CO150: College Composition Sec. 1 Spring 1999

Course Policies and Procedures

Instructor: N. Baxter

E-mail: nbaxter@vines.colostate.edu

Class meetings: Eddy 2 M, W, F 8-8:50

Office: Aylesworth 263 491-2430

Office Hours: M 9:00-10:30 & W 12-1:30 or by appt.

English Department: Eddy 359

Writing Center: Eddy 6

Course description: CO 150 is a writing workshop class designed to prepare you for successful reading, writing, and critical thinking at the university-level and beyond. It emphasizes academic expository writing and improving your abilities in areas such as analyzing the context in which one is writing, selecting topics, attending to purpose and audience, collecting information, focusing and organizing ideas, developing and supporting claims, and revising and editing written work. Discussions and writing assignments will be generated by readings from Living Languages, The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, and a selection of readings available at Copy Rite. All class sessions will be held in the Eddy Hall, Room 2 computer classroom. A large part of those sessions will involve writing on the computer. As a result, this class will tend to be much more like a workshop than a traditional lecture class.

Prerequisite: Composition Placement exam score of 3-6.

• Reid, S. The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, 4th edition
• ON LIBRARY RESERVE: Readings from Buffington, Diogenes, and Moneyhun Living Languages
• Additional readings: to be announced

Because of the small size of this class and the extent to which we will use collaborative activities during class sessions, regular attendance by members of the class is important. To encourage your attendance, I will record attendance. If you accumulate more than three absences during Unit I, I will reduce your grade for the Inquiry Essay by one letter grade per each additional absence. If you accumulate more than three absences during Units II and III, I will reduce your grade for the Arguing Essay by one letter grade per each additional absence.

Make-up work: If you miss class, you are responsible for doing the work done in class and the next day's assignment. Please do not return to class after an absence unprepared. Be advised that this is not the kind of class for which getting notes from another student will always suffice. You should, however, check with someone, preferably a classmate, for assignments, work collected, and the general activities you missed. Please don't expect me to re-teach the class to you if you are absent.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism (the intentional or unintentional submission of all or part of another's work as your own) is unethical and, in some cases, illegal. If you turn in plagiarized work, you will receive a zero on that assignment and may be reported to the university discipline authorities.

Participation: The focus of this class is learning to communicate more effectively; therefore, you need to be fully engaged in our ongoing "conversation" in whatever role is appropriate at the time. Plan on being prepared for every class--and busy! Preparation includes completing reading assignments and written homework, as well as bringing texts and materials to class.

Your participation grade will include dailies and other in-class activities, forum postings, written homework, workshops and postscripts, and the occasional pop quiz if I sense the class might not be doing the assigned reading. I will not collect everything I assign, but any assignment might be collected and graded.

This class uses plus/minus grading. You will be given clear directions regarding what is expected of you. Completing all assignments on time and attending class are essential to passing this class, but work which simply fulfills the basic expectations receives a C, not a B or A. While you will receive more explicit information about grading and evaluation criteria throughout the semester, the following outline is provided for quick reference. If you have a question or concern regarding your grade at any point during the semester, please arrange to meet with me outside of class.

Personal Reflection 5%
Response Essay 10%
Inquiry Essay 15%

Unit II:
Text Analysis 10%

Arguing Proposal 10%
Arguing Essay Brief 5%
Arguing Essay 20%
 

Final Exam 5%

Homework and In-Class Work 20%

 Policies and Requirements:

1. Paper Format: All papers must be printed in a legible font using a laser printer or an ink-jet printer. (If you have a dot matrix printer that can produce acceptable/readable output, that's fine too.)
2. Three-Ring Binder: Please bring a three-ring binder to class. I will ask you to keep all of your written work in this binder.
3. Late Papers: If you submit a paper late, it will be penalized. However, should you find it impossible to meet the due date for an assignment, please contact me prior to the due date so that we can arrange a new due date. Papers submitted on revised due dates will not be considered to be late. Late Arguing Essays will not be accepted.
4. Attendance: Please attend all days on which we will be conducting peer-review workshops. If you choose to be absent on a day that we are conducting a peer-review workshop, you will be penalized not only for missing that day's in-class assignment(s), but also for missing a workshop day. The penalty will affect your grade on the essay for which we are conducting the workshop.
5. Backup Copies of Your Work: You will responsible for making multiple copies of all the work you do in this class. You should bring two high density, PC formatted, 3.5-inch floppy diskettes to each class session. These diskettes will be used to make copies of the work you produce during each class sessions and to make copies of your major essays. You should be aware that, although the files you save on your network drive are backed up each evening, files have been known to become corrupted, lost, stolen, destroyed, deleted, hacked, flayed, and/or infected.
6. Computers in Our Classroom: We will be doing a great deal of work on computers during class. If you have a strong aversion to computers, please see me so that we can work out an alternative to taking this section of CO150. I will expect those of you who choose to remain in this section to be willing to work on the computers in this room.
7. Home Computers: If you have a computer at home or that you use on a regular basis, you will be expected to learn how to translate the file format for the word processing program you use on that computer so that you can work from your files both in this room and on your home computer. If you have any questions about how to do this, please talk with me.
8. Open-Door Policy: If at any time you have questions or concerns, please contact me. Please let me know if you have any particular needs that require accommodation, e.g. hearing or visual impairment. Take care of small concerns and confusion early before they have the opportunity to grow into major difficulties.

The Writing Center: I encourage all students to use the Writing Center, located in Eddy Hall Room 6. The tutors in the Writing Center are available to help you with your writing, to provide feedback on your work as it progresses, or simply to talk with you about ideas you have for a paper. Although the Writing Center tutors do not proofread papers, they are quite happy to work with you to improve your proofreading and editing skills. If you bring one of our assignments to the Writing Center, be prepared to talk about the assignment (you'll find the assignment sheets on the Web and I'll also hand them out in class) and the thinking you've done so far about the paper. The Writing Center is a superb resource-you'll certainly benefit as a writer and as a student if you make regular use of its services.

 The Writing Center: Located at http://www.colostate.edu on the Web, the Writing Center is an internationally known (and used) site for writing and speaking instruction. The Writing Center offers a wealth of resources that can help you improve as a writer, including the course page for this class. Be sure to check it out, not just this semester, but in other semesters during your time at the University.

Mid-Term Notification of Absences:

Attendance: Class attendance is essential to your success in CO150. You are expected to be in class, on time and prepared to participate, every scheduled class meeting. If the regular class is canceled for individual or group appointments, that appointment is considered a class meeting. To encourage you to attend every class, attendance will affect your grade in the following manner:

Everyone gets up to three (3) absences excused, which I suggest you will budget well, no questions asked. Absence #4 may result in unfavorable consequences in the evaluation of your final course grade. After this fourth absence, your course grade can be lowered one full letter grade per additional absence. Chronic tardiness will result in a recorded absence. If you have any intention of missing more than one class at a time or missing three or more classes total, consult with me in advance.

You have _____ absences. If you have questions, please make an appointment to see me.