Overview of Major Assignments in CO150

Major Assignments Overview

 

CO150

Overview

Overview of Major CO150 Goals and Assignments

 

We will begin by working with the notion that writing is like a conversation. Public issues take the shape they do because of the way they are talked or written about. As critical members of society, it is important that we take responsibility for understanding what people are saying about important issues in society. We also need to be responsible for analyzing why people are saying what they are and ultimately work toward participating in the conversations that affect our daily lives.

 

To become accountable members of the conversations we hear around us, we will begin by developing critical reading and responding skills. We will then research at the university level, engage ourselves with the texts we encounter through our research, and analyze the texts produced by other writers about a particular issue. Our final major assignment will be a source-based argument targeted toward an audience of your choice.

 

As we learn about public issues and how they are discussed in our society, we will also work with skills and strategies you will need to effectively write for an academic environment as well as for situations you will encounter in everyday life. Throughout the semester, you will learn how to most effectively reach your audiences and accomplish your purposes by making the most effective choices about the claim (thesis), focus, development, and organization of your writing based on your context or writing situation.

 

Portfolio 1           Due Dates:

This portfolio entails reading and responding to a series of articles about a publicly debated issue. To fully understand and respond any text we read, we need to first look at the text's context. To that end, we will first examine what is going around particular texts and thus contributes to what goes on inside them. We will develop skills to accurately identify main ideas in a text and then clearly articulate them to an audience. Additionally, we will work on how to accountably respond to what we read. Thus, our first unit and portfolio will include the following:

 

Portfolio1 : Reading a series of articles about a publicly debated issue

  Summarizing the articles' main points

  Responding to the articles following three different guidelines for     response

  Revising Summary/Response drafts

  Polishing one of your Summary/Response papers

  Revising your Summary/Response to fit a new context

  (Letter to the Editor)

 

* The total value of Portfolio 1 is 25% of your final grade and will graded on a +/- scale.

 


Portfolio 2           Due Dates:

In order to write accountable, source-based arguments, we need to do research. This unit and portfolio will introduce you to research at the university level and also illustrate how to engage yourself with the texts you come across to test your own values and beliefs as well as examine the values and beliefs of the authors you read. Your primary goals in this portfolio are to critically analyze writers and their texts and to organize the information you found in an effective and analytical manner. This portfolio will help you make the most effective argument in the long run (i.e. Portfolio 3) and will consist of the following:

 

Portfolio 2 : Choosing a Topic and writing a Topic Proposal

Critically reading and analyzing your research

A Personal Position Analysis

Compiling an Annotated Bibliography

Creating an Issue Analysis

 

* The total value of Portfolio 2 is 30% of your final grade and will graded on a +/- scale.

 

 

 

Portfolio 3            Due Dates:

Once you have become an accountable member of the conversation going on about your issue, you will most likely want to contribute your own fresh and unique thoughts about the issue to the conversation. Accordingly, this unit and portfolio will culminate in a source-based argument you will compose and revise for two separate audiences.You will want to represent yourself well by using the proper appeals to your audience and by showing the audience that you have “done your homework”—that is, that you have listened to what experts and other people have to say about the issue before sharing what you think. In Portfolio 3, we will accomplish the following:

 

Portfolio 3 : Arguing for an Academic Audience

  A Source-based Argument with Works Cited or References Page

Choosing and analyzing a publication

A Comparative Context Analysis

Arguing for a Public Audience

 

* The total value of Portfolio 3 is 35% of your final grade and will graded on a +/- scale.