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College Writing II

Please note that this syllabus also appears in full on Canvas

Required Texts and Materials

  • Meyer, Michael. Literature to Go, 3rd Edition. Bedford/St. Martins, 2016. (note: can be found at the MSU bookstore OR online through the publisher OR on Amazon –you MUST purchase the textbook for this course and bring it with you to each class).
  • Use the handbook that you purchased for your WRIT105 class
  • A notebook of your choice devoted exclusively to this course
  • A folder (paper or electronic) to hold drafts and peer review feedback
  • Flash drive, pens, pencils, highlighter, computer paper

It is essential that you bring the texts to class. Be prepared to write in them, to make notations, and to underline or highlight.

Course Scope

College Writing II builds on the basic writing strategies taught in College Writing I and extends the goal of helping students to become effective writers of intellectual arguments in response to works of fiction, poetry and drama. Students continue to practice and develop as writers, but the focus in this course is on reading and interpreting literary texts. A minimum of 6000 words of formal writing, including at least one documented essay that engages students in their own process of academic research, is required. The central goal of WRIT 106, "College Writing II," is to help studentsexpand upon their critical thinking and writing skills and build an appreciation of a diversity of intellectual texts.

What We Will Do

This is a writing-intensive course designed to develop thinking and writing abilities through frequent writing assignments based on critical response to intellectually challenging questions and readings. Over the course of the semester, we will read a variety of texts by a fairly diverse group of writers, approaching them in three modules. Each module will begin with readings and proceed with a sequence of essay or project drafts, culminating in a final essay or project, due at the end of each module, one of which will involve outside research. During the reading portion of each module, you will have homework and in-class activities aimed at developing your reading and writing skills. You should expect to spend roughly eight hours a week outside of class time on your course work for this class. Expect to share your writing and your ideas with the class, so only write what you feel comfortable sharing. You will receive feedback on your writing from peers and from me and will revise your work based on this feedback. Your final course work will be the creation of a portfolio.

Course Outcomes

Students will develop competencies in first-year academic writing through specific attention to achievement in such areas as:

  • Generating central claims about intellectual ideas that are of significance, interest, and distinction
  • Supporting central claims with appropriate evidence and analysis
  • Organizing prose in a sequence that maximizes rhetorical effectiveness
  • Integrating ideas and information into one’s own prose using appropriate introduction, quotation, summary, and paraphrase
  • Documenting sources in-text and in a works-cited list
  • Analyzing the ideas of others with accuracy and insight
  • Understanding and correcting surface-level writing problems related to appropriate pronoun use, agreement (pronoun and antecedent, subject and verb), transitions, and sentence structure

CourseRequirements & Grading

Your course work will be weighted as follows (see below for exceptions):

  • Course Citizenship, Live Lit, Homework: 15%
  • Module 1 Final Draft: 15%
  • Module 2 Final Draft: 20%
  • Module 3 Final Draft: 25%
  • Final Portfolio: 25%

Course Citizenship (15%)

Because this is not a lecture course, your active engagement is required. To be actively engaged in the classroom means being on time and prepared to discuss the day’s reading by having done the assigned work and having all necessary materials in class. Part of good course citizenship includes raising questions about the texts, responding to others' questions, proposing interpretations, and making connections between our assigned texts. In order to meet the requirement, you must contribute to the work of the day (including class discussion, peer review, group work, and in-class writing assignments). Texting or consulting your cell phone or other device—even briefly—takes you out of the class and negates participation for the day. Your active engagement is what will make our classroom meetings dynamic, interesting, and illuminating. You may not have your cell phone out during class, unless you need it for an emergency, in which case you should see me before class. Also, please be aware that the use of laptops is not permitted unless cleared by the professor for a particular activity. The completion of the course evaluation in the last weeks of the semester is also part of this grade.

Unit Essays (60%)
Three papers, varying in length but totaling roughly 5500 words of revised prose, will be written over the course of the semester. Individual essay assignments will provide all the details for each assignment. Please know that you cannot reuse papers you have written for another course.

Portfolio (25%)

The portfolio takes the place of a final exam and receives its own grade, but does not change the grades originally earned by the formal writing assignments. The portfolio will be due at a class meeting during our scheduled final exam period; the university requires us to have a full class meeting at that time. You will be required to hand in the newly revised version and the original, graded version of the essays you select for your portfolio, so be sure to save your work. Specific details will be provided in the portfolio assignment.Please note that your final portfolio will be due at the end of our final exam period (on course schedule). The final portfolio is worth 25% of your final grade.

Reading/Viewing
The reading load will vary depending on what is being read, but you should expect to read between 20 and 70 pages a week during the reading portion of units. The reading may include essays, journal articles, newspaper articles, as well as critical texts and other secondary sources. Since you will have the reading assignments well in advance, you can plan your reading schedule to balance out the weeks of heavier reading. You are expected to follow close-reading techniques when reading all assigned texts and to annotate them to facilitate class discussion.

Class Cancellation Due to Emergency or Inclement Weather

Please note that I will make every effort to hold our class twice a week, every week, and you should expect that we hold class every week, twice a week. However, if I am extremely sick, or if there are dangerous driving conditions, class will not be held. In the event that this occurs, I will email you with ample notice. Please note that should this occur, you will have an assignment due in lieu of class that will count toward your participation and attendance grades for that day.

Class Etiquette

Let’s have our classroom be a model for how we would like the world to work. How we treat others demonstrates our respect for them. Our classroom and our shared Canvas site are collaborative spaces and the home of our writing community. In all communication with each other, respect is the order of the day. We will often disagree with one another but always respect the right of the other to hold a different opinion. However, even as regards opinions, no form of intolerance or hostility is allowed to enter our environment, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, or religious intolerance. Occasionally, although not often, immature “high-school” type behavior surfaces in the form of shared looks, eye-rolling, giggling, or otherwise making fun of someone in class. This type of behavior has no place in the college environment, and I will not ever tolerate it.

Further, the following rules are in place to keep our space safe and foster an atmosphere of intellectual growth and curiosity:

  • Cellphones and other electronic devices are to be stored out of sight and turned to silent once our class begins.
  • Arriving late to class is disruptive. If you feel you cannot make it to class on time given your other obligations (classes, transportation, etc.), please find a section that is better suited to your schedule before the add/drop period ends.
  • Always come to class prepared to discuss the readings or to work on drafts. This means having your course text(s) and other required materials with you (pen/pencil/highlighter, peer review sheets, handouts, etc.). You will not be able to get full credit for attendance if you are unprepared.
  • Know the names of your classmates! We will practice in the beginning but, if you find you do not know some names, please make the effort to find out. We will address each other by name in class.
  • Talking to another while I am speaking or another student is speaking is blatantly rude. Please do not do it.
  • Do not pack up before our class has ended.

Netiquette/Emails:
This course uses Canvas extensively for its course documents, submission of work, and any online discussions. You must have reliable access to the Internet, as schedules, assignments, handouts, and supplemental links for this course will be posted on Canvas. You must also have a “Plan B” in place for those times when your Internet stops working if you are off campus.If you experience any problems in using Canvas—issues with your computer and/or do not understand how to use a particular Canvas tool, please seek help from the Canvas tutorials or through OIT on the 5thfloor of University Hall. All work must be sent using Microsoft Word (.doc), Microsoft Word 2007/2010 (.docx). If your work is sent in a format I cannot open, it will be counted as late. Be diligent about submitting your work on time and in the proper format.

I fully expect you to check your email (Montclair mail and Canvas) at least once every day, as part of your overall participation in this course. I will often send reminders for the week or decide to add a discussion post or other assignment, and it is therefore very important that you check your email regularly and give your full attention to each email that I send (read it carefully). If I offer a reminder, or send an assignment, or any other important information, “I didn’t get the email” or “I didn’t read the email” is not a valid excuse for missing important information or missing an assignment.

Additionally, I expect that when you send me an email, you compose it professionally. Emailing a professor is its own unique rhetorical situation that calls for the following: a) a clear subject line; b) a salutation (for instance: “Good Morning Professor,”) and signature (for instance: “Sincerely,”); and c) proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. I also ask that prior to sending an email, you check the syllabus, recent email communication, assignment instructions, and/or reach out to a peer for the answer to your question. If you are still stumped, please feel free to email me.

A final note on emails is that you might want to get used to emailing work to yourself, from on or off campus as an attachment. Many students (including me at one time) have fallen prey to nasty technology surprises that erase their work, delete programs, destroy hard drives, etc. Avoid this (and know that I will not view it as an excuse) by emailing work to yourself, so that you can easily retrieve it from anywhere and relieve yourself of that soul-crushing feeling of losing all the work that you’ve been working on for the last several hours. Trust me.

Homework

Both the reading and written homework assignments are important aspects of the course and are listed on the course schedule. Submit the written homework via Canvas, and make sure to have access to your work during class as well. Due by the beginning of class, the written assignments are a place for you to start thinking about the readings we will be discussing. For clarity, please follow standards for punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and paragraphing.I will grade homework responses using a point-based and offer a brief comment. You will be graded on how well you follow the instructions and meet the requirements of the assignment.Homework is due on the date indicated on the syllabus, by the beginning of class time, regardless of whether you are absent, class is cancelled due to an emergency, or campus is closed.

Live Lit Requirement

One of the requirements of this course is that you attend one Live Lit event at MSU. I have highlighted the Live Lit or Peak Performance events on the course schedule. Including both Montclair State University writers and visiting writers and artists that are published locally, nationally, and even internationally, Live Lit events provide the opportunity for the MSU community to experience literary performance and engage directly with writers about the creative process. At Live Lit events, typically two or three writers share a stage, first reading their work, and then responding to questions from the audience. Attending a Live Lit event is a wonderful way for students to gain perspective on the writing process.

To check the schedule (which will be updated soon), please visit:

Live Lit Short Assignment:

As part of the Live Lit requirement for this course, you are also required to submit a ticket stub or other proof of attendance, and type a short (300-500 words, double spaced, in MLA format) summary and reflection paper discussing the nature of the event you attended, your reaction to the event, and how it relates to discussions, literature, or theory we have covered in class.

Formal Writing Assignments

Three formal assignments arerequired, one for each module on the syllabus. Each module assignment will ask you to develop an argument that grows out of your analysis of assigned readings and consideration of the topics covered; specific assignments will be distributed in advance. The first two will be traditional argumentative essays; the third will be a multimodal project that requires some outside research and appropriate integration of secondary sources, including digital materials. Each essay will undergo revision and rewriting, with the assistance of peer review, instructor feedback, and your own further thinking. All essays will adhere to MLA format for research papers, including documentation. Only final drafts receive a letter grade; however, credit for the rough drafts will be factored into the final essay grade. More specifically, there will be penalties for short, late, or missing drafts and for short or late essays, or for drafts that show minimal revision.

Meeting deadlines is an important part of our class and your overall academic success. Accordingly, I will deduct half a letter grade for each day that afinal draftis late. If you are struggling with an assignment, please come discuss it with mebefore it is due. Telling me about any struggles you may be experiencingafterthe assignment is due will not change this policy.

I will do my best to provide you with detailed,meaningfulfeedback during the draft process and beyond. I expect you to submit exploratory and middle drafts on the dates and times they are due, listed on your syllabus (course schedule) and on assignment pages.If you do not submit your exploratory and middle drafts (through Canvas, in the proper format) on time, you will not receive feedback from me on those drafts. Your final drafts will generally receive minimal feedback, as extensive feedback will have been provided on exploratory and middle drafts.

Drafts

Drafting and revising are critical to success in this class, and to that end, substantial work between drafts must be evident. If you were given notes during a peer review, or comments from me, their effect on your writing should be apparent.Spell-checking, addition, and format changes alone are not enough to constitute a revised draft. For a draft to receive full credit, it must meet the requirements outlined on the essay assignment (length, topic, format, and so forth). You should also keep and back up all drafts for work on your revisions and your final portfolio; keep all feedback received as well. You may decide to keep a folder (either paper or electronically) that contains all drafts and feedback, as this will help you as you begin to work on your final portfolio.

Grading Criteria & Grades

  • See "Student Writing Assessment(Links to an external site.)" for grading rubric and descriptions of A, B, C, D, and F essays
  • Your course grade will be calculated using the percentages described above with the following exceptions: excessive absence, missing work, and submitting plagiarized work (see detailed program policies below)

Missing Work