Wr 122 essay one

Writing 122 Essay One 15 points

1. Write a two-page (no more – so edit skillfully) narrative essay about a time in your life when the place you were defined the experience. This is your chance to write about something without doing much research. So, enjoy it, but along the way make sure to use your best sentence structure, grammar, organization, punctuation, and word choices. Due Thursday., April 9.

Shame

Shame  by Dick Gregory

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that. I was about seven years old when I got my first big lesson. I was in love with a little girl named Helene Tucker, a light-complexioned little girl with pigtails and nice manners. She was always clean and she was smart in school. I think I went to school then mostly to look at her. I brushed my hair and even got me a little old handkerchief. It was a lady's handkerchief, but I didn't want Helene to see me wipe my nose on my hand.

The pipes were frozen again, there was no water in the house, but I washed my socks and shirt every night. I'd get a pot, and go over to Mister Ben's grocery store, and stick my pot down into his soda machine and scoop out some chopped ice. By evening the ice melted to water for washing. I got sick a lot that winter because the fire would go out at night before the clothes were dry. In the morning I'd put them on, wet or dry, because they were the only clothes I had.

Everybody's got a Helene Tucker, a symbol of everything you want. I loved her for her goodness, her cleanness, her popularity. She'd walk down my street and my brothers and sisters would yell, "Here comes Helene," and I'd rub my tennis sneakers on the back of my pants and wish my hair wasn't so nappy and the white folks' shirt fit me better. I'd run out on the street. If I knew my place and didn't come too close, she'd wink at me and say hello. That was a good feeling. Sometimes I'd follow her all the way home, and shovel the snow off her walk and try to make friends with her momma and her aunts. I'd drop money on her stoop late at night on my way back from shining shoes in the taverns. And she had a daddy, and he had a good job. He was a paperhanger.

I guess I would have gotten over Helene by summertime, but something happened in that classroom that made her face hang in front of me for the next twenty-two years. When I played the drums in high school, it was for Helene, and when I broke track records in college, it was for Helene, and when I started standing behind microphones and heard applause, I wished Helene could hear it too. It wasn't until I was twenty-nine years old and married and making money that I finally got her out of my system. Helene was sitting in that classroom when I learned to be ashamed of myself.

It was on a Thursday. I was sitting in the back of the room, in a seat with a chalk circle drawn around it. The idiot's seat, the troublemaker's seat.

The teacher thought I was stupid. Couldn't spell, couldn't read, couldn't do arithmetic. Just stupid. Teachers were never interested in finding out that you couldn't concentrate because you were so hungry, because you hadn't had any breakfast. All you could think about was noontime; would it ever come? Maybe you could sneak into the cloakroom and steal a bite of some kid's lunch out of a coat pocket. A bite of something. Paste. You can't really make a meal of paste, or put it on bread for a sandwich, but sometimes I'd scoop a few spoonfuls out of the big paste jar in the back of the room. Pregnant people get strange tastes. I was pregnant with poverty. Pregnant with dirt and pregnant with smells that made people turn away. Pregnant with cold and pregnant with shoes that were never bought for me. Pregnant with five other people in my bed and no daddy in the next room, and pregnant with hunger. Paste doesn't taste too bad when you're hungry.

The teacher thought I was a troublemaker. All she saw from the front of the room was a little black boy who squirmed in his idiot's seat and made noises and poked the kids around him. I guess she couldn't see a kid who made noises because he wanted someone to know he was there.

It was on a Thursday, the day before the Negro payday. The eagle always flew on Friday. The teacher was asking each student how much his father would give to the Community Chest. On Friday night, each kid would get the money from his father, and on Monday he would bring it to the school. I decided I was going to buy a daddy right then. I had money in my pocket from shining shoes and selling papers, and whatever Helene Tucker pledged for her daddy I was going to top it. And I'd hand the money right in. I wasn't going to wait until Monday to buy me a daddy.

I was shaking, scared to death. The teacher opened her book and started calling out names alphabetically: "Helene Tucker?" "My Daddy said he'd give two dollars and fifty cents." "That's very nice, Helene. Very, very nice indeed."

That made me feel pretty good. It wouldn't take too much to top that. I had almost three dollars in dimes and quarters in my pocket. I stuck my hand in my pocket and held on to the money, waiting for her to call my name. But the teacher closed her book after she called everybody else in the class.

I stood up and raised my hand. "What is it now?" "You forgot me?" She turned toward the blackboard. "I don't have time to be playing with you, Richard."

"My daddy said he'd..." "Sit down, Richard, you're disturbing the class." "My daddy said he'd give...fifteen dollars."

She turned around and looked mad. "We are collecting this money for you and your kind, Richard Gregory. If your daddy can give fifteen dollars you have no business being on relief."

"I got it right now, I got it right now, my Daddy gave it to me to turn in today, my daddy said. .."

"And furthermore," she said, looking right at me, her nostrils getting big 2 and her lips getting thin and her eyes opening wide, "We know you don't have a daddy."

Helene Tucker turned around, her eyes full of tears. She felt sorry for me. Then I couldn't see her too well because I was crying, too.

"Sit down, Richard." And I always thought the teacher kind of liked me. She always picked me to wash the blackboard on Friday, after school. That was a big thrill; it made me feel important. If I didn't wash it, come Monday the school might not function right.

"Where are you going, Richard! "

I walked out of school that day, and for a long time I didn't go back very often.

There was shame there. Now there was shame everywhere. It seemed like the whole world had been inside that classroom, everyone had heard what the teacher had said, everyone had turned around and felt sorry for me. There was shame in going to the Worthy Boys Annual Christmas Dinner for you and your kind, because everybody knew what a worthy boy was. Why couldn't they just call it the Boys Annual Dinner-why'd they have to give it a name? There was shame in wearing the brown and orange and white plaid mackinaw' the welfare gave to three thousand boys. Why'd it have to be the same for everybody so when you walked down the street the people could see you were on relief? It was a nice warm mackinaw and it had a hood, and my momma beat me and called me a little rat when she found out I stuffed it in the bottom of a pail full of garbage way over on Cottage Street. There was shame in running over to Mister Ben's at the end of the day and asking for his rotten peaches, there was shame in asking Mrs. Simmons for a spoonful of sugar, there was shame in running out to meet the relief truck. I hated that truck, full of food for you and your kind. I ran into the house and hid when it came. And then I started to sneak through alleys, to take the long way home so the people going into White's Eat Shop wouldn't see me. Yeah, the whole world heard the teacher that day-we all know you don't have a Daddy.

It lasted for a while, this kind of numbness. I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. And then one day I met this wino in a restaurant. I'd been out hustling all day, shining shoes, selling newspapers, and I had googobs of money in my pocket. Bought me a bowl of chili for fifteen cents, and a cheese- burger for fifteen cents, and a Pepsi for five cents, and a piece of chocolate cake for ten cents. That was a good meal. I was eating when this old wino came in. I love winos because they never hurt anyone but themselves.

The old wino sat down at the counter and ordered twenty-six cents worth of food. He ate it like he really enjoyed it. When the owner, Mister Williams, asked him to pay the check, the old wino didn't lie or go through his pocket like he suddenly found a hole.

He just said: "Don't have no money." The owner yelled: "Why in hell did you come in here and eat my food if you don't have no money? That food cost me money."

Mister Williams jumped over the counter and knocked the wino off his stool and beat him over the head with a pop bottle. Then he stepped back and watched the wino bleed. Then he kicked him. And he kicked him again.

I looked at the wino with blood all over his face and I went over.
"Leave him alone, Mister Williams. I'll pay the twenty-six cents."

The wino got up, slowly, pulling himself up to the stool, then up to the counter, holding on for a minute until his legs stopped shaking so bad. He looked at me with pure hate. "Keep your twenty-six cents. You don't have to pay, not now. I just finished paying for it."

He started to walk out, and as he passed me, he reached down and touched my shoulder. "Thanks, sonny, but it's too late now. Why didn't you pay it before?" I was pretty sick about that. I waited too long to help another man. []

Countdown

The New Yorker

Are We There Yet?

Countdown

by Jonathan Franzen April 18, 2005

In 1969, the drive from Minneapolis to St. Louis took twelve hours and was mostly on two-lane roads. My parents woke me up for it at dawn. We had just spent an outstandingly fun week with my Minnesota cousins, but as soon as we pulled out of my uncle’s driveway these cousins evaporated from my mind like the morning dew from the hood of our car. I was alone in the back seat again. I went to sleep, and my mother took out her magazines, and the weight of the long July drive fell squarely on my father.

To get through the day, he made himself into an algorithm, a number cruncher. Our car was the axe with which he attacked the miles listed on road signs, chopping the nearly unbearable 238 down to a still daunting 179, bludgeoning the 150s and 140s and 130s until they yielded the halfway humane 127, which was roundable down to 120, which he could pretend was just two hours of driving time even though, with so many livestock trucks and thoughtless drivers on the road ahead of him, it would probably take closer to three. Through sheer force of will, he mowed down the last twenty miles between him and double digits, and these digits he then reduced by tens and twelves until, finally, he could glimpse it: “Cedar Rapids 34.” Only then, as his sole treat of the day, did he allow himself to remember that 34 was the distance to the city center—that we were, in fact, less than thirty miles now from the oak-shaded park where we liked to stop for a picnic lunch.

The three of us ate quietly. My father took the pit of a damson plum out of his mouth and dropped it into a paper bag, fluttering his fingers a little. He was wishing he’d pressed on to Iowa City—Cedar Rapids wasn’t even the halfway point—and I was wishing we were back in the air-conditioned car. Cedar Rapids felt like outer space to me. The warm breeze was someone else’s breeze, not mine, and the sun overhead was a harsh reminder of the day’s relentless waning, and the park’s unfamiliar oak trees all spoke to our deep nowhereness. Even my mother didn’t have much to say.

But the really interminable drive was through southeastern Iowa. My father remarked on the height of the corn, the blackness of the soil, the need for better roads. My mother lowered the front-seat armrest and played crazy eights with me until I was just as sick of it as she was. Every few miles a pig farm. Another ninety-degree bend in the road. Another truck with fifty cars behind it. Each time my father floored the accelerator and swung out to pass, my mother drew frightened breath:

“Fffff!

“Ffffffff!

“Fffff—fffffffff!—oh! earl! oh! Fffffff!”

There was white sun in the east and white sun in the west. Aluminum domes of silos white against white sky. It seemed as if we’d been driving steadily downhill for hours, careering toward an ever-receding green furriness at the Missouri state line. Terrible that it could still be afternoon. Terrible that we were still in Iowa. We had left behind the convivial planet where my cousins lived, and we were plummeting south toward a quiet, dark, air-conditioned house in which I didn’t even recognize loneliness as loneliness, it was so familiar to me.

My father hadn’t said a word in fifty miles. He silently accepted another plum from my mother and, a moment later, handed her the pit. She unrolled her window and flung the pit into a wind suddenly heavy with a smell of tornadoes. What looked like diesel exhaust was rapidly filling the southern sky. A darkness gathering at three in the afternoon. The endless downslope steepening, the tasselled corn tossing, and everything suddenly green—sky green, pavement green, parents green.

My father turned on the radio and sorted through crashes of static to find a station. He had remembered—or maybe never forgotten—that another descent was in progress. There was static on static on static, crazy assaults on the signal’s integrity, but we could hear men with Texan accents reporting lower and lower elevations, counting the mileage down toward zero. Then a wall of rain hit our windshield with a roar like deep-fry. Lightning everywhere. Static smashing the Texan voices, the rain on our roof louder than the thunder, the car shimmying in lateral gusts.

“Earl, maybe you should pull over,” my mother said. “Earl?”

He had just passed milepost 2, and the Texan voices were getting steadier, as if they’d figured out that the static couldn’t hurt them: that they were going to make it. And, indeed, the wipers were already starting to squeak, the road drying out, the black clouds shearing off into harmless shreds. “The Eagle has landed,” the radio said. We’d crossed the state line. We were back home on the moon.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/18/050418fa_fact1?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz2bDvxr0OX

Stop Ordering Me Around link

http://www.newsweek.com/stop-ordering-me-around-192058

HW for Week One

HW: Due Thursday, April 2: Read "Students that Keep Teachers Inspired." )You can google it.
(short quiz Thursday)

HW: Due Thursday: Read "Countdown", "Shame" (on blogspot), and "Stop Ordering Me Around" (link on blogspot), and type a short paragraph summary for each (all three need to fit on one page).

HW: Due Thursday: Read pages 1-7 in textbook
HW: Due April 7: pages 2-37 (quiz Tuesday)
HW: Due April 7: Get "Throwing Like a Girl" from the blogspot. Print it, annotate it, and bring it to class. Also, type a 2/3-page summary of it. Below is the link.
HW: Due April 9: Essay one

Throwing Like a Girl link

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1996/08/throwing-like-a-girl/306152/

Syllabus

Mt. Hood Community College
WR 122 English Composition: Critical Thinking   Class time: 2:40- 4:30 p.m.
Humanities Division – Spring 2015 – 4 Credits
Instructor: Joe Van Zutphen   Email: Joe.VanZutphen@mhcc.edu
Office and mailbox: Humanities Division, AC 1582 Office Hours: 12:00 – 1:00 TTH
Blogspot: http://wr122mhccvanzutphen.blogspot.com/

COURSE INFORMATION _________________________________________________________________________

MT. HOOD COMMUNITY COLLEGE MISSION STATEMENT

A commitment to the community: Mt. Hood Community College affords all people a knowledge-based education, giving them the ability to make life choices: adapt to change; build strong communities; contribute to and derive benefit from the new economy; and become part of a skilled workforce.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This four-credit class is designed to focus on specific ways to develop critical argumentative essays.  These essays will be in response to increasingly complex contexts, competing arguments and issues in politics, rhetoric, media, and philosophical issues. The practice and mastery will revolve around concise theses, adept organization, and effective reasoning, while using academically sound grammar and sentence structure. Students will learn to find appropriate, reliable sources in a variety of contexts in order to write research essays.

PREREQUISITE: Completion of WR 121 with C or better

Instructional Methods Used:

Writing 122 is a class best taught by a combination of instructional methods. The method students will encounter most frequently is the class discussion, in which the teacher is not so much a lecturer as a facilitator of student conversation. We will use class discussion to explore the issues we will be writing about. Additionally, students will often evaluate their writing or explore class concepts using small group discussions or workshops. On a few occasions during the quarter I will give formal lectures, particularly to explain grammar or citation concepts. Finally, and most importantly, students will spend a good deal of time writing in class, both as a tool for discovery, for assessment of student ability, and for practicing our writing skills.

Course Requirements:

The bulk of the work for this class will involve reading challenging, college-level essays and articles, as well as writing several essays, summaries, responses, and other writing assignments. More specifically, you will write four essays over the course of the quarter, three of which will be written as take home assignments over a period of roughly two weeks each. The other essay will be in-class writing exams which will occur at midterm and during finals week. Each of these essay assignments will be different, with different length requirements, structures, and topics, though all will require that you analyze the topic critically and respond to it with college-level writing.

In addition to your writing essays and tests, I will ask you to practice your writing with shorter day-to-day assignments. Most of these assignments will be short—summaries, reader responses, and the like—and you will submit them for a quick “check-off” grade. For some assignments, I may ask you to provide evidence of active reading or to fill out a brief grammar exercise, but most of the day-to-day assignments will involve writing. Research (and common sense) suggests that if you want to be a better writer you must write, and these day-to-day assignments offer you an opportunity to practice your skills.

Finally, because good writing depends so much on revision, I will ask you to help one another revise essays by working in peer response groups. These groups will meet several times during the class and you will be graded on the quality of your participation in these groups.

Grading

As you can see by the grade scale below, your work is graded more heavily at the end of the quarter than at the beginning. This is deliberate. It really isn’t very important to me how strong (or weak) a writer and reader you are at the beginning of the quarter; what matters to me is how much you learn in this class and how competently you can write at the end.

Assignment	Points of Final Grade
Take-Home Essay 1	20
Take-Home Essay 2	25
In-Class Essay 3	15
Take-Home Essay 4	45
In-Class Exam 1	10
In-Class Exam 2	10
In-class writing and other homework	25
Peer response, attendance, participation	30 180

I accept no assignments via e-mail.

Points and Final grades

162 -- 180 = A

144 -- 161 = B

126 – 143 = C

108 – 125 = D

Below 108 = F

Regarding the question of how these assignments will be graded, the end of this syllabus contains a chart of my grading criteria for the essays and day-to-day assignments. I will also post documents soon that describe these grading criteria in greater detail. Your peer response participation grade will depend on the quality and quantity of written comments and suggestions you make on your classmates’ papers during peer response workshops.

All students have the opportunity to turn in any one assignment up to five days late without incurring a grade penalty. There’s a One-Time-Only-Due-Date-Extender to fill out and email to me; you can find it on the class web page (http://wr122vanzutphen.blogspot.com/). Once you have used this permission, though, any other late assignments you turn in late will not be accepted. Note that the permission slip is good for turning in only ONE paper up to five days late. Papers are due at the start of class and an assignment that is turned in later that day is considered a day late. Please understand also that I will always grade assignments which have been turned in on time before I will grade a late assignment; therefore, if you turn in an assignment late, it will not be graded as promptly. Finally, keep in mind that no late assignment may be turned in for any reason after the last regular class day of the quarter.

Texts and Materials

 Required text: Envision. Alfano. ISBN 9780205758470 Publisher Longman. Ed. 4

Other Materials:

You will need to have access to a computer with a word processor and an Internet connection. Don’t despair if you don’t own a computer: there are many computer labs at MHCC for student use. While we’re on the subject, it’s a good idea to save your work in two places, such as on a thumb drive and in an email account: please back up your work frequently, as essays which are erased/virus-infected/eaten by computers are your responsibility.

Finally, you’ll need some kind of paper notebook or folder for day-to-day writing. A single spiral bound notebook should be fine.

Class Policies

Attendance: Please come to class and be on time. While I am happy to work with students who must miss a class because of a genuine emergency, students simply will not do well in the course if they make a habit of missing class. You only get one chance this quarter to turn your work in late, and a good share of your final grade corresponds to work you will be doing in class. Also, students are given credit for peer response workshops only if they participate in the workshops during class time. In short, you need to be here regularly if you want to do well. I will be taking attendance to encourage your staying caught up with the challenging class material. Students may miss up to five class days for any reason; after that, each subsequent absence will lower the student’s overall grade by 3%. Students who have missed more than ten class days will automatically receive a final class grade of C- or lower.

The only exception to these rules occurs in the first week of the quarter. During that time, in accordance with English department policy, I will drop any student who misses a class during the first two class meetings and does not get in touch with me.

Class Courtesy: Having a safe and civil atmosphere for learning depends on all of us. When we speak with one another, especially when disagreeing, it is vital that we do so with mutual respect. Students who are disruptive or abusive towards others may be asked to leave the class. On a related note, it is both disruptive and rude to leave your cell phone on in the classroom. Please turn it off when you come to class.

Plagiarism: Students who copy the words or ideas of any other writer without acknowledging the original author of those words or ideas are engaging in plagiarism. Plagiarism is grounds for failing this course. One of the goals of this course is to understand how to use information effectively and ethically in your writing. Once those concepts have been introduced, any instances of plagiarism will result in severe grade penalties for the student. In most cases, these penalties lead to failure of the class.

For more information about the English department’s plagiarism policy, please follow this link:

http://www.clark.edu/Library/PDF/eng_dept_statement_plagiarism.pdf

Americans with Disabilities Act Accommodations:

Please allow the kind and helpful people in the Disabilities Services Office to guide you in documenting your disability and in helping you attain the accommodations that you need to succeed in college. Please do contact this office or stop by to make an appointment.   FOR ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT MHCC POLICIES AND SAFETY INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT THE FOLLOWING WEBSITE: http://home.mhcc.edu/office_of_instruction/pdf%20forms/syllabus_addendum_Gresham_Bruning.pdf TUTORING Many of you may wish to work with a tutor periodically throughout this course. In some cases, I may require that you do so. FREE tutoring is available through the Learning Success Center in AC 3300 on the third floor above the Library. Call 503-491-7108 for an appointment. Keep in mind that tutors are not there to proofread your work. When visiting with a tutor, please make sure to bring your textbook so the tutor understands what assignment you are working on and try to be as specific as possible as to what you want help with. Also, don’t wait till the last minute to seek out tutoring; the tutoring/learning process doesn’t work if you try to meet with a tutor the day your assignment is due. The LSC also offers individual learning skills consultation and academic success seminars. The LSC Computer Lab is available for individual academic use and has a variety of skill-building software available.

Tentative Schedule

Date		Class Activities		What’s Due?
Week 1		Introduction to the course; discussion of syllabus; discussion of active reading and summaries; introduction to writing process. Essay 1 assigned.		Diagnostic       Writing
Week 2		Sentence grammar review; introduction to peer response; review of paragraphing; discussion of common reading for essay 1. Peer response of essay 1.		Essay 1
Week 3		Review of comma usage; basic citation methods introduced; The Aristotelian Rhetoric; discussion of revision strategies. Essay 2 assigned.
Week 4		The Rogerian argument; discussion of common readings for essay 2; peer response of essay 2.		Essay 2
Week 5		Essay 3 assigned. Discussion of common readings for essay 3. Practice with impromptu writing.		In-Class Exam 1
Week 6		Discussion of common readings for essay 3; peer response for essay 3. Practice with impromptu writing.		Essay 3
Week 7		Essay 4 assigned. Advanced citation methods introduced; evaluating logic; Toulmin analysis. Discussion of common readings for essay 4;
Week 8
	Peer response for essay 4; discussion of logical fallacies; discussion of writing style.
Week 9	Discussion of common readings for essay 4; peer response for essay 4; discussion of logical fallacies; discussion of writing style.		Essay 4
Week 10 Week 11	Review and final revisions; final practice on impromptu writing Final exam		In-class exam 2

What Makes a Good Writing 122 Essay?

Most students can read another student’s essay and tell whether it is good or not so good. Just like teachers, when you read a classmate’s work you get a first impression about whether the essay is strong or weak. However, answering why an essay is strong or weak becomes more difficult. Though this is a difficult question to answer when looking at a classmate’s essay, it is an even tougher question to apply to your own writing.

What follows is a brief list of qualities that make your writing strong. When looking at another student’s writing or evaluating your own, think of the essay in these terms. If you ever wonder why you received a certain grade on an essay in this class, the answer has to do with the qualities listed below.

Focus: A well-focused essay speaks about one main topic, called the thesis, and does not stray from it. In the case of short 101 essays, this main topic can often be identified in a single statement in the essay, called the thesis statement. Even when there is no single explicit thesis statement, however, the essay should be focused around a single idea. The main topic of the essay is not so broad that you cannot explore it fully in your paper; also, it is not so narrow that you cannot develop it (for more on development, see below). Though you may write an essay of many paragraphs with many different arguments and pieces of evidence, everything in the essay should ultimately support your main idea.

Development: An essay is well developed when every claim you make is supported by evidence of some kind, as well as by a sound and logical argument. This evidence should be appropriate to the argument you are making, relevant to the case at hand, and reputable. In addition, a good writer uses logic that is sound and well thought-out. A well-developed essay does not claim anything to be true without offering evidence to show why or how it is true.

Audience Awareness: Good writers tailor their essays towards the needs of the audience, or reader. For example, a good writer chooses a tone that does not insult or talk down to the reader; similarly, good essays are written at a level that the audience is likely to be able to comprehend. In other words, a writer with good audience awareness writes in a style that is readable and which sounds natural. In all communication, what we mean to say and what we actually do say can be very different things; however, good writers work hard to minimize this difference. A writer with good audience awareness also does not make unfair assumptions about the reader’s gender, race, religion, class, sexuality, or value system.

Organization: Strong essays are well organized into paragraphs. Each paragraph focuses on a single idea—often this one idea can be conveyed in a single topic sentence—and displays a logical strategy for conveying its information. Each paragraph should be unified by intelligent use of transitions and key words. Similarly, a good writer uses transitions to link paragraphs into a sequence. This sequence of paragraphs should be logical and should serve to support the essay’s thesis.

Correctness: Strong essays display correct sentence grammar, punctuation, sentence unity, agreement, syntax, and spelling. While it is normal for English 101 students to make grammatical mistakes once in a while, by the time you finish this class you should have pretty strong control over sentence structure and sentence form.

Research and Citations: When it’s called for, students should know how to find outside information to support their arguments. They should also know how to cite this outside information correctly, giving proper credit wherever another writer’s words were used.

STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES:

1. Academic Discourse and Conventions
A. Engage in and value a respectful and free exchange of ideas.
B. Practice active reading of challenging college-level texts, including: annotation, cultivation/development of vocabulary, objective summary, identification, and analysis of the thesis and main ideas of source material
C. Participate in class discussion and activities; speak, read, respond, and listen reflectively, recognizing self as part of a larger community and the stakeholders in an issue
D. Appreciate and reflect on challenging points of view through reading and writing; fairly and objectively measure a writer’s viewpoint against personal experience and assumptions and the experience of others
E. Identify, explain, and evaluate basic structural components of written arguments such as claims, support, evidence, rebuttal, refutation, and final appeal
F. Evaluate elements of argument such as logic, credibility, evidence, psychological appeals, and fallacies, and distinguish differences among observations, inferences, fact, and opinion
G. Use appropriate technologies in the service of writing and learning. For example: use word processing tools to prepare and edit formal writing assignments (spell check/grammar check, find and replace); understand the limitations of such tools; locate course materials and resources online; and use online communication tools such as e-mail
H. Word process and format final drafts with appropriate headings, titles, spacing, margins, demonstrating an understanding of MLA citation style
I. Demonstrate the ability to use Edited Standard Written English to address an academic audience
J. Use a writer's handbook and/or other resources with increasing sophistication for style, grammar, citation, and documentation

2. Organization, Thesis and Development
A. Use argument as a means of inquiry as well as persuasion
B. Try more than one organizational strategy in essay drafts considering multiple implications of various claims
C. Write well-focused and logically organized essays, using introductions, transitions, discussion, and conclusions in which the relationship of ideas to one another is clear
D. Support conclusions with evidence by using appropriate outside sources, presenting good reasons, showing logical relationships, clarifying inferences, choosing appropriate language, and using the most convincing evidence for the target audience
E. Use the elements of formal argumentation
F. Select appropriate methods for developing ideas in paragraphs and essays, such as analysis, facts, explanations,
examples, descriptions, quotations, and/or narratives
G. Thoroughly develop and support an argumentative thesis with a balanced and insightful presentation of evidence

3. Audience, Purpose, and Voice
Apply rhetorical competence:
a. Evaluate the effectiveness of audience analysis in written arguments
b. Assess audience’s knowledge, assumptions, beliefs, values, attitudes, and needs and respond with appropriate
c. voice, tone, and level of formality
d. Assess and question personal knowledge, beliefs and assumptions
e. Make conscious choices about how to project oneself as a writer
f. Articulate varying points of view, particularly opposing ones, in a fair and objective way
g. Anticipate and prepare for reactions to written work by audiences outside the classroom

4. Writing Process
A. Explore the ideas of others in both informal and formal writing
B. Recognize that strong organization, thesis, and development result from a recursive writing process
C. Define and focus original and specific topics that reflect curiosity and interest
D. Develop substantial essays through a flexible writing process, making controlled rhetorical choices at all stages, from exploration, research and invention, through drafting, peer review, revision, editing, and proofreading
E. Work effectively and collaboratively with other writers to evaluate and revise essays, sharing work in process and providing constructive feedback to others according to established guidelines
F. Reflect on own problem solving process and use self-assessment to improve writing
G. Work through multiple drafts of several longer pieces of writing with time to separate the acts of writing and revising and improve essays through revision
H. Revise essay drafts to emphasize a claim, considering what support is appropriate to the purpose of essay
I. Develop discipline and organizational skills necessary to pursue an in-depth writing and research project
K. Use available writing assistance

5. Research and Documentation
A. Use library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate information and evidence, recognizing that there are different resources available for different purposes/subjects
B. Use some advanced research techniques to locate sources (subject indexes, Boolean search terms, etc.)
C. Record and organize information resources to track the research process
D. Demonstrate an ability to summarize, paraphrase, and quote sources in a manner that distinguishes the writer's voice from that of his/her sources and that gives evidence of understanding the implications of choosing one method of representing a source's ideas over another
E. Demonstrate the ability to evaluate source material for authority, currency, reliability, bias, sound reasoning, and validity of evidence. These abilities may include but are not limited to: distinguishing between observation, fact, inference; understanding invalid evidence, bias, fallacies, and unfair emotional appeals; distinguishing between objective and subjective approaches
F. Assemble a bibliography using a discipline-appropriate documentation style

The One-Time-Only Due-Date Extender

Instructions: Fill in your name, the date, and the name of the assignment you’d like to turn in late or make up. Then attach the form to the same email that you are using to turn in your assignment.

 I am requesting permission to turn in the attached assignment, or make up a missed test, up to three calendar days late with no grade penalty. I agree not to ask for extensions on any other assignments I may turn in for this class, and I understand that any other assignment I turn in after the class period in which it is due, for whatever reason, will not be accepted.

 Note: no assignments will be accepted for any reason after the last regular day of classes (i.e. no assignments are accepted during finals week).

 ___________________________________

Name of assignment

 ___________________________________

Name of student

 ___________________________________ Date:____________