Syllabus

English102	Instructor: Daniel Lupton
Spring 2010	Office: Greenlaw Hall 307
Office Hours	Tuesday/Thursday 1PM-2PM
Email	dlupton@email.unc.edu

Course Description

While the English 101 course most of you took last fall dealt with the properties of good writing in the broadest sense, the goal of English 12 is to introduce students to the conventions of specific types of written academic discourse. Over the course of the semester each student will complete three units of study: one unit each on neurology, psychology and art history. However, unlike most English 12 courses, in this course students will create blogs that explore how the conventions of academic discourse interact with the conventions of more popular media.

Draft Workshops

As with most English 11 courses, much of our class time in English 12 will be spent evaluating student writing in group-centered draft workshops. Your participation in these workshops is MANDATORY, and poor performance in them (i.e. failing to give helpful comments to your peers, consistently pulling the discussion off-topic) will adversely affect your grade for that unit.

Required Texts (Available in Student Stores)

Student Guide to English 100, 101, and 102
The St. Martin’s Handbook

In addition to the above texts, it is required that you bring your fully-charged laptop to every class meeting.

Attendance

More than one absence over the course of any given unit will adversely affect your grade for that unit and any student who accumulates more than five absences over the course of the semester will receive a failing grade. If you have extreme circumstances which require you to miss several classes (i.e. mononucleosis, the death of a close relative, etc.) please let me know as soon as possible so that there may be as little disruption to the operation of your group as possible. Please note that there is no distinction between excused and unexcused absences.

Assignments

Your first assignment of the semester will be the first post to your group's blog, which will be an introductory post that introduces the members of your group and establishes the subject and rhetorical style of your blog that you will follow all semester. We will devote a great deal of class time to this post and I encourage you to take it very seriously, since the first post to a blog often establishes the tone that a blog will follow for some time.

You will produce three finished products for each of our 3 units: two feeder assignments, which will either develop skills you will need or help you put together preliminary research for your unit assignment, and a more extensive unit project that will encompass all of the things we’ve studied in class. At the end of each unit each student's work for their blog will be evaluated based on criteria we have developed in class. Blogs will be evaluated along with your participation in class to determine your grade for the unit.

All blog posts should be formatted properly according to the conventions of published blogging.

Late posts are not only unprofessional, they are unfair to your fellow students who worked hard and turned their papers in on time. Posts are considered due by the end of class on the due date unless another time is specified by me. Late posts may or may not be accepted, but they will be strictly and severely penalized.

Even more unacceptable than late work is plagiarism. All instances of plagiarism will be prosecuted in the honor court to the fullest extent allowable by university policy. If you are thinking of plagiarizing, remember that it’s not difficult to tell your writing from a professional’s and I can probably find the original source as easily as you did. You will get far more from the course if you do the work yourself, and your grade will always be better if you work hard on a mediocre assignment than if you plagiarize an excellent one.

Podcasting

In addition to blog posts, each student's feeder 2.2 and unit 2 project posts will be published as podcasts. We will talk about this more as this assignment gets closer.

Grading

Four grades will be assigned in this course, three letter grades for your cumulative work in each of the three units (including you blog, drafting, pre-writing, class participation, etc.) and one letter grade for your group's presentation.

Obsession with grades is a severe impediment to the writing process, and the perception that one must write to the teacher’s desires rather than one’s own artistic and academic ambition is a key cause of bad writing. No one wants to read the kind of lifeless prose most people think will earn them an A, thus no piece of writing in this class will receive a grade. Grades will only be assigned for your cumulative work in the unit, including final drafts, preliminary drafts and participation in draft workshops and in-class assignments.

The Writing Center (http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/)

Students are encouraged to visit the UNC Writing Center (located on the lower level of Phillips Annex). The tutors at the writing center will work with you one-on-one through problems or concerns about any stage of the writing process and can provide useful feedback between in-class draft workshops. Please note that the writing center tutors will not edit or proofread your papers.

Course Web Site and Blackboard Site

As a computer-intensive course, the internet will be an integral means of communication between yourself, your teacher and your group members. You are expected to check the course web site (http://www.unc.edu/~dlupton/1207) regularly. You can log in to our Blackboard site with your ONYEN at http://blackboard.unc.edu. If you have trouble accessing the site please alert me as soon as possible, as many of our assignments will depend upon this technology.

Email Correspondence

If office hours are inconvenient students are encouraged to communicate with me via email with the caveat that I will respond at my convenience. I will not review drafts via email; if you are grappling with specific issues you may send a section of your post, but no more than two paragraphs at a time.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as the unattributed or unacknowledged use of another’s words or ideas and is a breach of the honor code. If I suspect you of a willful violation of the honor code, I will report you to the honor court. See your Student Guide for further information on plagiarism.