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English 1102: Critical Reading and Writing Instructor: Mr. Topper Email: toppryan@isu.edu Location: England Please recognize timezone difference during correspondence.

Course Description This course is designed to help prepare you for academic reading and writing. Through activities that emphasize both collaborative, process-oriented learning as well as individual, self-motivated learning, you will be introduced to the following three skills:

Critical Reading This course is reading-heavy. You will read multiple essays nearly every week. Some essays will be challenging to grasp, but thoughtful writing begins with thoughtful reading.

Critical Writing This course is also writing-heavy. Like any craft, strong writing is produced through rigorous practice. You will write every week, sometimes formally and sometimes informally, through discussion board posts, journal entries, and essays.

Critical Thinking By focusing on reading and writing, this course is centered around critical thought. Whether you are responding to an assigned reading, responding to a fellow student, or articulating your own argument, the depth of your thought will weigh heavily on your grade.

Course Values

Empathy Always consider other points of view, whether that be from an author or a classmate.

Honesty Read and write honestly: questioning, challenging, and developing your own worldview.

Community This course is a digital community. Play your part by posting meaningful contributions to discussion board conversations.

Close Reading Read meticulously. Move to generalizations only after you have lingered over the intricate details of a text.

Clarity Support your claims with evidence, organize your thoughts effectively, and utilize proper punctuation to write concise, legible prose.

Rhetoric Always keep in mind your audience, your purpose, and your overall rhetorical situation.

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Idaho State University, Department of English and Philosophy, Spring, 2015

mailto:toppryan@isu.edu
mailto:toppryan@isu.edu
Course Goals and Learning Objectives Each student should display competence in all three skills mentioned in the course description: critical reading, critical writing, and critical thinking. Likewise, each student’s work should reflect all six of the course values: empathy, honesty, community, close reading, clarity, and rhetoric. Each student’s competence in these three skills will be judged by the ways in which each student’s work reflects these six values.

Required Text The Norton Reader, 13th Edition.

Homework Submission All assignments will be submitted on Moodle, not via email. All discussion board posts will be submitted on the corresponding week’s discussion board. All assignments are due by 11:55 pm (Mountain Timezone) on the day they are scheduled as due. NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ACCEPTED. If you find yourself in an emergency situation, email me ahead of time and we might be able to work out a solution.

MLA Format Essays and journal entries will be formatted according to MLA standards: one inch margins, double spaced, size twelve, Times New Roman font. All citations will be formatted according to MLA standards, and each essay will include a Works Cited page. For explanations and examples of MLA format and style, visit Owl Purdue’s MLA Formatting and Style Guide. Proper formatting is your responsibility. If you have questions about anything demonstrated in the style guide, ask me for clarification.

Plagiarism Plagiarism is the improper borrowing of another person's words, ideas, or methods. If you rely on another person's material, you must acknowledge your source. If you plagiarize in an assignment, you will fail that assignment (including discussion boards and journal entires). If you plagiarize more than once, you will fail this course. Likewise, if you plagiarize on the final essay, you will fail this course. You know what plagiarism is, so don't play dumb, and don't try it in this course.

Writing Center The Writing Center, located in Rendezvous 323, (208) 282-3662, offers free, one-on-one tutoring to ISU students. If you struggle with discussion boards, journal entries, quizzes, or essays, I highly recommend scheduling a session.

Message from ADA Disabilities & Resources Center Our program is committed to helping all students achieve their potential. If you have a disability or think you have a disability (physical, learning disability, hearing, vision or psychiatric) which may need a reasonable accommodation, please contact the ADA Disabilities & Resource Center located in Gravely Hall, Room 123, (208) 282-3599, as early as possible.

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Idaho State University, Department of English and Philosophy, Spring, 2015

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
http://www.isu.edu/success/writing/
http://www.isu.edu/success/writing/
Assignments and Grading

Essays 60% This course is organized into three progressive units. At the end of the first unit, you will write an argumentative essay in response to one of the assigned readings from that unit; likewise, at the end of the second unit, you will write an argumentative essay in response to one of the assigned readings from that unit. For example, at the end of the first unit you could write an essay that argues against Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” and at the end of the second unit you could write an essay that agrees with Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The third unit is solely dedicated to research and writing for your final essay, which is worth as much as your first two essays combined, and will be an argumentative essay on any topic related to this course. Essays will be graded on quality of thought, clarity and organization of prose, and fulfillment of that particular essay’s guideline. Specific guidelines for each essay can be found on Moodle.

Essay 1: 15% Essay 2: 15% Essay 3: 30%

Discussion Board 20% Every Thursday a discussion board post will be due. The discussion board is a digital classroom. Rather than attending in-class lectures and discussing our assigned readings in person, we will have discussions every week through online posts. You will be given a prompt—typically multiple questions to answer—to which you will respond, and you will always be required to comment on at least one other student’s post. If you do not comment on anyone else’s post, you will receive a 0% grade on that particular discussion board. Grading is based on the depth of your thought, the depth of your interaction with other students, and the depth of your interaction with assigned readings. Therefore, simply answering a question does not merit a decent grade. Quote the assigned reading, use textual evidence to back up your claims, raise questions and challenge your fellow classmates, etc. The discussion board is the heart and soul of this course, and its success or failure is up to you. There are no minimum or maximum sentence requirements, but I do encourage ongoing discussion.

Journal Entries 10% Journal entries will be due on various Fridays throughout the semester, each of which is noted on the course schedule. Each entry must be three to four pages, double spaced, size twelve, Times New Roman font, and in some way related to this course. Journals are intended as a place for you to reflect on the readings and practice the process of writing, so be thoughtful and engaging, but do not worry too much about grammar and mechanics. Entries are graded as pass or fail, so make sure to write at least three full pages.

Quizzes 10% As a student at the English 1102 level, you are expected to already understand the basic mechanics of the English language. We will not spend class discussions on these matters. To encourage mechanical skills, however, quizzes on grammatical, linguistic, and formatting topics will be due on various Fridays throughout the semester. You will have five minutes to answer five questions. Once you answer a question, you cannot return to change your answer. You cannot retake any quiz.

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Idaho State University, Department of English and Philosophy, Spring, 2015

Course Schedule

Introduction

Week 1 Jan 12-16 Syllabus (Moodle) Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkentsein, They Say/I Say (Moodle) Jan 15 Due: Discussion Board Jan 16 Due: Quiz 1: Syllabus

Unit One: Epistemologies

Week 2 Jan 19-23 Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave” (NR) Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism” (NR) Jan 22 Due: Discussion Board Jan 23 Due: Journal Entry 1

Week 3 Jan 26-30 Jacob Bronowski, “The Nature of Scientific Reasoning” (NR) Michel Foucault, Preface to The Order of Things (Moodle) Jan 29 Due: Discussion Board Jan 30 Due: Quiz 2: Commas

Week 4 Feb 2-6 Steven Weinberg, “Without God” (NR) Wendell Berry, “God, Science, and Imagination” (Moodle) Feb 5 Due: Discussion Board Feb 6 Journal Entry 2

Week 5 Feb 9-13 Stephen Hawking, “Is Everything Determined?” (NR) Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (Moodle) Feb 12 Due: Discussion Board Feb 13 Due: Quiz 3: In-text Citations Week 6 Feb 16-20 No Reading Feb 20 Due: Essay 1

Unit Two: Paradigms of Education and Knowledge

Week 7 Feb 23-27 Sir Ken Robinson, “Changing Education Paradigms” (Moodle) Caroline Bird, “College is a Waste of Time and Money” (NR) Brent Staples, “Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s” (NR) Feb 26 Due: Discussion Board Feb 27 Due: Quiz 4: Works Cited

Week 8 Mar 2-6 Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (NR) Mar 5 Due: Discussion Board

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Idaho State University, Department of English and Philosophy, Spring, 2015

Mar 6 Due: Journal Entry 3

Week 9 Mar 9-13 Francis FitzGerald, “Rewriting American History” (NR) H. Bruce Franklin, “From Realism to Virtual Reality: Images of America’s Wars” (NR) Howard Zinn, “Empire or Humanity?” (Moodle) Mar 12 Due: Discussion Board Mar 13 Due: Quiz 5: Colons and Semicolons

Week 10 Mar 16-20 Jane Tompkins, “‘Indians’: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” (Moodle) Mar 19 Due: Discussion Board Mar 20 Due: Journal Entry 4

Week 11 Mar 23-27 Spring Break

Week 12 Mar 30- Apr 3 No Reading Apr 3 Due: Essay 2

Unit Three: Composing a Scholarly Argument

Week 13 Apr 6-10 Independent Research and Writing Apr 9 Due: Discussion Board

Week 14 Apr 13-17 Independent Research and Writing Apr 16 Due: Discussion Board Apr 17 Journal Entry 5

Week 15 Apr 20-24 Independent Research and Writing Apr 23 Due: Discussion Board

Week 16 Apr 27-May 1- Independent Research and Writing May 1 Due: Essay 3

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Idaho State University, Department of English and Philosophy, Spring, 2015