Kingsborough Community College



Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

Spring 2008

English 91 DO2A – Course Syllabus

Instructor: Donna-lyn Washington

Office Hours: Mondays 11:30am – 12:30pm

Mailbox: English Department: Room C309

Email: DonnaWashington@

Office: Room E219

Meeting Times: Monday and Thursday – 8:00am – 10:10am – Room C215

Wednesday – 8:00am – 10:10am – Room C111

Lab Hours: Tuesday - 8:00am – 10:10am – Room L219

Course Description:

English 91 is a developmental course designed to help students increase fluency in college-level reading and writing. During this course we will talk about your ideas at length in the forms of small and whole class discussions. You will also be asked to read for overall meaning as well as to do more closely focused reading of shorter texts and segments of longer texts. This is a writing intensive course that focuses on writing as a process. Through essay writing and revising you will work through a series of drafts aided by the teacher-, tutor-, peer-, and self-response methods.

By the end of the course, you should:

- Understand that reading is a process that involves guesswork, prediction, and reflection

- Use a variety of reading strategies for approaching challenging texts

- Be more comfortable writing an essay of several pages than when you began the course

- Identify the main idea for texts and be able to interpret it in your own words

- Improve your knowledge of Standard American Written English

Required Reading:

- The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Stories Since 1970

- Selections from In Our Own Words by Rebecca Mlynarczyk and Steven Haber

- The Color of Water by James McBride

- Handouts will also be provided

Required Materials:

- Five pocket folders (one for each essay and one for your journals)

- Standard size 8 ½ x 11 Loose leaf paper

- Pen/Pencil/highlighter

- Post-its

- A good English dictionary

Work Requirements:

You will write four (4) formal essays (written work that is drafted and revised) and one (1) reflective essay over the course of the semester. For each formal essay, I will provide you with an assignment sheet, detailing the requirements of that essay. You must write a minimum of three drafts of each of the essays you feel are your strongest. Also, you will write additional drafts for two of the essays to submit in your final portfolio.

Journal/Response Writing

Your journal will be a place to express your thoughts and ideas about the texts we are reading and the issues that are raised through our class discussions. I will periodically collect your journals on announced dates. For your journal, you must purchase a regular pocket folder and a good supply of loose leaf paper. Each piece of journal writing must contain a heading including your full name, the date and the number of the journal assignment. Print your full name clearly on the front of your folder. This is the only form your journal may take. I will not accept notebooks or stapled piles of paper as a journal.

Class Expectations:

- Always bring the text we are currently reading to class

- Always bring your journal and something to write with to class

- Do not hand in your work late. I will not accept work once it is a week late

- Do not throw out your drafts

- You are allowed 16 hours of absences from the class (including the Tuesday lab) before you are given an automatic fail (WU) for the course. Also if you are 20 minutes or more late to class or lab it counts as half an absence. I will take attendance every session so make sure you are on time and prepared to work.

- Plagiarism which is the use of someone else’s work without giving credit to its author, will not be tolerated. This includes copying from the internet, from another student’s work, from books, articles etc. If you are unsure as to whether you are correctly citing a source, please contact me.

- Turn off all cell phones/ipods etc before entering the classroom

Evaluation/Assessment:

You will not receive grades on individual essays in this course. Instead, your writing will be evaluated through the portfolio system. (I will also chart your progress through peer review, my comments and one-to-one meetings.) Near the end of the semester you will submit a final portfolio to me, which (as per college policy) will be assessed on a pass/fail basis by another instructor of English 91. You will also take a final reading test at the end of the semester. Every student in every section of English 91 will take the same test. In order to pass English 91 you must pass the portfolio and the reading test. There is no CUNY-ACT test at the end of this course.

Best of luck to you this semester.

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

D. Washington

Spring 2008/English 91

Using Quotations to Make Connections

James McBride’s The Color of Water

Directions - On a separate sheet of paper:

Part A.

Find the context (the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning – Merriam-Webster dictionary) of each quotation. How does the quotation help to explain or connect to what is happening at this moment on the page (or possibly also on the page(s) before or after)?

Part B.

What is the significance of each quote? Do they refer to other information that’s not stated directly in the text – but which the author may have referred to earlier in the chapter or the book?

1. “Mommy’s contradictions crashed and slammed against one another like bumper cars at Coney Island. White folks, she felt, were implicitly evil toward blacks, yet she forced us to go to white schools to get the best education. Blacks could be trusted more, but anything involving blacks was probably substandard…She was against welfare and never applied for it despite our need, but championed those who availed themselves of it.” (p. 29)

2. “The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. It’s what made the river flow, the ocean swell, and the tide rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable? (p. 94)

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

Spring 2008/English 91

Reading Journal Assignment Questions #2: The Color of Water, Chapters 1-11 (pages 1-115)

Due: Beginning of Class on Wednesday March 12

Directions: Do not copy the questions. Write the question numbers and the answers. Answer ALL the questions. Answer in complete sentences and use the essay breakdown form to help you. Put your name and Reading Journal #3 at the top of the first page.

Write a minimum (at least) of 3 pages (3 sides) single spaced/do not skip lines.

Use your own words. Do not copy the text or simply insert a different word every few text words.

1. Ruth McBride Jordan begins her story by telling her son that she is “dead”. How does this statement relate to the question of her identity? (pp 1-3)

2. What were Ruth’s relationships with her siblings like? How are Ruth’s sibling ties similar/different than that of James and his siblings? (chapter 7, chapter 8, pp. 98, 200-201)

3. How did Ruth McBride’s refusal to reveal her past influence her children’s sense of themselves and their place in the world? How has your knowledge – or lack thereof – about your family background shaped you own sense of identity? (pp 12, 13, 50-53, 85-86, 89-93, 99-100, 104-105)

4. James punches the son of a Black Panther on the school bus. How does this relate to James’ confusion about identity? (pp 21-23, 26-27, 30-31, 34-36)

5. Ruth’s name changes from “Ruchel Dwajra Zylska” to “Rachel Deborah Shilsky” to “Ruth McBride Jordan”. How are these name changes significant and what do they each represent with respect to the identity and life lived by James’ mother? (pp 1-2, chapter 3, 42-43, 80, chapter 11)

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

English 91

Instructor: D. Washington

Reading Journal Assignment Questions #3: The Color of Water, Chapters 12-16 (pages 117-168)

Due: Beginning of Class on Wednesday March 19, 2008

Directions: Do not copy the questions. Write the question numbers and the answers. Answer ALL the questions. Answer in complete sentences and use the essay breakdown form to help you. Put your name and Reading Journal #3 at the top of the first page.

Write a minimum (at least) of 3 pages (3 sides) single spaced/do not skip lines.

Use your own words. Do not copy the text or simply insert a different word every few text words.

1. James McBride writes his novel in two voices. While his own is in standard font his mother’s (Ruth) is written in italics. Why is this significant? How does it affect the way you are reading the book?

2. How does Ruth respond to tragedy? You may use information from previous chapters to help you answer this question. (chapters 12-13, 163-165)

3. James’ life begins to deteriorate after the death of his stepfather. Does his experience in Louisville Kentucky turn his life around? What did he learn from Chicken Man during the summers he spent there? (chapter 14, 161-163)

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

English 91

Instructor: D. Washington

Reading Journal Assignment Questions #4: The Color of Water, Chapters 17- “Afterword” (pages 169-295)

Due: Beginning of Class on Wednesday March 26, 2008

Directions: Do not copy the questions. Write the question numbers and the answers. Answer ALL the questions. Answer in complete sentences and use the essay breakdown form to help you. Put your name and Reading Journal #4 at the top of the first page.

1. Now that you have completed The Color of Water, how does Ruth’s statement of “I’m dead” relate to the question of her identity? (pp. 246, 253-254, 269, 271-274, Epilogue)

2. What connection is there between chapter 21 A Bird Who Flies and chapter 15 Graduation?

3. What influence did Dennis McBride have on Ruth and James? (Ch. 23, pp. 250-251, 253)

4. James McBride states: “It took many years to find out who she was partly because I never knew who I was” (p. 261). How does this statement affect your idea(s) about personal identity? Why is this quote important? (pp. 253-254, 261-263, 266, 269-270)

5. “As she revealed the facts of her life I felt helpless, like I was watching her die and be reborn again.” (p. 269) What does this statement reveal about James McBride? (pp. 261-270, Epilogue)

6. Based on your reading of The Color of Water did Ruth and/or James find their identity? (Ch. 25, Epilogue, Afterward)

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

Instructor: D. Washington

English 91

Group Work on The Color of Water Chapters 17 – “Epilogue”

Your first formal portfolio essay focused on your personal definition of identity. Now we will be looking at the readings from a different point-of-view. You will now be analyzing/interpreting texts not from your personal experience, but as a critical observer. Questioning the readings from another angle will help develop your writing and reading skills. In essence, it will improve your fluency in writing.

Now for the fun part, you will be formed into groups and assigned one question formulated by another group. Your group will work together as follows:

• Discuss the question amongst yours group members.

o Ask yourselves and each other:

▪ What is McBride trying to say?

▪ What connections are being made?

▪ Is McBride trying to explain his mother’s behavior?

▪ What does the use of imagery have to do with his mother?

• Take notes while talking with your group, refer to our past class discussions, highlight anything in the book relevant to answering the question.

• If necessary take turns reading the texts relevant to answering the question.

• Then as a class each group will present what the question is about, what the answer is, and the process in which they found the answer.

Note:

The above questions are only a guide. The goal is to answer the questions that were formulated by your fellow students.

Kingsborough Community College

City University of New York

Instructor: D. Washington

English 91

Writing Assignment 1

(First Formal Essay)

Due: Monday March 17, 2008 – Essays handed in later than this date will be penalized

Requirements:

- Your essay must be at least two typed written pages. Your essay will include the following criteria:

o 12 point font, Times New Roman

o One inch margins – Go to file, then page set up, in the margins section click until you see the number 1 for top, bottom, left and right

o Double space your essay

- Attach your outline/brainstorming/clustering behind the essay

- Your heading should be as follows:

Your Name

English 91 DO2A

Instructor: D. Washington

Essay 1 Draft 1

Date

Title – Center your title

Essay Question:

Write an essay in which you define and explain what the concept of “identity” means to you. In writing your essay, keep in mind Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self”, Amy Bloom’s “Silver Water”, Robert Olen Butler’s “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot”, James McBride’s The Color of Water, and reading four (4) on identity from In Our Own Words. You should refer to and quote at least one of these texts AND use personal experience(s) to illustrate your definition of "identity" for the reader of your essay.  Remember, your unique definition of "identity" IS your thesis for this essay, so it must be well supported.  In essence, you are trying to offer the reader a new way of viewing the concept of identity that he/she may not have considered before.

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