Instructor: Brian McKinney - bmckinne@silcon.com
Preamble: This course, like all college courses, is taught within a framework provided by the college. That framework includes grading standards (A through F) and amount of time per unit (three hours a week or nine hours a week for a three unit course) students should be asked to devote to that course. Further, the English Division has adopted a course outline for English 122, which sets guidelines for content.
Journals - about four a week, each entry at least 150 words, no more than one entry sent to me a day, for a total of 50.
Essays: Twelve, sent to me in four stages: thesis (Read Chapter 1, Writing with a Thesis, to discover what I mean by "thesis"), first paragraph, final (spell checked), and rewrite. You must have sent the first three stages by your deadline: Parts Three and Four of each essay should be sent as attachments. (See Nuts and Bolts, below.) Note that fourteen essays are assigned; you may miss two of them without lowering your grade.
Essay analyses: Five, sent about once a month. These are based on the "extra" essays by present and past students. "This is great" won't do. "This is great because _________ but it would be even more great if _______" would. Here's an example of a successful analysis. Here's another, even more successful. Please CC the writer of the essay (the writer's name is a "mailto" button). Once you have done your five analyses, each analysis you write will count as two journals (no more than one a week, please)
B. Nuts and bolts: Return to top | Return to index
Please use this format for Parts 3 and 4 of your essays.
Send Parts 1 (your thesis) and 2 (your first paragraph) in a regular
email message.
Write your papers single-spaced in your word processor
(MS Word preferred), edit and spell check them, then cut and paste
them into email. For a subject heading use, for example, jones_twothree,
for someone named Jones sending me Essay Two, Part Three; if your
name is Abernathy, just use the first five letters of your name:
abern_twothree. Put your name before the assignment number, so
my copy of your paper is kept in alphabetical order.
Journal format. At the top of the message, below the subject,
write your name and the number of the journal entry. ("John
Doe, Journal #1") Single-spaced, please. After I read your
entry, I will write "ok" and return it to you. If you
wish me to read your entry closely, after checking it for some
mechanical problem [run on sentences, say, or pronoun reference]
or because you wish me to respond to a question, put an asterisk
(*) after the number. If it's a grammatical problem, tell me what
you want me to look for ["runon sentences"] at the top.
Paper format and sequence. For your subject line, write
your name and the number of the assignment. ("John Doe, Essay
One") Single-spaced, please. All assignments will have four
stages, thesis, first paragraph, first version, rewrite, each
to be sent separately, after I approve each. Here is a workable
sequence for Assignment One:
You all have a "B." Earn "extra" on at least five papers, and you have an "A." Miss more than two week's assignments or write fewer than fifty journals or fail to satisfy the format requirement or to read and report on the novels, and you have a "C." combine two or more of these shortcomings or fail to rewrite papers (your Part 4 rewrites) up to standard college level writing, and you have a "C." Miss much more than three weeks' work, and you have a "D."
For the final, you will write an essays which will count toward your final grade only if it helps you or if it shows that that you not are the person who has been writing the online essays. Failure to write satisfactory college-level essays at the final will probably result in a final grade of "D," regardless of the grades you receive on the emailed essays.
These requirements may seem unnecessarily stringent and detailed. I have established them so we all know the rules by which we are operating, to keep you from falling into the Procrastination Pit (one of the main dangers in an online course), and to avoid a last-minute flood of work, which does nobody any good.
What makes a paper "extra"? Specific examples, unity, wit, active writing (as opposed to passive), human writing (as opposed to bureaucratic), mechanical control (spelling, sentence structure, workable thesis, logical development, transitions between sentences and paragraphs), surprises, and/or brilliance. I have posted some "extra" papers for you to examine.
If your papers are not college-level writing, I may refuse to accept them or give you a second chance to bring them up to college level. If your second versions are not college-level, I will reject them. "College-level" means to me writing complete sentences, avoiding incomplete sentences, avoiding massive spelling problems, and making your subjects and verbs agree. Some of you might be better suited for Eng 118 than 122; I will tell you if I think that is so.
Narration, description, process, comparison-contrast, cause and effect, division and classification, and definition. (These are chapter headings in Writing with a Thesis.) For maximum credit, you must use each of those rhetorical techniques or organizational devices in one of your papers. As part of the subject, tell me which of these techniques or devices you used in that paper. [Example: Joneseone_four Research Definition] You may use three or four of these in one paper. No problem. You may use them in any order. No problem. Once you've decided what to write about, think about which of these techniques you wish to use.
At least two of your papers must focus on novels chosen from this list:
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (what if
Charles Lindbergh had been elected president instead of FDR?)
Word of Honor by Nelson DeMille (post Vietnam suspense)
Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry (a short saga of the Old
West)
Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver (you can go
home again, but it's not easy)
Rose by Martin Cruz Smith (a love story and a mystery,
set in and around an English coal mine)
The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell (don't read on Mother's
Day)
A Widow for One Year by John Irving (like most Irving novels,
lots of commentary on quirky folk, and a fair amount of sex)
The Edge of the Crazies by Jamie Harrison (a Montana archeologist
becomes a sheriff, to his great dismay)
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe (What are college
students like these days?)
Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian (the second in the celebrated
series about a British sea captain and his best friend, the doctor/spy).
Find Writing with a Thesis and Rules of Thumb,
the two texts, online, or wherever is handiest; it doesn't matter
which edition you buy, and used texts are available from www.amazon.com.
I haven't ordered texts through the bookstore because of their
price, which is much more than prices you can find elsewhere.
Most of the novels should be available from your local library.
If you belong to the Contra Costa Country Library, you can reserve
books by going to the library's
webpage.
For other papers, you might persuade me to add novels (for
the following semester). You might also persuade me to remove
some of these.
Here is a checklist you may print out for all of the assignments in the class. Fill in your own due dates, and you're on your way.
Totally up to you. Write about what interests, engages, irritates, fascinates you. (We all write better when we write about something that's important to us.) You may write about nothing but the Internet. You may write about a different subject each week. You can get through the whole semester without ever mentioning the Internet. Try reviews: restaurants, books, television programs, websites. Try letters to the editor. (For extra credit, get a letter to the editor published.) Describe a place that's important to you, tell me something that happened there, and tell me why the place is important to you (for one, two, or three weeks' work). If you're a man, write about women. If you're a woman, write about men. (If you're stumped for subjects for essays, check Writing with a Thesis or the list of journal subjects).
Although you may write about anything you want, some subjects work less well than others. Papers about abortion, capital punishment, and gun control, for example, have to be brilliant to be successful because these subjects have been written about to the point where most writers have nothing new to add to the debate. Subjects that depend upon faith instead of facts ("Outlaw abortions because a fertilized egg is a human being") work even less well, and I reserve the right to refuse to accept such papers. As Robert Heinlein said: "The great trouble with religion - any religion - is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by reason." This course is about reason, not faith.
I don't assign lengths. Every paper has its own best length. If your paper is too long, I'll ask you to shorten it. If it's too short, I'll ask you to lengthen it. A paper could be done in 300 words or in 10,000, depending upon the thesis and the amount of evidence you need to provide to support it. Generally, a narrow, specific thesis ("Raise the drinking age to twenty-five") will produce a shorter, more workable paper than a meandering, vague thesis ("Someone should do something about teenage drinking"). I will credit you for two assignments when you write papers worth two assignments, because of their length, complexity, or research.
"Rules of Thumb," Silverman, Hughes, and Wienbroer. (An alternative to this text could be the handbook and writing guide at Capital Community-Technical College in Connecticut, complete with interactive quizzes.)
"Writing with a Thesis," David Skwire.
Both books are widely available online; used copies from Amazon are fine and a lot less expensive than they are at the campus bookstore. You must have a copy of "Writing with a Thesis," however, as it explains the formats you need to follow for your essays.
Here's a handy
guide to style and problems with word choice and structure.
Check it out.
Plagiarism, most simply described, is copying someone else's writing and turning it in as your own. (For an excellent explanation of plagiarism in academic writing, check out Oregon State University's webpage on avoiding plagiarism.) Don't do it. If you are writing a research paper, use quotation marks to show when you are using someone else's writing. Remember, with all the search engines on the web these days, I can check on suspect writing easily. Also, with all those journals and papers, I will soon have a feel for your writing, and marked deviations in style could send me off to MetaCrawler or Google. Plagiarism in this course results in a zero for any assignment which contains someone else's writing without proper attribution.
You can get in touch with me by calling me at home in case of computer collapses (925-254-1263). Please call me or email me if you have any questions about your progress or about specific assignments. Because I teach entirely online, I keep no office hours at DVC, but I'm available seven days a week by email and frequently by telephone. Before you call me or mail me, check out our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).
J. Grading symbols are posted at http://home.comcast.net/~bcmckinne/symbols.html.
DVC online courses |
Online English 122 syllabus | McKinney's
homepage | Student essays | Grading symbols | Are
you ready for Online 122? | feedback
from past students | FAQ | Journals
| Deadlines | Sample
essay analysis | Assignment checklist
| Advice from
Oregon State on avoiding plagiarism
Online guides for writers:
Purdue's
online resources for writers
Capital Community-Technical
College's guide to grammar and writing
Jack
Lynch's guide to grammar and style (Rutgers)
Common
errors in English (and non-errors to which some English teachers
object)
Questions? Email Brian McKinney
(bmckinne@silcon.com)
Most recent update: May 27, 2006