ENGLISH 092
DEVELOPMENTAL WRITING
Winter Quarter 2007

Instructor: Kathleen White
(425) 564-2123
kwhite@bcc.ctc.edu

English 092 is the training zone to get you into fighting form for college writing. Students will write complete essays, both personal and academic, composing them through drafts and tweaking them in editing sessions. 092 will also address the basic grammar errors that cause students injury: sentence structure errors, agreement problems, punctuation mysteries. The goal is to write confident, grammatically correct work, and to achieve an overall grade of C- or higher, which will qualify the student for 101 placement.

English 092 is taught completely on line; students are not required to attend classroom sessions. However, this is not a correspondence course, completed on your own timetable in isolation. Also, if you sign up for this course thinking that it will have less work than a course in the classroom, you will be unhappily surprised. On-line courses require the student to be responsible for reading the syllabus, tracking the posted deadlines, and proactively asking questions of the instructor in the appropriate venues.

Finally, this is an English class, not a computer class. If you are not comfortable on a computer, if you are not familiar with uploading and downloading files, if the terms .doc or .rtf are unknown to you, seriously ask yourself if an on-line class is a good choice for your education. The website does present a brief overview of how to get around it, but beyond that, students need to be willing to troubleshoot for themselves. It's also worth remembering that in on-line classes, the instruction comes through written text, not verbal instruction. It is possible to have occasional phone conferences or the odd, desperate office meeting, but students should be prepared to read from the computer screen, or print out lectures for home reading.

TEXTBOOKS
There is one textbook for this class: Real Writing with Readings, (3rd Ed) by Susan Anker. This book contains the materials for studying essay form, readings to give us a sense of what works and what doesn't in writing, and even grammar materials. If you feel you're going to need added grammar work, I also recommend The Least You Should Know About English.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Throughout the quarter, English 092 will generate 4 essays, 2-4 pages long. These will be run through different levels of development, and some drafts  will be edited in group sessions.  Participation in the editing will factor in with the essays as part of the quarter grade.  Students will also write four shorter written assignments, testing out different methods of development and practicing issues covered in the weekly reading.

Participation in threaded group discussion is also required. Topics will be posted every week, and each student must make a minimum of one, three-to-four line comment responding directly to each question in the topic, and at least one further reply to another student's post. (More comments are warmly encouraged.)

GRADING

The largest part of a student's grade (70%) will come from writing; however, the group editing and written editing notes, as well as the threaded discussion factor in 20%. That leaves a 10% instructor slush fund reserved for crediting student progress.

Work turned in late will lose credit points every day it's past the due date, roughly to one-third of the grade.

A FINAL WORD ABOUT HONESTY AND THE ON-LINE FORMAT:

This being an on-line course, we will never actually see each other as a whole, trapped in a class room together on a cold winter evening or fighting to stay awake on a sleepy, overheated afternoon. Be advised, though, that teachers actually can pick up a student's individual style fairly quickly, and therefore, can detect when essays come from sources other than the student's own hand. We also now have software which runs checks on suspected plagiarized essays, and I will run such a check at the slightest provocation. If any work done for this course is plagiarized, the student will receive a zero for the assignment with no chance of rewriting it, and the episode will be reported to the Dean of Students.  More than one such episode, and the student will receive an F for the course. Do not be tempted by on-line essays floating out there in the ether; to tell you the truth, most of them aren't really all that good anyway.

Read Start Here on the home page

Under Course Content, read Lecture One: How Did We Get Here?

In Real Writing read  pgs 9-18

Begin Diagnostic Writing Assignment

Post Comments and Follow Instructions on Beginning Discussion Thread

Discussion Thread

LectureTwo:

Real Writing pgs 99-144, 287-294
  (essay)  "It's Time I Shed Ex-con Status"  565

Diagnostic Essay Due Monday, 1/8

Week Three:  January 14th-20th

Discussion Thread

Lecture Three:

Real Writing  read Forward xxi-xxx-viii 
296-312; 551-561

Essay:  "Common Scents"  584

Short Writing Asst. One Due 1/16

Discussion Thread

Lecture Four:

Real Writing  329-372, 80-95;
Essay:  "Why Are We So Angry?"  574

Essay One Due 1/24

Week Five:  January 28th-February 3rd

Lecture Five:

Real Writing:  375-414;  145-193 
Essays:  "The Job Interview" 588; 
"What is Intelligence, Anyway?"  608

Short Writing Asst Two  Due -1/30

Discussion Thread

Lecture Six:

Real Writing  415-435;  471-491
Essay:  598  "The Ways We Lie"

Essay Two Due 2/8

Week Seven:  February 11th-17th;  Last Day to drop 2/16

Discussion Thread

Lecture Seven:

Real Writing  194-226;  Essays pgs 619, 627

Short Writing Asst Three Due 2/14

Discussion Thread

Lecture Eight:

Real Writing  pgs 507-543
Appendix A 649-660

Discussion Thread

Lecture Nine:

Real Writing 227-246; 
Readings: Attached here!
"Which are Smarter?" by Martha Brockenbrough)

Short Writing Assignment Four Due 2/26

Discussion Thread

Lecture Ten: Can We Go Now?

Reading:  "A Homemade Education" by Malcom X, pgh 593

Appendix A:  649-660

Essay Four Due 3/5

Closing Thread discussions.

There is no final exam for this class.