English 105.009, Spring 2011: Academic Writing II

Theme: Analyzing Multi-Media Information Derived from Commercial Products, Short Fiction, Movies, and Independent Scholarly Research

Professor Arnie Sanders,

Office: VM G57 (x6515) Office Hours: TTh 1:30-2:30.  Page last updated: 05/01/2011 12:56:46 PM

New!:   5/1/11--For Monday's final portfolio peer editing conferences, please bring one paper from among papers 2, 3 or 4, and be prepared to work with someone from the class to help add value to the paper's revision.  Remember that, in my typed comments, I referred to specific parts of each of papers which would reward your effort if you chose it for revision.  This is the web page defining "substantive revision" for the final portfolio revisions which I handed out in class on Friday. 

        Conference times for Fall 2011 advising, English 221 candidates, and English 105 film papers.

        Please consider taking your notes and ideas for all English 105 assignments to the Writing Center to talk it over with one of the tutors.  I have taught them all and they can help you understand what I am looking for in academic prose.  Writing complex documents coherently is hard work.  Seek help and you will have more fun doing it.

Good practices to follow when submitting professional documents by email.

      Summary Course Description

       This course will teach you to write papers based on college-level analytical insights supported by scholarly research, and your writing for the course will be evaluated for College Writing Proficiency. Since good research writing depends upon the writer's curiosity and intellectual concentration, we frequently will ask ourselves what we want to know, why we want to know it and how we can better find out. Professional research almost never is done as it is in high schools, where students are instructed to find out "all about" their subject and report everything they can discover. Professionals do research to solve problems which have arisen when they try to explain some original insight about their topic. This research is always guided by the problems the research will help solve, though it also is always alert to unplanned discoveries. Professional researchers seek only expert, sources, usually scholarly, peer-reviewed sources, because those sources are the root of professional knowledge.  They never trust popular sources which only know (imperfectly) what the professionals have told them. We want to become good hunters and gatherers of relevant, qualified information that solves problems.   For further explanation of this English 105 section's approach to research as a part of scholarly life, click here.

Student Learning Outcomes

        Students will write academic prose using clear, accurate, and appropriate diction to construct effective and coherent complex, compound, and simple sentences, using standard grammar and spelling and avoiding unnecessary use of the passive voice.

        Students will write academic prose unified by a clear thesis that develops an argument in logically organized paragraphs, supported by at least some properly cited scholarly sources and committing no acts of plagiarism.

        Students will locate scholarly sources by using modern online bibliographic tools, will evaluate and analyze primary and secondary sources, and will engage conflicting arguments and incorporate sources’ thinking into their own arguments.

Honor Code Statement

 "Academic Honor Code: Reference to the academic honor code is required of all course syllabi as a reminder to students.  Suggested wording includes: Reminder: All students are bound by the standards of the Academic Honor Code, found at www.goucher.edu/documents/General/AcademicHonorCode.pdf."  I distinguish between accidental forms of plagiarism, in which the author obviously intended to cite sources but cited them at the wrong place, from pure carelessness (no citations, even if sources are listed at the back) and outright theft of intellectual property intentionally passed off as one's own.  The first type of cases usually are opportunities to teach and learn, but the second type may have to go to the Honor Board if they happen late in the semester, after we have discussed source use and its importance to your readers.  The deliberate and disguised theft of others' ideas and/or language will be sent to the Honor Board without hesitation.  Students also are increasingly content to cite sources long after their prose has begun to borrow ideas from those sources.  That is technically plagiarism, too, but it has become so common that I must spend gallons of ink and hundreds of keystrokes un-teaching it.  Never make me guess whose ideas I'm reading.  Cite sources when you first depend on them.  I want to know how well you can think, not how well your sources can think, which is a matter of historical record for anyone who reads them.  Let there be a bright line of fire between ideas that are originally yours and those of other writers to which you refer. 

as of 1/29/08 reset.