INSTRUCTOR: David Rollison



INSTRUCTOR: David Rollison

Office: Harlan Center 225

Phone: 485-9355 (voice mail)

e-mail: david.rollison@.ca.us

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|Check “Staff Information” for current hours |

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|Summer hours online only |

Office Hours:

Course Description:

English 151 is a second semester course (one with a prerequisite) that addresses some important skills: reading and writing texts and thinking critically about them. This course will meet graduation requirements for U.C. and C.S.U. campuses and fulfills IGETC requirements for transfer into either system. In some cases, more than one requirement may be met by this course.

A course in Critical Thinking is intended to help students develop skills in problem-solving, weighing and analyzing evidence, evaluating and formulating arguments, and recognizing fallacies or common errors in reasoning.

A second-semester Composition course is designed to help students refine the skills and techniques of written expression they have learned in the basic courses. These skills include: reading texts of various kinds and styles with insight and understanding; writing clear, effective, well-organized prose essays.

Although many people do not know it, both thinking and writing have been developed as technologies in our contemporary world. Being successful in the practice of these skills is something that can be learned by applying and practicing the methods and techniques presented to you.

Introduction to Literature: Critical Thinking & Writing

Pearson Custom Edition: 0536438498

This text is packaged with a supplemental literature anthology, a CDROM, and access to

MyLiteratureLab (CourseCompass):

The text is custom produced for this course and is available in the College bookstore or online at Pearson Education.

POLICIES:

ATTENDANCE:

• You are responsible for all material presented in class, including announcements about course procedures. Online attendance consists of logging in at least four days a week and following instructions to complete tasks in a timely way. Your log in time is recorded and you are responsible for keeping track of the course requirements.

EVALUATION:

• Examinations: There will be a series of reading quizzes occurring at announced times throughout the semester. The reading quizzes added together are worth 10% of the final grade.

• Essays: There will be four essays. Cumulative essay grade is worth 60% of the final course grade.

• CourseCompass work: 25% of the final grade is based on completed homework, participation in class activities, via CourseCompass, including discussions, “scaffolding” tasks, in-class writing, pre-writing, and editing tasks.

• Peer Reviews are worth 5% of the final grade.

• Extra Credit: There are some extra credit options, which I will announce the opportunities come up. Generally, these consist of: writing about topics included in the text book, but not covered by the semester’s syllabus; viewing films that have an intertextual relationship with a text we have studied; various kinds of written presentations. Extra credit points are calculated in addition to assigned activities.

• Course grades will be assigned as follows:

A: 90%--100% B: 80%--89.99% C: 70%--79.99%

D: 60%--69.99% F: below 60%

• This course is a letter grade only course. There is no Credit/No-Credit grading option

• Academic dishonesty, plagiarism particularly, will result in a course grade of F.

It is recommended that you record the names and phone numbers of at least two other class members.

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Resources:

Companion Web site to Writing About Literature in the Media Age (provides author biographies, annotated research links, etc.): you can link to this website via the CDROM

Guide to Grammar and Writing:

Evaluation:

Essays: 60% of final grade

Quizzes and Exams: 10% of final grade

Class Activities: 25% of final grade (class activities include completed homework, class discussion, group work, and assignment-related CourseCompass tasks.)

Peer Reviews: 5% of final grade

Extra Credit counts on top of these percentages.

Late paper policy:

▪ 1 late paper, one week late, no penalty, no questions asked. (Late paper cannot be final paper due.)

▪ Second late paper declines by 1/3 letter grade per school day late.

▪ No third late paper.

TASKS:

▪ Essays: There will be three formal essays. You will get a detailed description of the assignment in writing (and on the CourseCompass site) when the paper is assigned.

Essay #1 is a personal narrative, in which you tell the detailed story of a true event and draw certain kinds of conclusions about the event.

The remaining essays are analytical and argumentative. An assignment might ask you to choose a specific text and both to do research to contextualize it and to argue for a particular interpretation of it. An assignment might ask you to take a position on a topic drawn from readings and discussion and support your position in three ways: with personal narrative, with analysis of a literary text, and with appropriate research (primarily online). Ample tutoring help is available to you. A tutor is assigned to this class, and you are encouraged to email me or to avail yourself of tutoring services in LC110 or on the Course Compass tutoring center..

▪ Reading: To succeed in English 151, you will have to maintain good reading habits. The assigned readings are an essential aspect of the course and will demand active attention on your part. Analysis is a skill that does not come easy for many people, especially the analysis of literary texts, since it depends on a familiarity with certain styles and conventions that have become somewhat rare. Read carefully and think about what you’re reading. Do not read assignments quickly or at the last minute or when you are doing something else. I never assign an unreasonable number of pages to be read—a typical reading assignment is five or six pages; only a few of the readings are longer than ten pages. You’ll find that conscientious attention to the reading will pay off in increased comprehension and better writing.

▪ Quizzes and Exams: There will be specific, announced quizzes on assigned readings. Questions will be primarily factual but may include some interpretive issues. Quizzes will be given on the “class” following the assignment and are “closed book.” I of course have no control over this, but quizzes are timed. If you miss a quiz, you cannot make it up. Quiz scores will be added together for a total cumulative score.

▪ CourseCompass [MyLiteratureLab]: CourseCompass is an interactive website maintained by Pearson Education, a publishing enterprise. Your student access code will provide you with entry to the site and to the Class Home Page where I will post various kinds of assignments and tasks. Some of the tasks are designed to help you build your skills at interpreting texts and some are designed to create what we call the “scaffolding” for the essay assignments. Composition theorists have determined that the most effective way students learn to become competent writers of college essays is to approach the essay as a series of smaller tasks and then to combine these tasks into the finished product. The tasks I create for you in CourseCompass are always related to the “Project,” the essay assignment connected with a particular unit of study. They are never busy work or tasks without connection to the larger picture.

There’s a considerable versatility in CourseCompass, so tasks range from writing responses to specific questions to working on different stages of an essay draft (“Invent”) to responding to others’ drafts (“Respond,” or Peer Review.) There are also live chat and discussion features, research links, file sharing, email, and other features. Like any technology, the CourseCompass site may be subject to flaws or glitches from time to time and there will be a bit of a learning curve as you get used to how to use the program. You’ll have to be tolerant of some of the built in frustrations of the English cyber-world. Last semester, everything ran quite smoothly after a brief adjustment period because people brought good attitudes to the enterprise and by the end of the semester, things ran quite smoothly, thanks to good attitudes and good ideas. Rest assured, I am not grading your computer skills or typing skills and that you, too, will master the ability to negotiate the site successfully.

▪ Peer Reviews: An essential step in learning to write well is learning to read drafts critically and to edit extensively. As training for this step, there will be Peer Review sessions for each essay prior to its final due date. Some students feel uncomfortable with the peer review process either because they are uncertain about certain technical writing issues or because they may not have done enough work on an essay draft to allow for the kind of detailed feedback these reviews provide. More detailed instructions on Peer Reviews will be provided along with specific assignments, but note for now that 1) attending and completing peer reviews counts toward your final grade, and 2) incorporating good suggestions from peer reviewers into revised final drafts counts for a portion of each essay grade.

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Required Texts:

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