Course Syllabus

College of Southern Nevada Course Syllabus

ENG 102 section 3032

Instructor: Riley Bassett

Email: Riley.Bassett@csn.edu

Class Meeting Times: 11:00 - 11:20 AM

Class Meeting Room: West Charleston Building D 213

 

Course Description (CSN Catalog): English 102 is a continuation and extension of English 101 and equivalents with attention to analytical reading and writing, critical thinking, and research methodologies, while emphasizing interpretation, analysis, synthesis and argument.

Prerequisite: ENG 100 or ENG 101 or ENG 101H or ENG 113 with a grade of C- or higher.

 

Course Learning Outcomes: Students successfully completing this course should be able to do the following:

• Address purpose, audience, and rhetorical situation.
• Produce writing that demonstrates academic reading skills.
• Use a process approach to compose well-developed, research-based essays.
• Create an argumentative and/or expository thesis supported by textual evidence.
• Locate, evaluate, and integrate information sources.
• Summarize, analyze, synthesize, apply, and document source material
• Control conventions of language, mechanics, and MLA format.

 

Required Textbooks:

• Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel K. Durst."They Say/I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, with Readings. 3rd ed. NY: Norton, 2015.
• Lunsford, Andrea, et al. Everyone's an Author. 2nd ed. NY: Norton. 2016.

 

Writing Center: All students are strongly encouraged to use the free services provided by the Writing Centers. The services are on a walk-in basis, so no appointment is necessary. Trained assistants are available to help students discover topics, complete helpful prewriting tasks, learn to work with campus resources for conducting research, organize papers, develop ideas, draft papers, and revise for readability. Help is available for both MLA and APA format and documentation style. For optimal assistance, students are encouraged to bring a copy of their writing project at any stage, including free writes, notes, research, an outline, a partial or complete draft, and a printed copy of the assignment guidelines.

Henderson Campus: Building C, Room 114 (651- 3187)

Charleston Campus: Building C, Room 112 (651- 7402)

Cheyenne Campus: Building Q (Telecomm.), Room 1708 (651- 4101)

Hours for all Writing Centers:

Monday – Thursday: 8:00AM - 6:00PM
Friday – Saturday: 9:00AM - 3:00PM
Writing Center Website: www.csn.ecu/writingcenter

SMARTHINKING provides students with an online Writing Lab. Students can access this free service via their CANVAS account.

Other Resources for Academic Help:

• For online help with writing mechanics: http://www.writingmechanics.com/ or http://owl.english.purdue.edu
• For CSN library resources to Start Research: http://sites.csn.edu/library/research/Main.html
• For CSN library resources on grammar and composition: http://libguides.csn.edu/grammar
• Sources for Student Success, including Student Retention Center: http://www.csn.edu/PDFFiles/Retention/Resources_for_Student_Success_August_2009[1].pdf

Students experiencing academic problems will be contacted by a member of the Student Retention Center to arrange tutoring in subject matter, study skills, time management, and other issues that may be problematic. Please respond to these email messages from the Student Retention Center and take appropriate and timely action to set up support.

CSN Disability Resource Center: If a student has a documented disability that may require assistance, he or she should contact the Disability Resource Center (DRC) as soon as possible:

Cheyenne Campus                 651-4045

W. Charleston Campus           651-5644

Henderson Campus                651-3086

 

Students’ Rights and Responsibilities: Information about CSN Student Policies can be found in the current catalog and online via the college’s website.

Student Resources: Please see this link for a variety of helpful information for students: http://www.csn.edu/PDFFiles/Retention/Resourcesforsuccess.pdf

Academic Honesty

Students are to make themselves familiar with the college’s Student Academic Integrity Policy at http://www.csn.edu/studentacademicintegrity . There will be zero tolerance for plagiarism and cheating. Copying and pasting from the Internet or merely paraphrasing just a few words is not an acceptable practice in college. Not knowing the rules for plagiarism is not an acceptable excuse. If you are unsure about the rules for plagiarism, go to the writing center or to the library. The minimum sanction/grade for plagiarism is an F on the assignment; repeated offenses carry an F for the class as the minimum penalty. Students are warned not to try the instructor on this because the incident will be recorded as plagiarism on the student’s permanent record.

 

Classroom Procedures

Required Format: Bring your books to class with you, as we will sometimes use them. All papers submitted for this course must be typed, with 1-inch margins (this means you have to change the margins in Word’s default page setup), in Times New Roman 12-point font, and double-spaced. Papers must also adhere to current MLA (Modern Language Association) 8^th edition style guidelines.

Communication: This is a classed based on rhetoric. Therefore, I expect emails to be clear and appropriate. I will communicate important details via emails and/or CANVAS.

The best way to know what to do for class is to consult the syllabus/schedule first—it is your guide for reading and/or homework assignments that are due for each class period. If you have a question and you can’t find the answer on the syllabus, schedule, CANVAS, or through your classmates, then email me and I will respond as quickly as I can (such inquiries will be answered during regular business hours).

Group Work: Good writing is a collaborative experience. As such, you will share topics and ideas with others, and you will often share your writing in class. This is so you will have the opportunity to receive others’ responses and reflections on your writing/argumentation. You will also offer comments on others’ writing. As part of a professional community of writers, you are expected to be honest but kind in your comments and to be respectful of others’ ideas.

 

Grading Scale:

94-100=A

90-93 = A-

87-89 = B+

84-86 = B

80-83 = B-

77-79 = C+

74-76 = C

70-73 = C-

67-69 = D+

64-66 = D

60-63 = D-

<60 =F

 

 

Policies:

Attendance Policy

Students who have more than three unexcused absences during the semester will forfeit ten points from their final grade. If you know ahead of time that you will exceed the absence limit please let me ASAP and we can try to work something out. If you are consistently and excessively late to class, or if you are not paying attention because of Facebook, phones, iMessage, etc. you will be counted as absent.

Revision Policy

You are allowed to revise any final draft of a paper. You cannot revise a paper with the grade of either an A- or A. If you choose to revise, you must attach the following to your revised paper:

• Your original paper with my comments
• The original rubric with my comments
• 1-2 page (double spaced) paper explaining the changes you made, why you think those changes are effective, and how you think they will improve your paper. Referencing, quoting, or paraphrasing from our class textbooks may help you to articulate your changes, as well as state your case for why/how these changes should improve your paper. (Be aware that surface changes will not make much difference in your paper’s grade).

I will record the average of the papers’ grades.

Late work

Late essays will lose a third of a letter grade for each day they are late, including weekends. There will be no make-ups for rushwrites, nor for missed homework assignments.

Participation

Your participation grade for the class will be determined by your participation in class discussion, paper workshopping/peer reviews, and some in-class assignments (i.e. rushwrites, etc). So be aware that not doing an assignment of any kind can cause loss of participation points.

 

 

Course Assignments:

Essays

There will be a total of three essays to be written throughout the course and one visual rhetorical project—all will be researched to help you take a stance on a position, or evaluate an author’s presentation of an argument. Each essay will require a rough/initial draft, as well as a final draft. Individual students may be assigned online exercises for various aspects of writing mechanics if the need arises. Some students may be directed to tutorial services for academic support.

Rushwrites

Rushwrites are in-class writing assignments, usually done at the beginning of class. The topics will change every time and will be collected in class. (They also help me to take attendance).

Peer Reviews

Peer reviews are an essential part of the writing and revision processes. These will be done primarily in class. If you do not do them, you will not only be hurting your peers' papers and revisions, but not participating will negatively affect your overall participation grade or the final grade of your own paper.

Annotated Bibliography

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph—the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

Yours will include 10-12 sources—6 of which need to be peer-reviewed/scholarly sources, the rest can be from wherever you feel necessary or appropriate, as long as they are credible.

Discussions

Throughout the course, there are discussion postings that are graded. These are titled either RRR (Read, Research, Respond) or Try It.

 

Course Evaluation Methods:

Your final grade will be calculated out of a total of 1500 points. Here is the point breakdown:

• Opinion Editorial:
  • Proposal/Outline: 25 pts.
  • Initial draft: 50 pts.
  • Final draft: 100 pts.
• Rhetorical Analysis:
  • Proposal/Outline: 25 pts.
  • Initial draft: 50 pts.
  • Second draft: 50 pts.
  • Final draft: 100 pts.

• Argument/Issues Paper:
  • Proposal/Outline: 25 pts.
  • Initial draft: 50 pts.
  • Second draft: 50 pts.
  • Final draft: 150 pts.
• Annotated Bibliography: 100 pts.
  • List of sources: 30 pts.
• Multimodal Project:
  • Proposal/Outline: 25 pts.
  • Initial draft: 50 pts.
  • Final draft: 100 pts.
• Final project: 100 pts.
• Discussions: 340 pts.
• Peer Reviews: 50 pts.
• Participation/Rushwrites: 30 pts.