Advanced Composition

ENGLISH 302 N06, Natural Sciences | Professor Mel Nichols
email: mnichol6@gmu.edu | office location: Thompson Hall, 207C

Course Description

ENGL302, Advanced Composition, builds on the general college-level writing skills and strategies students have acquired in earlier courses, and prepares them to do advanced level analysis and writing specifically within their major field and their possible future workplaces.

ENGL302 is offered in four versions: Business, Humanities, Natural Sciences/Technology, and Social Sciences. Students are advised to complete the ENGL302 version that is most relevant to their major field or postgraduate professional plans, and to do so by the end of their junior year, so that they may incorporate their new knowledge into senior-level research and writing projects in their major field.

Prerequisites
All students, regardless of discipline, who register for ENGL302 must meet the following prerequisites:

* A minimum of 45 credit hours
* Credit or requirement waiver for ENGL100 or ENGL101
* In degree programs that require 6 hours of literature, at least 3 must be taken prior to ENGL302; 3 credits may be taken concurrently with ENGL302

Learning Goals

Discipline-based Goals: Students who successfully complete ENGL302 will be able to adapt their reading and writing to meet the expectations of their academic discipline and future workplace. They will be able to demonstrate the ability to:

* apply critical reading strategies that are appropriate to advanced reading in their academic discipline and in their possible future workplaces
* recognize how knowledge is constructed in their academic discipline and possible future workplaces, attending to issues such as kinds of claims or questions posed by advanced or professional writers
* evidence considered sufficient to support arguments
* analyze the rhetorical situations—audience, purpose, and context—of texts produced in their academic disciplines and in possible future workplaces
* produce writing—including arguments or proposals—that is appropriate for a range of rhetorical situations within their academic disciplines and possible future workplaces, with particular attention to textual features such as
* common genres
* organizational strategies
* style, tone, and diction
* expected citation formats

Advanced Writing Goals: Students who successfully complete ENGL302 will demonstrate that they have continued to develop their research and writing strategies to an advanced level; they will be able to
* use writing as a tool for exploration and reflection in addressing advanced problems, as well as for exposition and persuasion
* successfully employ strategies for writing as a recursive process of inventing, investigating, shaping, drafting, revising, and editing to meet a range of advanced academic and professional expectations—including, when given appropriate time for drafting and editing, the ability to produce documents in Standard Edited American English that are generally free from error
* collaborate with others as they write, through peer review, group projects, and/or consulting with outside experts (writing center tutors, librarians, subject-matter experts, workplace informants, etc.)
* identify, evaluate, and use research sources (print and electronic), to include advanced online library searching of databases pertinent to their disciplines and the critical use of web sites
* employ a range of appropriate technologies to support their researching, reading, writing, and thinking, with particular attention to the ways that advanced students and professionals locate, analyze, organize, and share information


Requirements and Grading

There will be various short writing assignments and four major papers in this course, as well as a poster session and a final presentation of your research project. Paper grades include all components of the assignment, such as pre-writing exercises, required drafts, class discussion, meetings with the instructor, research, annotated bibliography, visual compoments, peer review, and collaborative work. I will accept a re-write for two major papers, so long as the original paper was turned in on time, and you conference with me prior to making your revisions. You receive the higher of the two grades. All revisions are due by the last day of class.

Major Paper #1: Reflective Essay = 20%
Major Paper #2: Descriptive Essay = 20%
Major Paper #3: Literature Review Essay = 20%
Major Paper #4: Research Project, Research Presentations, and Class Publication= 20%
Minor Papers: Daily Writing, Minor Papers, Process Papers, etc.  = 20%

All assignments written outside of class--and some written in class--will be submitted electronically to writingspaces@gmail.com with the subject line ENGL 302 N06 [your name] [assignment tag] unless otherwise noted.   Assignment tags will be included in your instructions. Work will generally be returned to you as a Google Document with comments and grade.

No late work will be accepted.   (Major essays lose a letter grade for every day late.) Please note that unless otherwise instructed, all work must be typed (double-spaced). Work that is not typed will not be accepted.

I am looking for work informed by research, reading, and reflection as required by the assignment. I expect you to be able to show how your work is informed by what you see and read. Writing must present innovative thinking that is well supported with evidence and presented in a clear, focused, and organized manner.   Research is always welcome in your writing, and must be appropriately documented using consistent MLA-style documentation.   For your research essay you are expected to use Mason Library and databases, and your grade will reflect the quality of research as well as the quality of writing as noted above.  

Many assignments will require that you turn in multiple drafts of a paper. Failure to hand in all complete drafts an assignment will impact the final grade for that assignment.


An "A" on an assignment demonstrates informed practice, original thinking, careful analysis or thoughtful reflection, and well-organized writing. To receive an "A" on a critical writing assignment, a clear contestable thesis statement must be made and supported by evidence from credible sources. Writing that is thoughtful, well-organized, and relatively free of technical errors such as spelling and grammar will receive a "B." Writing that addresses the assignment and that contains some errors will receive a "C." Writing that does not fully engage with the assignment and meets most but not all minimum requirements will receive a "D." Failure to meet minimum requirements will result in an "F"--this includes failure to provide parenthetical citations and a bibliography when required or necessary.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
All students with disabilities are legally entitled to certain accommodations in the classroom. Please contact me as soon as possible at the beginning of the semester to request appropriate accommodations during this course.

Plagiarism
The Mason Honor Code <http://www.gmu.edu/catalog/apolicies/#Anchor12> is available online. Suspected cases of plagiarism are reported to the Honor Committee.


Texts will be provided online, library reserve, or handouts.   Throughout the semester you will be asked to make multiple copies of your writing to bring to class for workshop, so please plan on this as a cost for the semester.


The George Mason University Writing Center (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/writingcenter)
The Writing Center is located in Robinson A114. The Writing Center offers free one-on-one writing help to faculty, staff, and alumni of George Mason University. Writing Center tutors can work with you on any stage of the writing process, whether you are just starting an assignment or revising a final draft of a paper. You can make an appointment for a tutoring session by calling (703) 993-1200 or by stopping in the Writing Center. Drop in appointments are available in Johnson Center 311.

English Department Statement on Plagiarism
Plagiarism means using the exact words, opinions, or factual information from another person without giving that person credit. Writers give credit through accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation, footnotes, or endnotes; a simple listing of books and articles 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 indeed 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 for this include factual information which can be obtained from a variety of sources, the writers' own insights or findings from their own field research, and what has been termed common knowledge. What constitutes common knowledge can sometimes be precarious; what is common knowledge for one audience may not 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 never be guilty of plagiarism.