Dan Melzer Office Phone: 278-6925 Office Hours: TWR 3:30-4:00 Summer 2011Office: Calaveras 151Email: [email protected] SacCT site: http://online.csus.edu English 20: College Composition II Section 03, TWR 1:00-3:20, CLV 135 English 20 Course Description: ENGL020. College Composition II. An advanced writing course that builds upon the critical thinking, reading, and writing processes introduced in English 1A or 2. This class emphasizes rhetorical awareness by exploring reading and writing within diverse academic contexts with a focus on the situational nature of the standards, values, habits, conventions, and products of composition. Students will research and analyze different disciplinary genres, purposes, and audiences with the goals of understanding how to appropriately shape their writing for different readers and demonstrating this understanding through various written products. Writing requirement: a minimum of 5,000 words. Prerequisite: 30 units and a grade of C- or better in ENGL 001A or equivalent. English 20 Learning Outcomes Students will develop rhetorical knowledge and awareness of writing in the disciplines through: • Reading texts from a variety of disciplines in a variety of genres • Identifying appropriate context-based writing conventions • Composing, informally and/or formally, in a variety of genres • Developing the ability to think critically about the values and standards of various disciplines Texts Sacramento State Student Writing Handbook at: http://www.csus.edu/wac/WAC/Students/CSUS_Writing_Handbook.pdf Readings from Writing the University at www.csus.edu/wac/journal Readings from Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing at http://writingspaces.org/ Additional readings on PDF files under Learning Modules link of the SacCT website Attendance and Participation This is not a lecture course, and I value everyone’s active and helpful participation. Because much of the learning in this class will take place during classroom discussions, workshops, and one-one-one conferences, regular attendance is essential. This means you cannot receive an “A” grade unless you are a regular and effective contributor to classroom discussions and workshops. Workshops and other in-class activities can’t be made up.I understand that life happens: emergencies come up, you’re asked to work an extra day, you get sick, etc. Because of this, you can miss two classes. If you miss more than two class days, your grade will be lowered by a third of a letter grade for each class you miss (for example, “A” to “A-”). If you are more than fifteen minutes late for class you will be marked as absent. Please turn off your cell phone before class, or put it on vibrate if you need to be accessible to someone (for example, a sick child or parent). Please do not use electronic devices during class to text or surf the Web, and please do not do homework from another class during class. I will respect you by being prepared and trying to make this an engaging and useful class, so please respect me and your peers by staying focused in class. Assignments Discussion Board Posts To use writing as a tool for learning and critical thinking about the class readings, before most classes you will write an informal, exploratory 150-200 word post to the class Web site electronic discussion board. Each post will be in response to a specific prompt (see syllabus or the discussion board for prompts). Don’t worry about grammatical correctness or organization: these are informal and exploratory responses, and the content is what matters—the depth and quality of your thinking. Discussion leaders might use your posts in class, so don’t write anything you do not want to share with the entire class. The posts are due before class on the day of the assigned readings for the post. Active Reading of Class Texts In order to fully engage with the class readings, you will need to be an active reader, underlining key ideas and writing responses or questions in the margins. Before each class discussion I will ask you to review your annotations of the readings. This will refresh your memory of the key ideas in the reading and the central responses and questions you had as you read. I will circulate around the class to give everyone credit for having their reading materials and annotating their reading materials. Leading and Summarizing Classroom Discussions I have a “constructivist” approach to teaching, which means that I believe that knowledge is not delivered by the teacher but is socially constructed. I believe that students learn best when they play the central role in the construction of knowledge. Because of this belief, I ask that students play the lead role in classroom discussions. Each student in the class will lead a 20-30 minute discussion of one of the readings or be in charge of summarizing the discussions for the class day they choose. Your role on the day you are leading discussion is to invite conversation by preparing thoughtful questions about the readings or a brief in-class activity that will engage us with the reading. The focus should be on sparking discussion, not on delivering a lecture. You may use your discussion board post and/or your peers’ posts to facilitate discussion on these days: for example, you might copy passages from your peers’ posts on a handout, or choose a few posts for classmates to read aloud. Feel free to have us get into small groups if you like. On the day you lead discussion, you are in charge of calling on your peers in the order they have raised their hands. If you are summarizing a class discussion, you will take careful notes for that class day and then at the end of class present a 2-3 minute overview of the main ideas and issues that were discussed in class. Writing in Your Major Project The biggest project you will complete in this class will involve investigating the writing in your major and in professions related to your major and presenting the results of this investigation in the form of a website about writing in your major that will be published in the “Student Resources” area of the University Reading and Writing Center website (www.csus.edu/writingcenter). The website will include information from teachers and students, analysis of the writing conventions in your major, a description of common genres in your major, example student writing, etc. You don’t need to know how to create a
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