English 1A HonorsSection 44893 Assoc. Prof. Kelly Douglass, PhDM/W 11:40 – 1:52 [email protected] 119 OfficeQuad 222 FWRC hours: Office Hours:T/W/Th 9:20 – 10:30 MW 10:30– 11:30 T/Th/F 12:45-2 English 1A Summary:This class emphasizes and develops skills in critical reading and academic writing. Reading and writing assignments include exposition, argumentation, and academic research. Students will write a minimum of 10,000 words. Classroom instruction integrates Writing and Reading Center activities. Students are required to spend 18 hours working in the Writing and Reading Center.Honors Addendum to Class Summary: WHAT IS AMERICAN IDENTITY?This section of English 1A Honors is organized around a unifying question: What is American Identity? To get at this question we will read American and non-American authors, insiders and outsiders, and ask what is it, who defines it, why do we need it, how has it changed, and other related questions. Also, all Honors courses offer anenriched experience for accelerated students through limited class size, seminar format, focus on primary texts, and application of higher level critical thinking skills.Note that students may not receive credit for both English 1A and English 1A Honors. Spring 2009Texts and Materials: America Goes to College: Political Theory for the Liberal Arts. John Seery. SUNY Press. ISBN: 0791455920Letters from an American Farmer. Hector St. John de Crevecouer. Dover. ISBN: 0486444082The Accidental Asian. Eric Liu. Vintage. ISBN: 0375704868 They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Graff and Birkenstein. Norton. ISBN: 97803934091The Bedford Handbook, seventh edition. Diana Hacker. Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN: 0312419333 (This text is optional. There will be reading and grammar assignments from it, but I will provide a copy in the WRC.)A packet of readings that I will provide to you, and you should guard with your lifeMany 3x5 cardsAn active email account that you check regularlyLearning Objectives for English 1A – Upon successful completion of the course, studentsshould be able to demonstrate competence inthree areas:1. Critical Reading: You should be able to analyze college level texts with understanding and insight.2. Composition: You should be able to compose developed, unified, coherent, stylistically fluent essays in different writing modes, using the rhetorical conventions of academic writing and that effectively support argumentative claims.3. Research: You should be able to compose research papers that show your ability toSeveral texts are identified on the calendar as a WEB LINK reading. You can access them through a link to the reading on the course calendar on our course webpage. You MUST have a paper copy in class.A few of the readings are on reserve in the library and are available under my name in the reserve listings for reading and copying – they may not be taken out of the library. These reading assignments are noted as LIBRARY RESERVE on the calendar.Assignment Values for Final GradeClass Participation (in-class writings, quizzes, group work and discussion participation)10%Resource Use (WRC hours and grammar assignments) 3%Critical Thinking paper #1 (1200 word minimum) 6%Critical Thinking paper #1 revision (1200 word minimum) 6%Critical Thinking paper #2 (1500 word minimum) 10%Critical Thinking paper #3 (1700 word minimum) 15%Critical Thinking paper with Research support #1 (1800 word minimum)15%Critical Thinking paper with Research support #2 (1800 word minimum)15%Presentation 5%Midterm Exam 5%Final Exam 10%About Your Assignments:You will write five major papers in this class. The last two will require you to do some research beyond the materials provided in class. On all of these assignments you should visit me or an instructor or tutor in the WRC for drafting, writing, and/or revision assistance. Also, you will submit an electronic copy in addition to the paper copy that you turn in for each of these papers. If you are going to be absent from class, as long as the electronic copy has been sent by the time class starts, your paper will not be considered late.You will do a lot of in-class writing in this class. In-class writing assignments will almost never be announced ahead of time, and they cannot be made up. This is also true of all reading quizzes which are usually given in the first ten minutes of class.You will prepare one question card per class per reading selection (except those from the writing instruction books The Bedford Handbook and They Say/ I Say). Each one should have your name and the label of the kind of question it is at the top. You should have one card for each reading; they can be either INTERPRETIVE / EVALUATIVE (you can label these I/E) or QUOTE, COMMENT, QUESTION (you can label these QCQ). o INTERPRETIVE / EVALUATIVE questions should promote discussion through critical thinking strategies. These questions should seek ideas and implications that result from ideas in the text or analyze the meaning inside or behind something in the text. They should identify orchallenge assumptions, and/or explore alternative ways of thinking about what the text says. You are always invited to raise questions, problems, and concerns about the readings.o QUOTE, COMMENT, QUESTION questions refer to a specific narrow piece of the text. Don’t get too carried away here (it should all fit on your card if you write small) but don’t go with the overly simplistic either. These questions start with a short quote from the reading with page number listed at the top of the card, then provide your comment (opinion or response) on the quote you have provided and then ask a question for discussion in response to your own comment. So for example, a QCQ card might have this on it: Page 55 - Edgerton says that Ken Burns was taught to “respect the power of the single image to communicate, whether in film or photography [and] strong composition and formal appreciation, and dynamism within the image . . . the honorable practices of still photography.” I actually was taught that photography can be deceptive because we think we are looking at something “true” when the truth is fluid motion and photography gives you a nanosecond frozen in time, sometimes with expressions or positions that people can’t even make for more than that nanosecond. So, if that is true (and maybe it isn’t) how can