers. Most of the assignments, however, will elicit from you some degree of personal reflection about the kinds of adjustment, in both style and content, required of scholars across the broad spectrum of academic writing.
Any and all of these seven papers may be rewritten ONCE for as much as a ten-point increase in the final grade. Note on the Schedule below, however, that rewrites must be submitted no later than class time on October 21.
STEPS LEADING TO LONG PAPER (20%, 5% each): The comparative research paper is the crowning achievement of your semester’s work. We will approach it very methodically in a series of steps. These will be four in number:
a) compilation of a bibliography: a list of sources orbiting a single topic that you create by consulting various data bases;
b) triage of bibliographical sources: a sorting of sources based upon some principle of “interplay” or “interrelation” (as described below) that you can effectively establish among several of them (without details, at this point, concerning the specific sources that you have selected);
c) composition of a project proposal: a brief paper naming the three or four articles upon which you intend to focus, how you propose to relate them, and what major points you shall trace through each; and
d) creation and presentation of an outline: a schematic of your intended paper that should approximate a rough draft in thoroughness (format is of very minor importance).
COMPARATIVE RESEARCH PAPER (17%): At the end of about a month’s preparation, as we near the end of the semester, you will have chosen three or four articles in your field that bear upon a single issue. Your job here is NOT to add something completely new to the discussion, but rather to define clearly how the pieces relate to each other. You’ll ask such questions as the following. Are the articles in agreement, disagreement, or both to some degree? Can you see progress taking place as you view their exchange retrospectively—is the chronologically latest article also closest to the truth? Or is the article with the greatest measure of truth an earlier composition? In that case, what did the later contributions miss, and why? On what basis have you decided in favor of a particular article as having the most veracity? Perhaps, on the other hand, you find that all three taken together wade through a mist of evidence that doesn’t really grow thinner at any point. The ultimate judgment is yours to make; but, of course, you must explain your reasons for making it, and do so in a manner consistent with the criteria and principles of your discipline.
Here are the six specific approaches to interrelating your articles which are STRONGLY recommended. (If you choose another, it should be cleared with me):
*evolutionary: scholarly knowledge of the subject clearly progresses with time as more research is done (diachronic);
*controversial: scholarly positions divided on a central issue (synchronic)—choose four articles, two on either side;
*methodological: positions on a single issue shift noticeably in response to different methods used (but NOT in response to passing time—synchronic);
*trend-driven: assessment of issue or phenomenon changes in response to political/cultural factors rather than objective evidence (diachronic or synchronic);
*confirmatory: resonant consensus on issues or a major issue (make selected articles either diachronic or methodologically distinct);
*rhetorical: position does not change, but presentation notably altered for different audiences (diachronic or synchronic).
The “diachronic/synchronic” contrast refers to whether the selected articles appeared over a span of several years or at about the same time. We will discuss why this matters and why one or the other kind of temporal grouping is more effective in building a particular argument.
RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF C.R.P. (8%): This paper and your comparative research paper are essentially a fourth of your grade. The somewhat oddball percentages indicated for these two assignments simply reflect that the former paper is two thirds of that quarter and this paper one third of it. You may consider the rhetorical analysis to be your final exam: it’s due at noon on Tuesday of exam week, but you may submit it earlier, and no formal meeting at a specific time or place is involved. You are asked to reflect upon your work in the comparative research paper. What stylistic adaptations did you make to the requirements of your discipline—what diction, organization, authorities, visual aids, etc., did you use or abstain from using in order to produce a professional piece of writing? How did your comparing or contrasting of the three/four articles you chose reflect the protocol observed by those in your field?
Life… what a lot there is to study!
Late Submission Policy
I have never refused to accept late work, and I have also always staunchly refused to deduct an inflexible, mandatory per-diem amount from it. In the past, students have requested more time for assignments because of broken limbs, car wrecks, physical assaults, a parent’s sudden death, and other obstacles that no decent human being would dismiss. Nevertheless, my leniency has sometimes been abused. I am especially irked when students inquire months after their difficulty, “Do you remember when I was out for surgery? What papers do I owe you from then?”
I need and expect you to do two things in the event of some personal catastrophe: a) inform me of the problem as soon as possible, and b) propose to me a timeline for completion of the missing work. Many situations, such as being laid up in the hospital, are actually very good occasions to grind out some writing. Show that you care. Don’t come to me as the semester winds down and ask if you still owe “stuff” from early September. Do your job, so that I can do mine.
Schedule of Readings and Assignments
Mostreading assignments are to be found in Reading and Writing about the Disciplines (referred to as “textbook”). Three have been added to a file on Blackboard under Course Documents titled, 1302supplement.pdf. All discussions and other activities during the semester’s first half are based upon material from these sources.
August
29 Introduction to class. Homework: read “Different Answers to the
Question ‘Why?’” in PDF (download on Blackboard, pp. 1-7).
31 Discussion of reading and of disciplinary styles generally.
Homework: short paper on topic, “What is considered ‘truth’ in your
discipline; that is, what kinds of evidence are sought, what is judged
to be convincing, what sort of argument must be avoided, etc.?”
September
2Submit paper and discuss its rhetorical analysis. Homework: read selections from “The Orator’s Audience,
the Orator, and… the Orator’s Teacher” in PDF (download on Blackboard, pp. 8-14).
5Labor Day (no class).
7Discuss reading and general relevance of rhetoric to academic analysis. Homework: nothing to submit.
9Continue previous class’s discussion. Homework: short paper on topic, “Should the likely tastes and
ethical values of your professional audience draw any sort of attention from your argument, or should you
always stick to objective facts?”
12Census Day. Discussion of submitted paper’s issues and of audience generally. Homework: read “Sweet
Conclusion” in textbook (pp. 343-354).
14Discussion of various audiences and purposes in academic writing. Homework: nothing tosubmit.
16Further discussion of academic audiences. Homework: short paper on topic, “For whom was ‘Sweet
Conclusion’ written, and why? To restate this question, why does the piece, if intended for academics, not
simply consist of facts, figures, case studies, or the like? Point to specifics within the article.”
19Discussion of summarizing. Homework: read “The Impact of Internet and Television Use…” in textbook
(pp. 295-316).
21In-class exercises on summarizing. Homework: nothing to submit.
23Further discussion of summaries. Homework: short paper topic, “Write a one-page summary of ‘The
Impact of Internet and Television Use…’.” Put entirely in your own words: be mindful of plagiarism.
26Discussion of abstracts. Homework: read “Ancient Maya Ditched Field Systems in the Rio Hondo” in
textbook (pp. 170-183).
28In-class exerciseson writing abstracts. Homework: nothing to submit.
30Further discussion of abstracts. Homework: short paper topic, “Write an abstract of the article,‘Ancient
Maya Ditched Field Systems in the Rio Hondo’.”
October