policies ENGL226 Writing About Writing
|
Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
FALL 2013 Office Hours
Monday & Wednesday: 3:30 to 4:30 Tuesday: 2:00 to 3:00 and by appointment. |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course serves as an introduction to the Writing Concentration in the English Major, a concentration that has recently undergone a name change to Writing and Writing Studies. Why this change? The answer to that question is the rationale for this new course.
The old name, the Writing Concentration, implied that students who elected to complete the concentration were going to learn to write. Certainly, that was and still is a part of the major. Part of what you’ll spend time doing in this class is paying attention to your particular writing practices—how do you develop ideas, compose, draft, revise, edit? What is your process? And what can you do to improve that process and, thus, improve your writing. You will explore the role workshopping plays in a writer’s life, and you will begin to develop a professional portfolio. But there is much more to the field of Writing Studies, which is more commonly known in the academy as Rhetoric & Composition, than the singular act of writing.
And so, in addition to getting practice as a writer, you will have the chance to explore the different ways you can approach (and, to a certain extent, make a living doing) writing. You will read and study different types of writing, as well as research on kinds of writing and on the process of writing—and the teaching of writing. All of that, every part of it, makes up the world of Writing Studies.
This course serves as an introduction to the field, one that should culminate in either the new Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies or the counterpart to that course Advanced Portfolio Workshop. What you start in this class you will finish there; along the way you will develop as a reader, thinker, and, of course, as a writer.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
TEXTS
Due to the varied nature of the kinds of reading we’ll need to do this semester, there is no prescribed text for this course. I will provide you with electronic or hard copies of all readings.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. It is important to me that you come to class as often as possible because the day-to-day work that we do as a class will contribute greatly to your success and improvement as a writer. I have an attendance policy to reward those students who take class and the work seriously. You have three absences to do with as you please. Use them wisely. After three absences, any and all absences will adversely affect your grade. After six absences, you will fail the course. Further, excessive tardiness will accumulate to at least one absence. Finally, absence is not an excuse for late work. If you anticipate problems with any part of this attendance policy, you should come talk to me.
Reader’s Notes. The readings are pivotal to this class. If you don’t do the reading we will not have very much to do in class. For every reading you have for homework, you are responsible for a two-page, double-spaced, typed response. It should answer a number of questions that gets at what the reading is about, first, and what makes this sort of writing different than other kinds of writing (see the complete assignment page on this website for details).
In-class Writer’s Notebook. One thing you can’t learn early enough in your career as a writer is discipline. Most writers will tell you that part of the job of writing is sitting your rear in a chair and actually writing—whether you want to or not. So we will spend part of every class doing some writing. I’ll collect and read it, but, more importantly, you’ll want to save it for projects in class, projects in future classes, and for inclusion in your portfolio now and later.
Blog226. A lot of students, past and present, either want to start a blog, have started a blog, and/or started a blog that they never kept up with. I’d like us to have the experience of writing and maintaining a blog this semester. We’ll take turns posting—so it’s a minimal commitment. The hardest part will be determining what the blog will be about—something we will do during our second class meeting.
Author Interview. It’s one thing to have an idea of what a writer does for a living, what she did to get there; it’s another thing entirely to get it first hand. This assignment, that you should start early and is due at the end of the semester, requires that you talk to a working writer—a writer in any capacity—and talk to them about how they are making writing a part of their life.
Formal Writing: There are three formal pieces of writing this semester. You can find more information about all of them on this website.
Writing in the Professions. Another title for this kind of writing is Technical and Professional Writing. This kind of writing covers all sorts of things like instruction writing and business reports to a greyer areas some public relations and social media (which can also be more like creative writing). Your first formal piece of writing will be an example of this kind of writing.
Writing Studies. This is a broad term that describes the work of scholars in the academy (faculty at Universities like Bridgewater), folks who work in the field of Rhetoric & Composition who look at various aspects of all kinds of writing (including Technical & Professional). Rhetoricians & Compositionists look at the effects of writing, communities of writers, the history of literacy instruction, how people actually write (composing processes), how they learn to write, the list goes on and on. We’ll look at samples of this kind of writing, and you’ll take on a modest writing study of your own.
Writing as Art. We end the semester with the part of “writing studies” that will seem most familiar to you: creative work. There is a lot more to creative work than novels or poetry—or even journalism. One semester won’t be enough to cover all of it, but we’ll do our best. You’ll have a chance to work on a creative project of your own design.
Portfolios. This class will use a portfolio system of evaluation. Portfolios are the way writers and artists collect work, and it is a very effective way of evaluating student writing (there is much research on the subject—some of which we’ll read). You’ll turn in a portfolio at the end of the semester that includes informal writing, formal writing, revision, and reflection.
Conferences & Workshopping. We will meet one-on-one at least once during the semester to work on your writing—the way an editor would meet with a writer. We will also have whole class workshops as well as small group workshops. This is the way professional writers—creative or otherwise—give and get feedback and revise their work. Too little of school involves this kind of work, and so it is important, as you enter the writing concentration, that you learn to participate in this kind of challenging conversation about writing.
EVALUATION AND GRADING
You will not receive letter grades on individual drafts and assignments in this class. This will make some of you nuts. It allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let you do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At midterm and the end of the semester you will receive a grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reader’s Notes 15%
Author Interview 10%
Blog226 10%
Writing in the Professions 15%
Writing Studies 15%
Writing as Art 10%
Final Project 15%
Midterm Portfolio &
Final Portfolio 10%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking other peoples words and ideas and claiming them for your own without giving the people who did the writing and the thinking the credit they have earned. It is dishonest and unethical. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that paper without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the drop add period. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers, please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.
This course serves as an introduction to the Writing Concentration in the English Major, a concentration that has recently undergone a name change to Writing and Writing Studies. Why this change? The answer to that question is the rationale for this new course.
The old name, the Writing Concentration, implied that students who elected to complete the concentration were going to learn to write. Certainly, that was and still is a part of the major. Part of what you’ll spend time doing in this class is paying attention to your particular writing practices—how do you develop ideas, compose, draft, revise, edit? What is your process? And what can you do to improve that process and, thus, improve your writing. You will explore the role workshopping plays in a writer’s life, and you will begin to develop a professional portfolio. But there is much more to the field of Writing Studies, which is more commonly known in the academy as Rhetoric & Composition, than the singular act of writing.
And so, in addition to getting practice as a writer, you will have the chance to explore the different ways you can approach (and, to a certain extent, make a living doing) writing. You will read and study different types of writing, as well as research on kinds of writing and on the process of writing—and the teaching of writing. All of that, every part of it, makes up the world of Writing Studies.
This course serves as an introduction to the field, one that should culminate in either the new Seminar in Writing & Writing Studies or the counterpart to that course Advanced Portfolio Workshop. What you start in this class you will finish there; along the way you will develop as a reader, thinker, and, of course, as a writer.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
- Have begun the process of becoming a professional rather than a student writer by interrogating and tweaking your own writing process;
- Have a better sense of the wide range of genre and scholarly activity that is meant by the term “Writing Studies”;
- Have begun to develop a portfolio of written work that you can develop and build on during the rest of your time in the Concentration.
TEXTS
Due to the varied nature of the kinds of reading we’ll need to do this semester, there is no prescribed text for this course. I will provide you with electronic or hard copies of all readings.
REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. It is important to me that you come to class as often as possible because the day-to-day work that we do as a class will contribute greatly to your success and improvement as a writer. I have an attendance policy to reward those students who take class and the work seriously. You have three absences to do with as you please. Use them wisely. After three absences, any and all absences will adversely affect your grade. After six absences, you will fail the course. Further, excessive tardiness will accumulate to at least one absence. Finally, absence is not an excuse for late work. If you anticipate problems with any part of this attendance policy, you should come talk to me.
Reader’s Notes. The readings are pivotal to this class. If you don’t do the reading we will not have very much to do in class. For every reading you have for homework, you are responsible for a two-page, double-spaced, typed response. It should answer a number of questions that gets at what the reading is about, first, and what makes this sort of writing different than other kinds of writing (see the complete assignment page on this website for details).
In-class Writer’s Notebook. One thing you can’t learn early enough in your career as a writer is discipline. Most writers will tell you that part of the job of writing is sitting your rear in a chair and actually writing—whether you want to or not. So we will spend part of every class doing some writing. I’ll collect and read it, but, more importantly, you’ll want to save it for projects in class, projects in future classes, and for inclusion in your portfolio now and later.
Blog226. A lot of students, past and present, either want to start a blog, have started a blog, and/or started a blog that they never kept up with. I’d like us to have the experience of writing and maintaining a blog this semester. We’ll take turns posting—so it’s a minimal commitment. The hardest part will be determining what the blog will be about—something we will do during our second class meeting.
Author Interview. It’s one thing to have an idea of what a writer does for a living, what she did to get there; it’s another thing entirely to get it first hand. This assignment, that you should start early and is due at the end of the semester, requires that you talk to a working writer—a writer in any capacity—and talk to them about how they are making writing a part of their life.
Formal Writing: There are three formal pieces of writing this semester. You can find more information about all of them on this website.
Writing in the Professions. Another title for this kind of writing is Technical and Professional Writing. This kind of writing covers all sorts of things like instruction writing and business reports to a greyer areas some public relations and social media (which can also be more like creative writing). Your first formal piece of writing will be an example of this kind of writing.
Writing Studies. This is a broad term that describes the work of scholars in the academy (faculty at Universities like Bridgewater), folks who work in the field of Rhetoric & Composition who look at various aspects of all kinds of writing (including Technical & Professional). Rhetoricians & Compositionists look at the effects of writing, communities of writers, the history of literacy instruction, how people actually write (composing processes), how they learn to write, the list goes on and on. We’ll look at samples of this kind of writing, and you’ll take on a modest writing study of your own.
Writing as Art. We end the semester with the part of “writing studies” that will seem most familiar to you: creative work. There is a lot more to creative work than novels or poetry—or even journalism. One semester won’t be enough to cover all of it, but we’ll do our best. You’ll have a chance to work on a creative project of your own design.
Portfolios. This class will use a portfolio system of evaluation. Portfolios are the way writers and artists collect work, and it is a very effective way of evaluating student writing (there is much research on the subject—some of which we’ll read). You’ll turn in a portfolio at the end of the semester that includes informal writing, formal writing, revision, and reflection.
Conferences & Workshopping. We will meet one-on-one at least once during the semester to work on your writing—the way an editor would meet with a writer. We will also have whole class workshops as well as small group workshops. This is the way professional writers—creative or otherwise—give and get feedback and revise their work. Too little of school involves this kind of work, and so it is important, as you enter the writing concentration, that you learn to participate in this kind of challenging conversation about writing.
EVALUATION AND GRADING
You will not receive letter grades on individual drafts and assignments in this class. This will make some of you nuts. It allows me the chance to give you credit for the things that grading individual papers will not let you do: this system, a portfolio system, allows me to count effort and revision and improvement. I think a system like that is particularly beneficial in a course like this because writing like this will be a new experience for many of you. A system like this makes room for you to develop as a writer—it makes room for failures and eventual successes.
Even though you will not be getting letter grades on everything you turn in, you will receive extensive comments on your writing that should both give you a sense of the quality of your work as well as a way to begin to revise and improve your writing. At midterm and the end of the semester you will receive a grade. These two letter grades will be based on the following criteria:
- Meeting all of the requirements described above;
- The quality of your written work, including how successful your revision work is;
- The quality of your effort in the class, in workshops, in class discussion, in your groups, in conferences, and in general;
- Your demonstration of a willingness to try new things, think in new ways, and explore different perspectives as both a reader and a writer.
Breakdown of assessment percentages. Different assignments require different amounts of effort. The percentages that accompany each of the requirements in this class should give you an indication of the time and energy that each should take up in your student life.
Reader’s Notes 15%
Author Interview 10%
Blog226 10%
Writing in the Professions 15%
Writing Studies 15%
Writing as Art 10%
Final Project 15%
Midterm Portfolio &
Final Portfolio 10%
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking other peoples words and ideas and claiming them for your own without giving the people who did the writing and the thinking the credit they have earned. It is dishonest and unethical. If you are caught plagiarizing in this class, you will fail that paper without possibility of making it up; you’ll be sent before the disciplinary board of the college, and you will fail the class.
Students with learning disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented learning disability must come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the drop add period. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time.
Electronics Policy. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers, please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.