Course Description

In this class, the first of a two-course sequence in the Pathways Required Core, we’ll explore how language shapes how we view everything and everyone around us. Language makes worlds. We’ll engage with a wide variety of textual genres—essays, poetry, songs, creative non-fiction pieces, news media, academic articles and film, for example—with careful attention to the role of genre itself as well as to the role of audience and purpose. Studying the writing styles and rhetorical moves of professional, published writers as well as the writing of fellow Baruch students will inform your approaches to your own development as a writer within academic contexts and beyond.

This course seeks to develop students’ intellectual viewpoints and a writing voice through open class discussions; self-reflection developed through regular writing; and reflective pieces on their writing. Combining a stronger self-knowledge with the understanding of the conventions of academic writing, you will produce approximately 40 pages of both formal and informal writing that asks questions and investigates possible answers through reflection, analysis and synthesis.

Course Objectives

After completing ENG 2100, you should be able to:

Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of your work by members of your discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on your writing process in metacognitive ways.

Compose with an awareness of how intersectional identity, social conventions, and rhetorical situations shape writing: Demonstrate in your writing an awareness of how personal experience, our discourse communities, social conventions, and rhetorical considerations of audience, purpose, genre, and medium shape how and what we write.

Read and analyze texts critically: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, trope, genre, audience, and purpose.

Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing: Identify sources of information and evidence credible to your audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in your writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in your writing, using a citation style appropriate to your audience and purpose.

Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including your style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to your rhetorical context.

Required Texts and Materials

Links or PDFs for class material will be shared on our course website.

Assignment Breakdown:

Major Project 1 / Literacy Narrative—20% of course grade

This project situates you within the context of the course theme and allows you to approach course readings, and the questions that arise from them, from your own perspective and experiences. Work in this assignment ideally will scaffold into (build up to or relate to) your final project, the research-based argument.

• +/- 1,500 words / 5-6 double-spaced pages

Major Project 2 / Critical Analysis—20% of course grade

Analyzing texts is a key skill for being a good reader and writer and forms one of the core goals of this course. It involves a number of processes that we do all the time intuitively but which you may never have thought of or which you may not be able to name.

• +/- 1,800 words / 6-7 double-spaced pages

Major Project 3 / Research-Based Argument—30% of course grade

Your final project of the term asks you to learn more about a topic of interest to you or that arises from the course readings. You’ll investigate the topic, form a guiding question for your research and attempt to answer the question, using course texts and sources outside the course. You’ll integrate these sources into your own writing, ultimately coming to a (perhaps tentative) conclusion or claim (thesis) from your research and learning.

• +/- 2,100 words / 8-9 double-spaced pages

Final Reflective/Writer’s Letter—10% of course grade

Your final project of the term asks you to reflect on your writing over the semester. How has your view of yourself as a writer, reader, and thinker changed since we started this term? What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned in this class? What contributed most to your learning (your writing group—maybe a certain person who gave you helpful feedback, the reading, planning or revising your writing, conferences)? What was your favorite piece of writing in the class? The most challenging? Your favorite reading? What grade would you give yourself based on your progress and your work as a whole this semester, and why?

• 750-850 words / 3-4 double-spaced pages                              

Reading Responses—10% of course grade

We will be writing four reading responses throughout the semester. Reading responses are an opportunity to engage with the assigned texts. These short essays are meant to complement your weekly readings, and, if you wish, you may incorporate them, or parts of them, into your major writing projects. These assignments are relatively open but must not be less than 350 words.

Attendance and Participation—10% of course grade

Participation in the writing process involves completing all assignments; participating in all in-class activities (including completion of free-writing assignments, participation in writing workshops and participation in peer review sessions); participating in student-teacher conferences; and showing evidence of progress.

Grading 

I use a 100% grading scale to assess individual assignments and your final course grade.
If at any time you have a question about your grade in the class, please bring it to
my attention immediately.

	B+   87-89	C+   77-79	D+   67-69
A   93-100	B     83-86	C     73-76	D     60-66
A-  90-92	B-    80-82	C-    70-72

Policies

Please do not use cellphones during class.

Attendance: I expect you to attend all class meetings and to be there on time. With that being said, life happens sometimes; note that you can miss class up to 2 times, no questions asked.

If you must miss class, let me know ahead of time to make sure you stay caught up. If you miss unexpectedly, check the schedule on our course website and make friends with someone in class to see what you missed so you can keep up with your work. If an assignment is due on a day that you miss class because of an unexcused absence, you are responsible for keeping up with the daily schedule and contacting someone in the class to see what you missed and for turning in your work at the same time it was due for those who were in class.

Because showing up on time and respecting other people are important parts of being a good student (in your case) and a good teacher (in my case), I’ll hold all of us to a standard of being on time to class and staying until class is over. Late arrivals and early departures are disruptive and ultimately disrespectful. Therefore, if you arrive to class more than 10 minutes late it will count as an absence. The same will hold true if you leave class early more than twice.

Assignment submission: All work must be completed by the time specified within the assignment details. If you have a legitimate excuse and would like to request an extension, you must let me know one or two days in advance and we can discuss whether that’s a possibility or not.

I accept early work, do take advantage of it.If you find yourself able to submit your work three sessions ahead of the deadline, I will gladly offer you feedback, giving you time to revise your draft and resubmit your work. If your final submission shows an incorporation of feedback and a good deal of revision, this will positively influence your grade. (Revision applies to your 3 major writing assignments only).

Academic Integrity: I’ll expect you to compose your projects ethically, meaning that if you use the work of others you cite that work, and that all work in this course is original, composed for the first time for this course, and is entirely your own, to the degree that anything we write is entirely our own. All students enrolled at Baruch are expected to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty, as defined in the Baruch Student Handbook.

Plagiarism is presenting another’s ideas, research, or writing as your own, such as:

• Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes (a functional limit is four or more words taken from another’s work)
  • Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledgement
  • Using information that is not considered common knowledge without acknowledging the source

Plagiarism may result in a failing grade on a particular assignment, at the least, and, depending on the circumstances, a failing grade in the course. It is a serious offense that, if done knowingly and depending on the severity and other factors, can result in a failing grade (or worse) and a mark on your permanent academic record.

If you ever have any questions or concerns about plagiarism, please ask me. You can also check out the online plagiarism tutorial prepared by members of the Newman Library faculty at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/help/plagiarism/default.htm and Baruch College’s academic integrity policy at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/academic/academic_honesty.htm.

I have a disability. Are accommodations possible?
If you require any accommodation for a disability of any kind, please contact the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities at [email protected], and let me know as soon as you can, ideally during the first two weeks of class, so that we can design the class in a way that is accessible to your learning. I encourage you to meet with me to co-design accommodations. For additional information check out the Student Disability Services webpage.

Course Withdrawal

If at any time during the semester you have concerns about the course, an assignment, or assessment, or are falling behind for any reason, please set up a meeting to talk with me about it.

Although I hope this will not be the case for anyone, rather than suffering the consequences of a failing grade, you may wish to consider dropping the class. If you feel you must withdraw, you must do so by the dates on the academic calendar (usually the 9^th week of the 14-week semester).

No longer attending class is not the same as withdrawing from the course. You will not be dropped automatically if you stop coming to class; you still will receive a grade for the course if you do not withdraw.