COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GRADING SCALE

ENGLISH 302-H20

Advanced Composition

FALL 2006

Instructor: J. Johnston

Office: Robinson A 455

(H and Fax) 703.368.1704 (W) 703.368.1160

E-MAIL: jjohnsto@gmu.edu

OFFICE HOURS: Wednesday 3:30-4:30 or by appointment

 

This section of English 302 focuses on advanced writing and research skills in such fields as modern and classical languages, English, history, philosophy and religious studies, art history, art studio, dance, music, theatre and communication. Students should endeavor to develop a flexible, literate writing style appropriate to a mature mind both in and out of these areas. Development of an individual, yet field-appropriate vocabulary and tone are primary, as is development of audience awareness. Familiarity with research techniques and sources--whether cyber, human or paper--is also essential.

MATERIALS FOR THIS COURSE

  • The primary text for this section is Writing in the Humanities (2nd edition), by Robert DiYanni (United States: Pearson, 2004, ISBN 0-13-183049-X)) This text can be ordered online through the GMU Bookstore.
  • Regular access to computer with e-mail and World Wide Web capabilities, plus printer with DARK ribbon or cartridge. The computer may be either on- or off-campus. Since assignments are often constructed and/or critiqued in class, off-site work should be in a format compatible with the software loaded in our classroom. All assignments are available on the instructor's website at URL's linked to the syllabus. Although assignments will be discussed in class, text versions of all assignments are therefore available at all times, complete with goals, instructions and grading criteria.
  • GMU computer account (free to students) with user ID and password, or other working e-mail account. Students who do not begin the semester with an account should apply on-line or in person on the Fairfax campus at Thompson Hall BEFORE the second class meeting. Students not familiar with GMU's computers--or computer use in general--are strongly encouraged to attend the free teaching sessions provided by UCIS. Course credit can be obtained for these sessions under the Events option. (IMPORTANT NOTE: any student not regularly using his or her GMU e-mail account must set that account to forward to the student's preferred e-mail address. Failure to do so will mean that the student will not receive any class notices or the web links needed for class work, which are sent to the class list maintained by the Registrar's Office.)
  • Willingness and ability to use GMU's libraries in Fenwick, the Johnson Center, and if necessary the Prince William and Law School campuses, plus possibly the Washington Research Library Consortium. Students new to GMU's libraries may receive free orientation sessions, which the library staff provides near the beginning of each semester. See the calendar of orientation sessions. Our class will also visit the library on our campus early in the semester for a training session.

Optional materials include:

  • A research handbook, either the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (5th ed.) for students in the humanities or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) for students in the sciences or social sciences. Both are available on-line if preferred (links are given in the syllabus) or can be purchased from the GMU bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, etc. Please be aware that since this is a humanities section, instruction will be provided for MLA format ONLY; APA, CBE and Engineering formats will not be taught. Students are responsible for correct MLA or APA format for all papers, whether or not the text is purchased.
  • The User's Guide to Mason is available in the Copy Shop (Room 117 in the Johnson Center) for those unfamiliar with GMU's computer support, at a cost of about $1.00.
  • Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference is recommended for those seeking a highly readable handbook of correct grammar and English usage. Her A Pocket Style Manual is an abridged but cheaper version of the same thing.

NOTE: In addition to the reader for this course; some readings are on-line. They are listed on the syllabus, and are no less required than paper texts. Therefore, failing to check links provided means not only missing instruction, but also missing needed readings.

Grammar will be taught in this class only occasionally, on an as-needed basis for the whole group. Please contact the instructor if a particular grammar question plagues you.

COURSE OVERVIEW

This course falls roughly into four sections:

An opening exercise exploring the library, personal, professional and Internet materials specialized to each student's field of study. If not familiar with research in the GMU libraries, it is strongly suggested that you attend a free class session with a university librarian. Library skills will produce the first paper of the semester, the Publication and Authority Paper, as well as a review of the materials  later needed for the research paper and poster project.

A section comprising three essays exploring different disciplines within humanities: (1) architecture and design (2) theatre or concert music and (3) art or sculpture.

A research component, including a brief proposal for research leading to an independent research project. related to the impact of new technology on each student’s field of study or career choice. A student may substitute a dual submission to another class in his/her major for this project with the other professor's permission, and

A poster presentation prepared as a group and involving all group members, exploring an unresolved ethical issue now confronting professionals in the field.

PLEASE NOTE: since the English Department requires a research component in all sections of English 302,

anyone not completing the research project will FAIL THE CLASS.

Students will also participate in a writing group which will meet both in class and online, using WebCT. Groups will, as much as possible, be determined by field of study, so that members can develop a shared frame of reference with a strong virtual support group. The poster projects will be the final products of the writing groups.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

As explained in "General Education at George Mason University," English 302 is an integral part of the general education curriculum at George Mason. The mission of the General Education Program is to educate, liberate, and broaden the mind, and to instill lifelong love of learning. In conjunction with each students' major program of study and other electives, minors, or certificates, this program seeks to produce graduates with intellectual vision, creative abilities, and moral sensibility, as well as the skills to assure a well-rounded and useable education. The General Education Program seeks four specific goals: 1. General education courses should first ensure that all undergraduates develop skills in information gathering, written and oral communication, and analytical and quantitative reasoning. 2. General education courses should expose students to the development of knowledge by emphasizing major domains of thought and methods of inquiry. 3. General education courses should enable students to attain a breadth of knowledge that supports their specializations and contributes to their education in both personal and professional ways. 4. General education courses should encourage students to make important connections across boundaries (for example: among disciplines; between the university and the external world; between the United States and other countries).

This advanced composition course is designed to help you develop effective written communication and analytical skills, which are critical to the learning of every well-educated student. In addition to requiring a minimum of 3500 written words from each student, the English Department has identified both discipline-based and advanced writing goals for English 302.  Students in humanities sections will demonstrate specific applications of these objectives to their own disciplines.  Paper copies of both the general student learning goals for English 302 and the goals specific to the Humanities sections will be distributed with the syllabus at the first class meeting.

 

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

Principal methods of instruction in this class will include:

INSTRUCTIONAL TYPE

EXAMPLE

Direct instruction

Online tutorials, in-class demonstrations, instructional web sites, online writing lab handouts.  Sessions with a research librarian.

Guided Practice

Workshops on writing skills, citation formats, analysis of journal articles, grammar and punctuation as needed, etc. These are supplemented by online writing labs such as Purdue's or GMU's.  Campus field trip to practice architectural design review.

Online tutorials and mastery exercises

Various university and professional web site materials on plagiarism, editing, and documentation

Guided and independent research

Library orientation with hands-on practice, location of appropriate articles for research review and nonfiction study

Group processing activities

Participation in writing groups, editing student drafts, proofreading citation entries, preparation of group poster presentation on ethics

COURSE REQUIREMENTS/GRADING POLICY

In all General Education English classes (English 100, 101, 201 and 302), students must achieve a grade of C or higher to receive credit for the course. Students with averages of C- or lower will receive an NC (No Credit) for the course.

Assignments will carry the following percentage values:

Online quizzes on plagiarism, netiquette and MLA documentation  5%

 

Analysis of Art/Sculpture 10%

Theatre or Concert Review 10%

Writing Group Participation 10%

Design, Imagescape and Subtext in Public Spaces  15%

Publication and Authority Paper 15%

Group Poster Presentation 15%

Research Paper 20%

Again, anyone not completing the research project will FAIL THE COURSE

Essential outlines of each assignment, along with goals and grading criteria, are provided as links to the syllabus, which is available both as links from my home page and on WebCT. For several assignments, it will be essential to have closely read our textbook, which contains both direction and essential questions.

LATE ASSIGNMENTS

All work is due on the date specified in the syllabus. Unless by prior arrangement with the instructor, late work will be penalized one letter grade for each week or portion thereof and two letter grades thereafter. This penalty cannot be removed from work resubmitted or revised.

In addition, late work may be delayed in being graded and returned to you; delay is usually one week but may be more. Please keep this in mind if planning to resubmit a paper, especially near the end of the semester. No work will be accepted after the date indicated on the syllabus as the last day to submit rewritten assignments.

ATTENDANCE

Missing any substantial art of writing group activities has the following disadvantages that the student is responsible to overcome:

  • missing editing of writing assignments
  • lack of workshop preparation in formatting and writing skills
  • nonparticipation in writing and presentation groups
  • serious lack of consideration and support for other members of one's writing group

Anyone who must unavoidably miss time away from class activities is advised to notify the instructor as promptly as possible to avoid falling behind and to minimize inconvenience to other writing group members.

Be aware that writing is a time-intensive activity. It is thus very difficult to make up any significant amount of lost time.

POLICY ON PLAGIARISM

In a research and writing course, it is especially important that students respect the intellectual property of others. Especially in thesciences, integrity of results falls under acute scrutiny from fellow professionals. All students are therefore expected to scrupulously observe all GMU policies as well as individual instructors' guidelines. Please read and observe the English Department's Statement on Plagiarism below.

Plagiarism means using the exact words, opinions, or factual information from another source without giving that source credit. Writers give credit through the use of accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation, footnotes, or end notes; a simple listing of books, articles, and websites is not sufficient. Plagiarism is the equivalent of intellectual robbery and cannot be tolerated in an academic setting.

Student writers are often confused as to what should be cited. Some think that only direct quotations need to be credited. While direct quotations do need citations, so do paraphrases and summaries of opinions or factual information formerly unknown to the writers or which the writers did not discover themselves. Exceptions to this include factual information which can be obtained from a variety of sources, the writers' own insights or findings from their own field research, (what has been called common knowledge). What constitutes common knowledge can sometimes be precarious; what is common knowledge for one audience may be so for another. In such situations, it is helpful to keep the reader in mind and to think of citations as being "reader friendly." In other words, writers provide a citation for any piece of information that they think their readers might want to investigate further. Not only is this attitude considerate of readers, it will almost certainly ensure that writers will not be guilty of plagiarism.

FORMAT

All graded work must be submitted by uploading to the Assignments section of WebCT unless the class has been specifically instructed to do otherwise.

Each assignment has related instructions in a link to that assignment in the online version of the Syllabus. The format for each assignment is presented in the file of instructions. Please refer to the Syllabus itself at http://mason.gmu.edu/~jjohnsto/syllh20f06.htm or find it on our WebCT course file.

Except for the poster project, assignments submitted electronically MUST be in Word (.doc) or Acrobat (.pdf) format, especially if sent as attachments. WebCT and GMU's e-mail will not read Mime, NotePad or WordPerfect documents, and regards zipped documents as possible viruses. Graphic files submitted with or embedded into assignments should be in GIF, TIF or JPEG formats. Any material sent in any of these formats cannot be accepted and may not even arrive.

Finally, any correspondence should be directed to the instructor's GMU e-mail: jjohnsto@gmu.edu. A Google or other search will reveal other e-mail addresses, but all GMU-related correspondence is handled through that address and only that address.

Mail sent to the instructor at other addresses will receive no response.

NOTE: Be careful when responding to mail sent to the class list. The Registrar's Office provides the capability to e-mail the whole lass from its online registration site, but requires the sender to use whatever mail program is resident on the machine (s)he is using rather than GMU's mail program, which is web-based. DO NOT reply to the mail address used for class mailings, but to the GMU address above.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

In accordance with English Department policy, each student will submit a minimum of 3500 words in the course of the semester, which will serve as the basis for the course grade. Any student with a documented disability which could impact the completion of this requirement should give the instructor a faculty contact sheet at the beginning of the course so that appropriate arrangements can be made in a timely fashion. Students in need of documentation are urged to contact the Disability Resource Center at 703.993.2474. Documentation is required to obtain course adaptations to ensure that students receive appropriate support and assistance for success in the class.

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