Syllabus

English Composition I (ENG 201-05)
Instructor: Olivia Wood (she/her/hers)
Email: [email protected]
Time: Optional synchronous session Mondays at 10:50 EST
Office Hours: Click here to schedule an appointment

Coronavirus Statement

The coronavirus and subsequent economic/unemployment crisis have affected everyone both physically and emotionally, but have especially hurt Black, Latinx, and working class people. The CUNY community has been hit harder by Covid-19 than any other university system in the country. And I know that we are all still being affected. So, let me be clear: I want you to prioritize your physical/emotional health, your ability to care for your loved ones, and your financial/safety needs. If life circumstances make it difficult for you to complete activities for this course, please email me so we can figure out a plan. I am more than happy to be flexible, and you do not need to provide me with details.

Course Description (Official)

This composition course introduces students to the rhetorical characteristics of cross-disciplinary writing styles.  Instructors choose a single theme and provide students with reading and writing assignments which address the differing literacy conventions and processes of diverse fields.  Students learn how to apply their accumulated repertoire of aptitudes and abilities to the writing situations presented to them from across the disciplines.

Course Theme: Genre and Imagination

When studying genre and style, it’s easy to get distracted with the argument and message of a piece of writing and lose sight of the structure and style. Therefore, I am encouraging you to write about Fake Stuff, allowing us an opportunity for creativity while keeping our analytical eye on the genres we are studying, not the content we’re writing about.

If you choose this option, you will choose an imaginary world (like a book or a movie) and create documents in various styles and genres for situations within that world. You can use the same world for all assignments, or choose a different world for each unit.

If you prefer to write about real-world issues, you are also free to do that on topics of your choice for each major assignment.

Examples of Writing in an Imaginary World

  • (Star Wars) A set of news reports about Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star (one from a pro-Empire news site, one from a pro-Rebels site, and one from a centrist site.)
  • (The Office) You are a new employee at Dunder Mifflin and are shocked by Michael (or another employee)’s behavior. You write an essay to post online explaining why the behavior is wrong and how it connects to larger social problems.
  • (Marvel) Peter Parker agrees to let his doctor run some tests on his Spiderman powers. The doctor writes a lab report to summarize the findings.
  • (Game of Thrones) An anthropologist from Westeros travels to study and write an ethnography of the Dothraki. Write the anthropologist’s summary report, and ALSO create something depicting how you imagine the Dothraki would choose to describe and express themselves.

Course Objectives (Official)

  • Invention and Inquiry: Students learn to explore and develop their ideas and the ideas of others in a thorough, meaningful, complex and logical way.
  • Awareness and Reflection: Students learn to identify concepts and issues in their own writing and analytically talk and write about them.
  • Writing Process: Students learn methods of composing, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading.
  • Rhetoric and Style: Students learn rhetorical and stylistic choices that are appropriate and advantageous to a variety of genres, audiences and contexts.
  • Claims and Evidence: Students learn to develop logical and substantial claims, provide valid and coherent evidence for their claims and show why and how their evidence supports their claims.
  • Research: Students learn to conduct research (primary and secondary), evaluate research sources, integrate research to support their ideas, and cite sources appropriately.
  • Sentence Fluency: Students learn to write clear, complete and correct sentences and use a variety of complex and compound sentence types.
  • Conventions: Students learn to control language, linguistic structures, and punctuation necessary for diverse literary and academic writing contexts.

Grading

Unit 1 (News Reporting): 15%
Unit 2 (Humanities Criticism): 15%
Unit 3 (Natural Science): 20%
Unit 4 (Social Science): 20%
Other Short Assignments: 10%
Portfolio: 20%

I will post the points breakdown for each unit at the beginning of the unit, as each one will vary based on the unit activities.

All assignments in “Other Short Assignments” will be graded by completion: 2 points for fully complete, 1 point for partially complete, 0 points for incomplete.

 Technology

Most of our class activities will take place on our class website on the CUNY Commons (english201.commons.gc.cuny.edu). We will also be using Hypothes.is to comment on online readings together, and Blackboard for grades and for final draft submissions.

Many people learning from home have technology-related difficulties. Please feel free to stay in communication with me about your technology-related needs throughout the semester— I am happy to adjust and adapt course materials so that technology is not a barrier to your learning.

Zoom

You are NOT REQUIRED to attend any synchronous class sessions. However, I will be holding OPTIONAL class sessions on Zoom on Mondays at 10:50am (our listed class time). I will post either recordings of these sessions or a written version of all material covered onto the course site after the meeting, so that students who don’t attend will not miss anything.

We will use the optional sessions to check in with each other, go over the week’s activities, answer questions, and discuss anything else that the class would like to talk about.

Late Work Policy

For most assignments, I will not deduct points for lateness. There are two exceptions, for cases where your timely participation (or not) impacts others:

  1. Peer review (drafts and feedback)
  2. Annotations/Examples.

You are permitted UNLIMITED revisions of your assignments up until the end of the semester.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writings as your own. The following are some examples of plagiarism, but by no means is it an exhaustive list:

  • Copying another person’s actual words without attributing the words to their source
  • Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source
  • Using information that is not common knowledge without acknowledging the sources
  • Failing to acknowledge collaborators on assignments

Full overview of John Jay’s academic integrity policy: https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/academic-integrity-0 To be clear: Unless I explicitly ask you to find examples of other people’s writing, you should be the author of everything you submit for this class.