| Instructor: Julie Barak Phone:
248-1072 Office: LHH 435 Office Hours: M-F 10:00-11:00 Home Page: http://www.mesastate.edu/~jbarak e-mail: [email protected] |
Course Goals: 1) To develop a writing habit. 2) To practice several skills and techniques that are helpful in various stages of the writing process: pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing. 3) To develop the ability to respond helpfully, analytically, and critically to the writing of others -- both peers and professionals. 4) To learn to accept and to respond in writing and through re-writing to others' comments about your work.
Course Methods/Description: The course is designed as a writing/reading workshop. We will spend most of our days in class writing, reading our writing out loud, and discussing that writing. We will also read and discuss the work of several published writers. In order to be a successful member of this class, you must be prepared to write daily in and out of class, to read your work out loud to small groups of your classmates and to the class as a whole, to comment thoughtfully on the writing of others and to accept and respond to others' comments about your own work. Participation in all of these activities is required from all members of the course. If you opt not to participate in the writing, sharing, or responding, you will fail the class.
Writing is a craft we can learn. It is also a means of exploring ourselves, our relationships with others and with our world. Writing is a mind-expanding, exciting, risky business. Let's all take up the challenge of living a writer's life this semester. It will be worth the effort!
Required Texts and Other Expenses:
Sharon Loan Fiffer and Steve Fiffer, Eds. Family: American Writers
Remember Their Own.
Alex Kotlowitz. The Other Side of the River.
A couple of file folders for your journals and portfolios.
Lots of paper and ink.
Copies of your essays as needed for peer and instructor evaluation.
Course Requirements:
Writing --
Journal. Each week you should spend at least
two hours outside of class working with the exercises we will begin in
class. I've designed these exercises to help you move through various stages
of the writing process -- pre-writing, drafting, researching, revising,
and editing. We'll move through them in this order, but you might find,
as you journal each week, that you'd like to go back and try one of the
previous exercises with a new idea you're writing about. You might do the
exercises more than once. For example, you might do the pre-writing exercises
for each new piece you start. You might find a couple of drafting or revising
exercises that really work for you, and go back to them for each draft.
Use the exercises to your advantage. By the end of the semester you should
have a MINIMUM (for me that translates in to a grade of "C")
of 15 journal entries -- one for each exercise we "practice"
in class. I'll collect and evaluate your journals 3 times during the semester.
The journal is worth 14% of your grade.
Return to Top
Essays. You'll submit one draft of each of
four essays to a group of your peers. A revised version of that draft will
be due to me about a week later. Each draft must be accompanied with a
letter that discusses the writing issues you dealt with as you wrote and
revised the piece. I call this kind of reflection a "Writer's Note"
or "Comments on the Draft." This letter is absolutely essential
reflection, not only for you, but also for your peers and for me. We will
need your comments in order to advise you about your writing. No draft
will be accepted without this letter. Each draft is worth 15% of your grade
when it is submitted to me after you've revised in response to peer comments.
Your grade will be based on the quality of your work and the way you worked
to revise in response to peer review.
Responses. Your responses to your peers will be formed as part of a group called an Editorial Board. You'll receive a copy of your classmates' work. You'll take it home and read it and make some preliminary comments. Then you'll meet with the other members of an Editorial Board who have read the same work. Together you'll compose a response to each piece of writing. A copy of this response will be submitted by the writer with the revision of the work. The writer will be asked to grade your response and I'll read and grade it as well. Your grade for this work will be the average of my grade and the writer's grade. You'll write four responses over the course of the semester. They're worth 10% of your grade.
Midterm and Final Learning Letters. At midterm and at the end of the semester, you'll be asked to assess your learning in writing. Each of these letters is worth 5% of your grade for a total of 10%.
Final Portfolio. At the end of the semester you will submit four polished drafts, one for each of the essays we've worked on during the semester. The drafts will have been revised a second time in response to my comments on them. Each polished draft will be accompanied by a comprehensive writer's note. This portfolio is worth 20% of your total grade.
Reading and Discussion --
Outside Texts. Each week, we will have a reading assignment from our
two texts or from some other sources I'll provide. We will spend part of
our class time discussing these readings, especially focussing on the ways
the writers present their ideas about writing and on their writing techniques.
You should always try to utilize the information gained from the reading
and the discussion when you are working on your journal exercises and drafting.
These readings and discussions should play a large role in your comments
in your writer's notes and in your learning letters, where you might tell
me and your classmates what you have learned from these other writers and
how you've tried to implement that learning in your own writing.
Class Texts. We will also spend time reading and discussing each other's writing. Sometimes we'll do this in small groups, sometimes as a whole class. Your participation in these discussions is important to me when I make decisions about grades. Have I heard your voice? How have your comments influenced the other writers in the class? Participation is determined by the following criteria: 1) how much you say, 2) how thoughtful and useful your contributions are to other writers, 3) how carefully you listen to the contributions of others. Lack of participation or inappropriate, distracting participation can adversely affect your grade.
Attendance --
Show up for class. You've got to come to class to do well in the class.
In order to share your responses and to help us construct a shared meaning
of the texts we'll read, you have to be here to participate in the discussions.
But, because I know that life can get complicated, everybody gets three
free absences. After three, you lose a third of a letter grade for each
absence. (That is, if you have a B for the class, but you've missed 5 classes,
your final grade will be a C+.) You will also be penalized for coming into
class late - three "lates" equals one absence.
Turn work in on time. I don't like late work. It's not fair to others to evaluate late work in the same way as work turned in on time. I always take it, but I assess a heavy penalty for its delayed submission. For every day the work is late, the grade drops one full letter grade. So, if you have an essay due on Monday, but you don't turn it in until Thursday, you won't receive any grade higher than a "D" for that assignment. Do your work ahead of time. Print your essay or response out the night BEFORE it's due. Don't wait until the last minute to dash something off. Be sure you back up all the work you do on your computer so that you have a copy on your hard drive and a copy on disk. No kind of excuse -- computer or printer problems, disk problems, lost items, etc. -- will mitigate the penalty for late work.