Composing for Your Community: Writing as Action

Required Materials:   

• Losh, Elizabeth and Jonathan Alexander. Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing. 2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017.
• All other short readings will be provided in PDF format by Dr. Andersen online

Course Goals, Descriptions, and Expectations:

Curricular description: This course is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of college-level writing.  Students will practice critical thinking and textual analysis, and learn the basics of college-level research and documentation.  Students will practice the steps in the writing process, including pre-writing, developing thesis statements, drafting, and revising.  

What does this mean?  It means that you will practice writing by writing.  A lot.  The course is designed for you to learn the conventions of college writing that you can then apply to any and all of your other courses.  This course is based on the writing process—the idea that writers go through a significant amount of drafting and revising in order to design a coherent/cohesive piece of prose that meets the needs of their intended audience. We will work together on the steps in the writing process, and work to create texts that use that process and reach their intended audience.  In WRI 1001, you will be fulfilling the requirements of the CGE Learning Outcomes 1, 3, 5 and 6.   

Course-specific description: What does it mean to be a writer? What does it mean to compose today? And what shapes us into the composers we are? The linguist, James Paul Gee, reminds us that there are very real connections between the communities of which we are a part and our communication styles and habits. The philosopher, J. L. Austin, argues that we can “do things with words,” and examines the performances and actions our communications take on. If we keep these ideas in mind, how might we use composing to bring about positive action for, in, and by our communities? This semester we’ll look at texts and work on assignments that examine what it means to think consciously about the writing we do, and how being aware of our writing practices makes us better writers. More specifically, we will pay close attention to how our writing forms, and is formed by, the communities of which we are members, and examine how our writing can directly impact those communities regarding the issues we care about the most. Some questions we will be considering this semester include: How do our personal, intersecting communities make an impact on our writing? On the other hand, how does writing (and other specific kinds of communications) shape the communities around us? How can we use composing to take action for our communities? What are the common practices of writers, and how can we employ them in order to be more active members of the communities of which we become parts? The semester will be broken up into three parts: Part I, “What’s Your Problem?,” will give us a chance to identify our communities and the issues we’d like to address through composing. Part II, “How are People Talking About It?,” will help us identify the rhetorical methods of others who are attempting to address important issues surrounding our communities. In Part III, “What are You Going to Do About It?,” we will develop rhetorical strategies and compositions of our own that will address important local issues that affect our communities. Through our analyses of these questions and the assignments we complete, this class will be a place for us to think about writing in a concentrated way in order to make better use of it and to communicate within our communities more effectively in our day-to-day lives – particularly as you begin to write your way through an undergraduate degree.

Minimum Grade Requirement:

Please note that in order to progress to the next section of the course, you will need to get a grade of C- or better in this course.  Students who receive grades less than a C- will need to repeat the course.

Course-Specific Learning Goals:

• To recognize that each of you is a writer with a valuable voice
• To develop healthy practices/habits for composing to be carried with you beyond this course
• To become conscious of your personal composing processes and to appreciate their importance in the completion of writing tasks
• To understand and value the multiple literacies we each experience
• To recognize the power of composing and the importance of rhetorical choices in taking action in our communities
• To understand the value of incorporating outside sources when analyzing, critiquing, arguing, and/or commenting upon a topic of importance
• To understand the importance of respecting one’s sources by using proper citation methods
• To learn to interact with other writers by forming a supportive community – both in the classroom and in a digital space – that is open to constructive feedback
• To think critically while being open to new ideas and respectful of others’ voices

Course Requirements:

Digital Materials:

• A laptop, tablet, or other reliable digital device (preferably not your phone) that you can bring to class, charged
• Regular access to a reliable internet connection (This could be a computer lab here at Centenary.)
• Regular access to a computer with Adobe Acrobat Reader (The computers in the labs at Centenary should already have this downloaded. You can download this for free on your personal computer at http://get.adobe.com/reader/.)
• A Google Drive account (also free; this comes with a Gmail account).
• A WordPress account (If you do not have a free account, you will have the opportunity to get one when I invite you via an email to participate in the course blog.)
• In addition to our textbook, short readings will be provided by me online via a shared Google Drive folder linked on the blog and/or in class.

For a list of assignments for the course, please see the Assignment page of this blog.

Turning in assignments: All assignments should be turned in electronically, via a Google Drive folder. At the beginning of the semester, I will share a Google Drive folder with you which contains blank Google documents pre-titled for each assignment you’ll need to turn in this semester. (Please be sure to give me a Gmail address or an email address connected to a Google Drive account.) Each assignment you compose should utilize these pre-made documents in order to ensure that we have access to all drafts and changes, and to avoid any technological difficulties.

• An additional note on submissions: I expect you to be able to resolve any technological difficulties you may be having well before your assignment is due. Not being able to upload a file, broken links, laptop malfunctions, or an “email glitch” are not a valid excuses for handing in late work.(This is why I base my course in Google docs – to ensure that you can access your work anywhere, from any computer, at any time.) If you need assistance you can always call or email the Centenary Helpdesk. You can contact me as well, although the sooner you reach out to me the better in terms of how much I’ll be able to help you. To clarify: any missing assignments, broken links, or inaccessible files/videos/images are your responsibility to take care of before the assignment deadline.

Writing Center Peer Tutoring: If you are in this section of WRI1001, you opted in to receive extra support for your writing over the course of the semester. As a result, your participation in writing tutoring through the Writing Collaboratory, Centenary’s writing center, will be a required component of your fulfillment of the Grading Contract. You will need to visit the Collaboratory for each draft of each assignment; this means that by December, you will have to have visited the Collaboratory at least 12 times. Workshop attendance does NOT count toward these 12 visits. (More than 12 visits, or workshop attendance, will earn you extra credit toward an “above standard” contract standing.) Eligible visits will include walk-in tutoring sessions during the Collaboratory’s designated WRI1001 Walk-In Hours (schedule TBD) or individual appointments scheduled using the Collaboratory’s online database: http://centenary.mywconline.com

Course Policies:  

• For course policies regarding grades, late work, plagiarism, etc., please refer to the grading contract for this course, and to the Centenary University Syllabi Statements linked in our course’s Moodle site.
• Special policy on inclusive language and gender-neutral pronouns: English is an evolving language that continuously changes to meet cultural, technical, and sociopolitical needs. In recent years, discussions of identity and inclusion have been shaping the way we use pronouns. With that in mind, please respect the pronoun choices of your classmates as we participate in class discussions and peer review. When appropriate, gender-neutral pronouns should be used. They/them/their/theirs/themself are commonly accepted forms of gender-neutral pronouns, but by no means are those the only, or even the most common, options. I encourage you to identify your pronouns when you feel comfortable doing so, and to refer to others in ways that align with their identities. Additionally, our awareness of harmful terminology in everyday speech is constantly shifting as we learn and grow as individuals. As a result, this class will be a place for us to think critically about the ways our words impact those around us. Language that degrades the humanity of others in- and outside of our classroom (i.e., words or phrases that are classist, ableist, racist, gender-exclusionary, anti-LGBTQIA, etc.) will be analyzed critically with an eye towards respectful communication and thinking, as our classroom community develops greater awareness of identity in the texts we confront. This class values inclusion, kindness, diversity, and thoughtful conversations that interrogate cultural concepts, and it is important for our language use to reflect that.

Academic Assistance:

• Accommodations: Students with documented disabilities are entitled under the law to reasonable accommodations. I am committed to an access-friendly classroom, and am willing to do whatever I can to help you succeed in this course. If you have a disability and need accommodations, please notify me as early as possible during the semester and contact the Office of Disability Services: dso@centenaryuniversity.edu or call 908-852-1400, ext. 2251.
• Academic Success and Advising Center: The Academic Success and Advising Center offers assistance in a  variety of areas, including study skills and content-based tutoring. Contact academicsuccess@centenaryuniversity.edu or call 908-852-1400, ext. 2353.
• Writing Collaboratory: Students seeking help with writing assignments, as well as those wishing to develop their writing skills in general, are invited to visit The Writing Collaboratory, a tutoring center specializing in writing. The tutors, who offer one-on-one assistance, are some of your fellow undergraduates specifically trained in proven methods for writing tutoring. The Collaboratory hours are 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Thursday. To get more information or to set up an appointment, send an email to collaboratory@centenaryuniversity.edu or call 908-852-1400, ext. 2400.