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WRTG 1150: First Year Writing and Rhetoric

Spring 2011

Instructor: Merrit Dukehart
Sections:64
Class Times:M/W4:30 – 5:45
Location:HLMS 237 / Office: Hellems 10
Office Hours: 1:30 – 2:50 on Wed. and by appointment. I schedule extra office hours the week papers are due.
e-mail:

Required Texts:

Available in CU Bookstore:

Ellis, Erik and Pearce, Lonni, eds. Knowing Words. Plymouth, MI: Hayden-McNeil, 2010-2011.

If you struggle with grammar, you must purchase a reference guide. My personal preference is:

Troyka, Lynn Q and Hesse, Douglas. Quick Access, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003.

Other Requirements:

We will read excerpts from Andrea Lunsford’s Everything is an Argument, Peter Pringle’s Food Inc. and Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest, and Erik Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation

These reading assignments will be available on CU Learn as a pdf:

CU Learn:

You are required to check CU Learn and CU Link (email account) everyday before and after class. I update CU Learn weekly and I often send out important information via email.

One binder with pockets, a manila file folder, or whatever you think would help you stay organized. Please bring or keep loose leaf paper on hand for in class free writing.

Course Purpose:

This course is an introduction to college-level academic writing – emphasizing critical thinking, reading, and written communication. These goals can be facilitated in a number of ways. I’ve chosen to focus the class on art, food, and social controversies (some of my favorite things). The goals of the course are to:

  • To Write with fluency and to acquire a practical and reflective understanding of the writing process. Nightly writing assignments, the textual analysis, rhetorical analysis, and inquiry project will provide you with the skills to master college essay writing.
  • To Understand and apply conventions of standard linguistic usage, including proper grammar, syntax, and punctuation as you compose, revise, and edit your writing assignments with the help of other students in the class.
  • To developcritical thinking skills, meaning the ability to examine issues and ideas while utilizing differing assumptions, contents, and methods. Critical thinking skills will help you participate confidently in the academic community.
  • Part of critical thinking means being able to identify the rhetorical situation. In other words, who is speaking? for whom? and why?We will spend the first part of the class reading and identifying various authors’questions, problems, and argumentsto identify the rhetorical situation.
  • In class, we will identify, discuss, and evaluate the authors’ theories against our own view points.
  • This classes’ writing assignment will require you to apply differentauthor’s theories and methods of reasoning to your personal experience.
  • In applying different author’s theories and methods of reasoning to your personal experience, you will come to understand your own unstated assumptionsand be able tocritically compare different points of views.
  • Class discussions and written assignments are designed to help you formulate questions and problems, construct and develop arguments, and articulate reasoned judgments.
  • Become a proficient and critical reader. This means you will learn how to approach texts with a writer’s awareness of craft and a critic’s ability to interpret and respond to the text’s meaning and effects.
  • You will come to recognize different types of writing including persuasive and descriptive.
  • You will summarize and interpret author’s points of view in written and oral formats
  • Develop strategies of research that will enable you to become an active investigator of your culture
  • In the latter half of class, you will design your own research project, learn how to use CU’s library to find, read, and evaluate mediated (web, newspaper, magazine) and scholarly sources.

Your Job:

1) Be Present: Much of our learning will take place in class, in active ways—listening, speaking, and writing. A significant portion of your final grade will be based on your participation during class. You need to come to class and speak up to participate.All of you have interesting ideas to contribute to class conversation.

Attendance and Late Policy

Attendance:You all are adults and can make your own wise decisions. I take attendance everyday and keep note of who is texting or off in space, and who is contributing valuable insights to class conversations.If at the end of the semester you have missed more than 4 days (excused absences excluded, see below), your participation grade will be in the C range. If you are in my class everyday, but not fully present, meaning you did not complete homework, space out, check your phone every 30 seconds, etc. you may also wind up with a disappointing C range participation grade. MISSING workshops will negatively impact your grade because other students are likely depending on your presence. It is your job to show me evidence of your excused absence. If you know you’ll miss a lot of class, tell me ahead of time.

Excused Absences: illness (bring a doctor’s note), legal (you have to sit on a jury or are a witness to a trial (again bring a note from the court), documented emergencies (bring evidence), religious observances (please notify me ahead of time), and military observances (please notify me ahead of time)

Unexcused: ski days, family/friend visits, oversleeping, losing your car keys etc.

Lateness: Homework is late if it is not posted to CU Learn before class time. Class assignments are late if they are not typed and in my hand within the first 10 minutes of class. I do not accept assignments via email. I accept late assignments but I deduct 10% of your grade for each 24 hour period the paper is late. After your paper is 4 days late, I will not accept it. Turn stuff in on time!!!

2) Be Prepared: Most days will have a reading assignment leading into them; you MUST read to participate in class!! The idea is to become more careful and critical readers and writers. You need to work on your own to do this. I will help the process along by providingyou with reading questions. You will need to come to class prepared to discuss the readings in depth. At some point each student will be responsible for summarizing a portion of the readings.

3) Be Engaged:Turn the sound off of your cell phones and put them out of your sight. This is one of the smallest classes you will ever have at the university. You will have an opportunity to get to know your peers through sharing of homework, class discussion, and peer work shopping of class assignments. Listen carefully to your peers, participate, and help each other out.Your capacity to receive credit for participation is related to how well you can evaluate the readings explicit and underlying assumptions, articulate well reasoned judgments of the readings, and discuss and

defend alternate view points.

Email

Please email me with class questions and concerns, I will respond to you ASAP.However, I rarely check my email past 9PM so expect a response in the morning if you write me late.

I do NOT accept email submission of any papers or homework. Here’s why: I am super busy and I will inevitably lose or forget about your paper. Also, if you have questions about your paper before you hand it in - come talk to me in person rather then email.

Office Hours:

Please use my office hours to receive extra help with understanding assignments or readings, writing papers, formulating ideas, and etc.

Writing Center

If you want additional help with your writing, and I encourage you to do so, please make an appointment with the WritingCenter (Norlin sundial side, first floor). The writing center is a great place to talk about your ideas, improve your essays, or just generally work on your writing skills. Make an appointment at

Students with Special Needs

If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to me a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities. Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, and

If you have a temporary medical condition or injury, see guidelines at

The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment

The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment, the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships apply to all students, staff and faculty. Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of sexual harassment or discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, creed, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550. Information about the ODH, the above referenced policies and the campus resources available to assist individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at

Maintaining a Civil Classroom Environment

The success of this class depends upon trust, respect, and civility. Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Faculty have the professional responsibility to treat all students with understanding, dignity and respect, to guide classroom discussion and to set reasonable limits on the manner in which they and their students express opinions. Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender variance, and nationalities. Class rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. I will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate name or gender pronoun. Please advise me of this preference early in the semester so that I may make appropriate changes to my records.
Plagiarism and Other Cheating

All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic

dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior. All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (; 303-735-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at

and at

Students caught plagiarizing or otherwise cheating will fail the class.

Class Assignments

Homework Response Papers

At the beginning of the semester we will be reading various authors’ arguments about rhetoric, food, and agriculture. I will assign a reading and you are to write 1-2 page response paper. You will either answer a specific question or you will construct a general response that follows this format:

Paragraph 1: Identify, summarize, and explain the author’s argument/thesis/theory in your own words (this will be the most challenging paragraph)

Paragraph 2-3: Apply the author’s thesis/theory to your own life. Does the thesis/theory resonate with your own experience? Why or why not?

Post all homework response papers to CU Learn.

Textual Analysis

To get your writing and critical thinking skills warmed up, we will spend class time carefully describing and analyzing a few paintings and/or photographs. This assignment will help you differentiate facts from opinion, a crucial critical thinking skill. For this assignment, you will chose one of the paintings or photos and eloquently describe and analyze its details. You will begin by doing some background research into the artist. When describing and analyzing, you will not be able to use words like ‘clearly’ or ‘obviously’ because what is clear for you may not be obvious to someone else. To practice analysis you will consider several questions designed to get you thinking critically about the painting.

Rhetorical Criticism Paper

In this class you will interact with and discuss numerous texts. Each text is persuasive in nature, meaning that the author is writing to convince you to adopt his/her opinion by making claims and supporting those claims with evidence. The essay that you craft will be in response to one of thetextsyou read for homework and should analyze the techniques/strategies the author uses to influence his/her anticipated audience as determined by the context of the reading. In other words, who is doing what to whom, how and why are they doing it? Your goal is to articulate the significance of your observation in a coherent argument.

Inquiry Project Proposal

This is the first writing assignment for the Inquiry Project. You will approach the Proposal as a problem statement. You must pick a topic that is controversial, yet the people involved have taken multiple perspectives of the issue. Here you will define your project in terms of a problem, explain whyand how you chose it, how you plan to research and present your findings, and make a case (argue) for why it’s a worthwhile topic. Each of these (problem posing, explaining, planning, arguing) can be done in separate paragraphs, or you can combine them in a way that makes sense to you.This proposal will be submitted to me for approval.

Annotated Bibliography

You will learn how to use the library to find sources for your research paper. Then you will learn how to cite this research using MLA or APA citation style and summarize the findings of your research in a succinct and informative manner. Learning how to write an annotated bibliography will keep you from plagiarizing and improve your research skills for future papers.

Inquiry Project Persuasive Essay

Once you have constructed your annotated bibliography you will take a stand on the controversial topic you choose. Your goal in writing this paper is to develop a strong argument using a combination of facts gleaned from your research and rhetorical strategies. Most likely the argument will pertain to a controversial aspect of your Inquiry Project. However, you will need to avoid being dogmatic by knowing the strengths and weaknesses of opposing views.

Writing Workshops

Writing workshops are designed to reduce the hesitation or anxiety you may feel about having others read your work albeit teachers, parents, or friends. A portion of our class time will be devoted to small and large group workshops in which you will read and assist with each other’s work. The benefits of the workshop approach are two-fold: as a writer, you receive a variety of responses to your work, as a reader, you learn from reading and critiquing your peers’ writing. Before I let anyone read your papers, I will teach the class the difference between constructive and non-constructive feedback.

Grading

Participation in Class i.e. your presence and participation during each class plus what you add to the class and workshop process
Homework Response Papers
Textual Analysis
Rhetorical Analysis
Proposal & Annotated Bibliography
Inquiry Workshop Letter
Inquiry Project
Total: / 15%
20%
15%
17.5%
10%
5%
17.5%
100%

Grading Guidelines

The Program assigns grades based on the evidence provided by the final version of the essay that you submitted. The classroom workshop in which your drafts are discussed encourages you to improve your work, and provides you with the tools to do so, but grades on the final papers are not assigned based on effort, progress, or time spent on the task. Pluses and minuses attached to grades reflect shades of difference.

AA paper that is excellent in content, form, and style: original, substantive, insightful, persuasive, well-organized, and written in a clear, graceful, error-free style. Although not necessarily “perfect,” an “A” paper rewards its reader with genuine insight, gracefully expressed. Such a paper is an ambitious project that engages interesting, complex ideas in a perceptive manner. It offers a nuanced, specific claim that responds to a genuine question at issue, and it follows a compelling line of reasoning. It engages and responds to questions and counterarguments in a thoughtful manner, and explores well-chosen evidence in a detailed and revealing way. The paper does not repeat, but rather enhances, what writer and reader already know. Offering a context for its ideas, the essay could be read and appreciated by someone outside of the class. The style is clear, precise, and graceful, and the author’s voice engaging.

BA clearly written, well-developed, interesting paper that shows above average thought and writing craft. The essay reaches high, and meets many, though not all, of its aims. The thinking and writing are general very solid, but the paper may have some unresolved problems in argument and style, some thin patches in content, or some tangents that don’t fit in. Despite these problems, the paper does not have major flaws that compromise the general effectiveness of the case it presents or the overall readability of its prose. OR A paper that is far less ambitious than an “A” paper, but reaches all of its aims. This is an essay that may be well organized and cleanly, even elegantly written, but whose reasoning and argument may nonetheless be somewhat routine or self-evident.