Spring 2011

English 384J, A02

Writing in the Professions

IntroductionWelcome to English 384J Writing in the Professions. I’m

excited to work with all of you as we try to learn a thing or two about both about writing in general and profession-al writing specifically. Our goal this quarter is to try and deepen our knowledge about both of these topics and how they relate to and create each other. To do this, we will be reading a lot of texts about writing. These texts should give us a good foundation to use as we go about the business of researching and writing about the ways writing works in your intended professions. Our course project will be to un-derstand how writing functions to create and structure rela-tionships and create knowledge within the particular social environments of your intended professions, which means that you will be researching those professions with the intent of analyzing and theorizing how writing serves, maintains, and even creates those professions and the knowledge they generate and use. You’ll document your findings through the various documents I’ll ask you to produce.

Course WorkI’ll require you to produce four significant documents: a

Professional Profile package (Resume & Cover-letter respond-ing to an actual call for applications, LinkedIn Account Profile), a Genre Analysis, Proposal and Annotated Bibliography, and a Manual for writing in your profession. Each of these projects will involve multiple components that may include workshops, consultations with me individually, small group workshops, peer reviews, reflective essays, posts to your per-sonal blogs or the class blog, individual or collaborative work on our class Wiki, etc. Your final project for the course will be assembling these documents into an E-portfolio with a cover-letter informing me of any revisions you make and giv-ing a self-assessment of your projects individually and your performance in the course overall, and a reflective essay on your experience in the course. In addition to these formal assignments, I will ask you to produce numerous informal writings including: responses to readings that you will post to your personal blog before each class, work on the class

InstructorJohn H. Whickerjw338609@ohio.edu

Office: 343 Ellis Hall

Office Phone: 740-593-2799

Office Hours: 12–2 PM, M & W

Required TextsThe Non-Designers Design Book Robin Williams, 3rd Edition

The Little Seagull Handbook Richard Bullock and Francine Weinberg

Additional readings avail-able on Blackboard

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Spring 2011

English 384J, A02

Writing in the ProfessionsWiki, in-class writing, group work, etc. Finally, because our success in this course depends on us all engaging fully, at-tendance and participation are mandatory.

GradingI hate giving grades. Nothing inhibits your work to de-

velop as writers and thinkers like grades. Since I don’t want you giving up on your work just because you are satisfied with the grade you’ve got already (or depressed about the possibility of ever doing any better), I won’t assign any grades until the end of the quarter. You probably won’t like this; it will probably cause you some level of anxiety and discomfort. I’m sorry about that. I’d prefer to simply believe that you will work as hard as you can even if you’ve already got a satisfactory grade, but experience has taught me that sometimes, for very good reasons, you might choose not to put your best effort in if you think less than your best effort is enough. If you aren’t sure where you stand, I find you will work harder to be sure you get the grade you want. Ide-ally, we could both just concentrate on learning and creat-ing knowledge rather than the messy and divisive issue of grades; unfortunately, I have to grade you.

On the plus side, I think the most important part of a class like this is showing up, reading all the texts, and doing all the work, so I assign grades accordingly: a majority of your grade will consist of attendance, participation, and the completion of all assignments. Simply put, there are a great number of easy points that you can earn just by showing up and doing all the work. The more of these easy points you get, the fewer more difficult points you need to get the grade you want.

Grading CriteriaAttendance: 10%

Participation: 10%

Informal Writing: 15%

Professional Profile Package: 10%

Genre Analysis: 15%

Proposal and Annotated Bibliography: 10%

Writing Manual: 20%

Final Portfolio: 10%

Attendance and ParticipationAttendance

Your attendance to every class is mandatory. I will keep a tally of attendance points that I will give out every day. If you are absent for any reason, you will not get the points for that day. After about three absences, that loss of points will start negatively impacting your grade. After six absences, I think you have missed too much of the class to pass, so you will receive an F for the course.

ParticipationYour participation grade will be determined by adding

your attendance grade to your informal writing grade, divid-ing by two, and adjusting the result up subjectively based on how much I remember you participating over the course of the quarter. If you didn’t participate much, you will get the average of your attendance and informal writing grades. I won’t dock you points.

Informal writingWe will do numerous types of writing that I call informal

because they won’t count as formal projects in my grading calculations. That doesn’t mean they aren’t important. In fact, I often think that these are more important than the other papers because they tend to give a more honest and accurate look at your thinking because I won’t expect them to be polished, finished works. Most of these will be short (two page) responses to the course readings I will ask you to post to your personal blogs (I will also require that you post thoughtful comments to at least two of your peers’ posts each time to get full points). Others will include in-class writing, group work, and additional work on our course wiki not included in the grades for major projects. All out of class informal writing will be submitted on your indi-vidual blogs, and all papers will be submitted electronically through blackboard.

Course PoliciesI use e-mail to communicate important information »about the class. Email me by the end of the first day to establish communication and so I can invite you to be an editor of the class blog and the class wiki.Your work in this class is always public. Don’t submit »writing you can’t let other students see.All out-of-class work must be typed. »Papers must be ready on the assigned dates to get credit. »

Grading Scale:%

A 94–100 A- 90–93B+ 86–89 B 84–85B- 80–83C+ 76–79C 74–75C- 70–73D+ 66–69D 64–65D- 60–63F 0–59

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Spring 2011

English 384J, A02

Writing in the ProfessionsI am not your editor or proofreader. You are responsible »to ensure that all work you turn in meets the conven-tions of mechanics, grammar, and usage expected of aca-demic or professional writing. Any paper with excessive problems will be returned and must be resubmitted after problems have been resolved.If an assignment is lost or missing, you must provide an- »other copy—no matter whose fault it is.I will not accept late assignments. If you know you will »be absent, we can make arrangements for you to turn in assignments early. All papers must incorporate sources ethically using cita- »tion consistent with an established citation style, includ-ing a final page of references, works cited, or bibliogra-phy.Plagiarism: Cheating—whether by claiming another’s »ideas or work as your own (fraud) or making up or falsify-ing information (fabrication)—will result in, at the least, zero credit for the assignment, and possibly a course grade of F and a report to the College. You are at all times responsible for handling sources ethically by acknowledg-ing the author and source of directly borrowed ideas and language in your writing.1

All Major Papers must be turned in electronically on »Blackboard. THey will be analyzed by Safe Assign, a pro-gram designed to identify plagiarism.ADA: Please let me know as soon as possible if you need »any special accommodations in order to work success-fully in this class. Bring any materials you have received from the Office of Institutional Equity to document your particular needs.Everyone in our class, including me, must remain civil »and courteous at all times. We will often have opportuni-ty to share our opinions and beliefs, but no racist, sexist, heterosexist, or any other negative communication harm-ful to an individual or group will be tolerated. Whether something is offensive or not will be determined by the people whom it might offend. Your continued enrollment in this course constitutes »your acceptance and understanding of the policies out-lined in this syllabus and all attached OU or English De-partment policies and your committment to adhere to all policies and employ your best efforts to accomplishing course objectives and outcomes.

CommentsYes!: I like what you’re doing and want you to do more »of it.Great Language!: Your sentence or paragraph impresses »me, and I want you to use more of this excellent style.Nice! I find the way you made a point rhetorically effec- »tive and want to see you use similar appeals again.Yellow Highlight: I wasn’t able to understand your point »or meaning—your fault or mine, it’s a problem.Blue Highlighted Word: “I don’t think it means what you »think it means”Where am I?: I lost the train of thought—I’m not sure »how what you write about at that point relates to what came before.¶ (Paragraph symbol): Begin new paragraph here. Para- »graphs are marked by indenting the first line not skip-ping a line. Way to go!: I’m pleased with your work overall and think »you’re on the right track. (This is not an indication of a grade but an indication that continued effort in the cur-rent direction will greatly improve your chances of getting a good grade.)

Plagiarism policyAcademic Dishonesty: Plagiarism is defined by the

Ohio University Student handbook as a Code A of-fense (10); this means:

[a] student found to have violated any of the following regulations will be subject to a maximum sanction of expulsion, or any sanction not lessthan a reprimand . . . . Plagiarism involves the presentation of some other person’s work as if it were the work of the presenter. A faculty member has the authority to grant a failing grade. . . as well as referring the case to the director of judiciaries.

Any student who has chosen to plagiarize will receive an F for the course and will be referred to judiciaries in most cases. Please, if you are not sure how to avoid plagiarizing, see your instructor or a trained writing center tutor. Also, note that the Safe Assign program on Blackboard will iden-tify plagiarized material, even copies of essays written for other classes.

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1. See the full English Department

Plagiarism policy attached to this

syllabus.

Spring 2011

English 384J, A02

Writing in the ProfessionsLearning outcomes for all English J courses - Spring 2011Write:

write for specific purposes, audiences and situations »show ability to quote, paraphrase, summarize, analyze, »synthesize, and critiquecompose original arguments using rhetorical strategies »show ability to utilize and/or analyze visual texts along »with alphabetic textspractice writing in a variety of genres »approach writing as a recursive process »use various activities to generate ideas for writing »use informal writing as a tool for developing critical »thinking revise at both global and local levels »use correct documentation, grammar, spelling, and punc- »tuationcompose a minimum of 20 pages of formal, graded writ- »ing, not including revised writing

Read:read a variety of texts and genres »differentiate between primary and secondary sources »analyze and/or evaluate texts according to the audience, »purposes, and writing situationsunderstand and use a variety of concepts or theories to »analyze different textsunderstand and use rhetorical concepts to analyze texts »read own texts reflectively to identify strengths, weak- »nesses, and areas needing improvementrespond to peers’ texts constructively at both global and »local levels.

Research:

search a variety of academic databases using appropriate »and effective strategiesevaluate the quality and validity of sources using clear »criteriaunderstand what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid »itdocument sources correctly using an assigned documen- »tation styledemonstrate ability to develop a good question for re- »search