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The Syllabus Eng 100 - College Writing I - Fall 2011 other pages welcome | course | essay | case | reports out-of-class writing assignments 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 in-class writing assignments   1| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 this page schedule at a glance

This is a good page to bookmark.

The links on this syllabus will take you on divergent paths. I don't expect any of you to read -- or to need -- all of it. However, if you're going to progress towards the course objectives, I do expect all of you to read -- and to need -- much of it. It's up to you to balance your learning style against these resources.

Schedule at a Glance

Day-by-Day

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
-- Winston Churchill

September 7, 8L, 12, 14, 15L

introduction

overview of course

course web at toLearn.net/eng100/ - welcome < index.html >, course < course.htm >, case < case.htm >, essay < essay.htm >, syllabus (this page) < syllabus.htm >, and reports < reports.htm >

research areas - what are you going to write about?

rhetorical situation: audience and purpose

diagnostic

in-class paragraph 1

Tell me a story about you and writing.

By "writing" I mean writing in the broadest sense, from your first scribbles as a child to the most recent text sent from your phone. By "a story", I don't mean the whole complete story. I mean one specific story or incident, something that happened to you in the past. Try to do it in less than 250 words.

First, set the scene. Make sure I understand who was involved, when it happened, and where it happened.

Then tell me what happened.

Finish by saying what made it worth telling.

to do

Explore this syllabus page and the rest of the course web: welcome | course | case | reports

Just before class on September 7, I sent an email to your official college address from the email address I use for this course: eng100f11 at gmail.com. Reply to my email from your official college address or from another address if you prefer. For the assignments below, you can send me two emails or combine them into one. These are official course assignments and not doing them before class on Thursday, September 9, will get you a late mark on the reports page under your initials.

Possible research areas. Send me an email at eng110f11 at gmail.com with half a dozen possible research areas about Buffalo.

1st out of class writing assignment

Send me an email at eng110f11 at gmail.com with a sample of your writing, at least 200 words. By writing, I mean sentences and paragraphs, in response to something I heard the other day.

The other day, I heard someone say about Buffalo's professional baseball team, "The Bisons have always sucked." Is that true? Always? Here's what happened to the Bisons in 1884: 1884 National League

Here's what happened to the Bisons 127 years later: 2011 International League

Write a paragraph, minimum 200 words, explaining which team had the better year, the 1884 Bisons or the 2011 Bisons. Based on that one team from 1884, have the Bisons always sucked? Feel free to substitute a word for "sucked" that you think is better justified by the data.

Send this paragraph to me as an email -- not as a .doc file attached to an email.

September 14

in-class paragraph 2

Pick the one word that best describes what yesterday, September 13, was like for you.

Write a paragraph that begins:

Yesterday was like a ________?

That's your claim. For evidence, use the events of yesterday. Organize this paragraph by time, first this event happened, then that event happened. As you go along, explain how the events contributed to the one word in your claim that describes it. These are your inferences and they should all contribute to the one word in your claim. Please note that this is a college course, not a judicial proceeding, so your evidence doesn't have to be "the whole truth and nothing but the truth". In other words, feel free to exaggerate, emphasize, and embellish, especially for comic effect.

2nd out of class writing assignment

Send me an email before class on Monday, Sept 19 at eng110f11 at gmail.com with a paragraph of at least 200 words.

Here are photos of four buildings:

City Hall (1832)	Huntley Generating Station
Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1890-1905)	Central Terminal (1929)

Look at the picture of one of these monumental Buffalo buildings and observe the details *that you can see* that are relevant to

Politics (power)
Economics ($$)
Society (people)
Technology (tools and materials)

Pretend that you work for a tourism website that is doing a feature on Buffalo's buildings. The visitors to the web site are people who have not been to Buffalo before but might be interested in going if they knew more about it. One of the web pages is going to have these photographs and next to each of them a paragraph describing and characterizing it. Write that paragraph about *one* of these buildings, describing it with observable details and characterizing it with a claim. Begin your paragraph with this sentence.

[ Name of building ] is like a ________?

That's your claim (the characterization). Use the details you observe as evidence to support that claim. That's your description. Then make the connections between the evidence and the claim. That is, explain to that audience of potential tourists how the evidence supports the claim. Take the reader through your thinking; do the thinking for them. They'll be looking at the same picture you are describing, so tell them what you see, what you want them to see. In your explanation, move from what you observe to what you can infer about what you observe. Those inferences add up to the claim.

Try to do this in 200 words, though if you need more, that's ok.

 September 19, 21,

For better or worse, we seem to be focused on Buffalo's architecture.

The next step is to choose the building(s) you are going to focus on for the rest of the semester.

During class today, I will send you an email. Before you leave class, please respond to it with a list of three (or more) buildings that you would like to learn more about. If you tell me why they interest you, that will help me decide. My biggest concern is that there is enough information about that building for you to be able to write about it for the rest of the semester.

A comprehensive list of noteworthy Buffalo buildings.

Byron Pitts

Wikipedia | CBS site

Byron Pitts is represented by the Greater Talent Network. They have a pretty good-sized staff and well as job openings for sales reps. Note there is no requirement of a college degree. There is, however, a requirement for some of the things that you can get in college:

The PERFECT Applicant:

Is a voracious reader, and has a knowledge of what is being published successfully

Talks literature, is immersed in current events, international affairs and politics

Is an excellent communicator, savvy negotiator with an extremely professional phone presence

On Monday, October 3, Byron Pitts will be on campus. You will be able to meet him and ask questions personally during his book signing, or later during the public conversation in the gym, which will be pretty full.

 September 26, 28

3rd out of class writing assignment

Byron Pitts - Stepping Out on Nothing

Pretend that you are working for Greater Talent Network, the agency that represents Byron Pitts. The agency gets a percentage of Byron Pitts's fee from Medaille, a small but important part of which is your salary at GTN. So it is in your interest that Byron perform well. The agency can charge more and you can get a raise. That means that Byron Pitts must be entertaining -- and prepared. So your boss at GTN has asked you to draft a response to one of the hard-to-answer questions that Byron might be asked by some well-meaning or even smart-aleck college student. In sports, this is like playing against the scout team, the 2nd team that is pretending to be the next opponent.

Audience: the students, faculty, and staff in the gym on Oct 3 (or an individual student at the book signing beforehand).
Purpose: to promote the book; to get people to read it

Questions:

- How did your family, including the father figures you met, both help and hinder you on your way to becoming a reporter?

- Why make such a big deal about being a late bloomer, a late reader?

- In Stepping Out on Nothing, you seemed to try too hard to touch other people, to the extent that I didn't believe the story any more. It felt fraudalent, like a lie.

- I'm a young black male, and I couldn't relate to your story.

- Stepping Out on Nothing was boring, a physical pain to read.

Write a short paragraph, at least 200 words, about how Pitts should respond if he wants to get more people to read his book.

October 3, 5

in-class paragraph 4

Accuplacer eval in Library

4th out of class writing assignment

Write a list of questions relating to our dozen buildings. You can focus on your building but most of the questions you come up with should be general enough to apply to all the buildings. Try to get at least half a dozen for each of the six questions:

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

For example, "Who built this building?" is one question.

Each of you should send me about 36 questions, half a dozen beginning with "Who", half a dozen beginning with "What", etc.

October 12

In class writing assignment 5

Ask many more questions about your building. Include the ones on the table on the reports page. For those questions, you will have answers, too, so that I can fill out the table. Email your expanded list of questions and your data for the table before you leave class.

I would also like to see a folder in your MyDocuments with images and screenshots relevant to your building.

5th out of class writing assignment

Send me an email before class on Monday, October 17 at eng100f11 at gmail.com with a paragraph of at least 200 words.

You have been hired to lead a tour of important Buffalo buildings. Your boss wants you to have a short speech to give for each building when the tour bus arrives there. The speech should introduce and characterize the building and incorporate all of the information on the table on the reports page, though not necessarily in that order. The key to this assignment will be finding a way to organize the information and make the paragraph flow with connecting words. Try to write in a human voice, one person talking to a group on the tour bus. Don't bore them!

October 17, 19

All of you have chosen either landmark buildings or, for a couple of you, neighborhood buildings that haven't quite reached "landmark" status. Two were built recently, First Niagara Center and the airport. The oldest is either the Dun Building or one of the mansions on Millionaire's Row.

The question is what should be done with old buildings. On one extreme, we should tear them down and start over. On the other extreme, we should always preserve and re-use old buildings before building new ones.

Recent battlegrounds: Canalside, Bass Pro and Peace Bridge plaza

I suspect that all of us could place ourselves on a continuum between these two extremes. If 0 is the tear them all down extreme and 100 is the preserve them at all costs extreme, where would you place yourself?

I also suspect that as we learn more about this, our position would change.

At this point, we're going to get more out of examining the issue. It will help if you begin to focus on one of the following aspects of the situation:

political / legal - who decides? what laws apply? who pays for what?

economic - what are the direct costs? indirect costs?

social / personal - the quality of life, the value of history, the importance of progress, etc.

technical - the actual tearing down of old buildings, the renovation of old buildings, and the construction of new buildings.

Buffalo Architecture and History

book: Buffalo's Best. The Preservation Coalition of Erie County, edited by Tim Tielman. 1985

recent Buffalo Rising articles

Introducing Buffalo's Young Preservationists

Why Didnt They Do Something?

Bflo Rising's list of Buffalo Books

City of Buffalo's Preservation Board

Preservation Buffalo Niagara

to identify, preserve, promote, and revitalize historically and architecturally significant sites, structures, neighborhoods, commercial districts and landscapes in Erie and Niagara Counties.

Henry McCartney, Executive Director
Market Arcade, Suite M108
Buffalo, New York 14203
Phone: 716-852-3300
henry.mccartney@gmail.com

Buffalo's Young Preservationists - Facebook - their party at Pearl Street Brewery, Wed Oct 19, 8 PM, is open to the public

Buffalo Unscripted

Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture

Carl Paladino: The Bass Pro Debacle

After decades of frustration, our waterfront was finally set to come to life. Instead, once again, Buffalo’s obstructionists piped up at the last minute and buried Canal Place.

Mark Goldman: A Buffalo 'obstructionist' proclaims his manifesto

As one of the “few obstructionists” Mayor Byron Brown referred to as responsible for the decision by Bass Pro not to come to Buffalo, I would like to proudly proclaim “The Obstructionist Manifesto.”

Tours to showcase neighborhoods' revitalization

Preservationists value efforts beyond saving landmarks

Buffalonian.com

History of Bufalo

The Burning of Buffalo

Fire Dept
 
This day in Buffalo History

Historical Society

PUSH Buffalo (People United for Sustainable Housing)

Buffalo ReUse

=================

What I asked you to do on Monday didn't seem to work very well, so I'm going to take a different approach today, Wednesday, October 19.

In class writing assignment 6

Inferences are going to be an important part of your essay, so let's get a little practice.

I don't think there's anywhere, online or in print, that has a table or chart comparing your dozen or so buildings by worth. For example, if we were forced to tear down your buildings one-by-one, which should be the first to go? The next? And on through to the last, the most valuable of these buildings?

What criteria will you use for these rankings? Where will you get the information for these rankings? By information, I mean:

* observable, empirical evidence -- events, facts, images (still and moving) and statistics -- as well as expert's inferences (reasoned thinking) about that evidence.

* relevant, plausible examples -- stories about people, things, and events.

You draw that information from different places into one table, with the buildings as the columns and the criteria as the rows. You add it all up and assign a score of some sort to each building. Then you can then say, for example, "According to my criteria, the _____ building is the most valuable buidling of these twelve important Buffalo buildings. At the other end, the ______ building is the least valuable." You have made an inference, in fact, a whole bunch of them. You have, based on evidence and through a process of reasoning (thinking about the comparison table), reached a conclusion, in this case a rank order of those dozen buildings by worth.

Please note that you do the same thing, however quickly and informally, when you decide which of three movies to watch or which player to add to your team or what to wear when you're standing in front of your closet. For this quick example, you're rank-ordering buildings for the demolition crew.

Sources for criteria:

National Register of Historic Places - criteria

National Historic Landmark - criteria

Before you leave class today, send me an email with your preliminary inferences. Based on what you can figure out in the next hour, which are the least and most valuable buildings among our dozen or so? Where does yours rank?

The essay

You are going to write one essay for this course. So far, we have done some general, preliminary research and thinking. Now it's time to focus on your essay.

In the next course that you take, ENG 110, you will write more of these essays, probably four of them. In the course after that, ENG 200, you will write even more essays; most teachers require four. In each of these courses, expectations will rise. For most students, the senior thesis is the longest research essay they write during college. Some of the senior theses approach 10,000 words (about thirty "typed" pages). If you run into seniors somewhere on campus, ask how long their senior thesis is going to be.

I will be doing everyone, especially you, a disservice if I let you go on to ENG 110 without us both having confidence that you can write four essays in one semester. The basis for our confidence is going to be your having written one essay in ENG 100 that would be acceptable in ENG 110.

Death to the Reading Class
By Marshall Poe
Fortnightly Review, September 2011

The hard truth, however, is that most people don’t want to read and, therefore, don’t read.

Mechanical Icon

6th out of class writing assignment

Mid-Semester Review

Next week, during the last week of October, we will be half-way through this course. We are going to have individual conferences during out class time on both Tuesday and Thursday, October 25 and 27. While I am speaking to each of you individually, the rest of you will have time to work on your research proposal for your essay, the 7th out of class writing assignment, which is due October 31.

For our individual meeting, I would like to see a portfolio of everything that you have written for me. We have had five in-class writing assignments, including the Accuplacer thing, and five out-of-class. Except for the Accuplacer, you emailed them to me, so they should be in your email. Almost all of them are on the course web, including the Accuplacer, and you are welcome to copy and paste yours from the web. Collect all ten, label each one, and send it all as one long email (no attached .doc files, please). It will work best if you arrange the pieces in chronological order.

Here's the schedule with more on Monday in case we can get to them or in case there are absent students.

Over the two days, we will have ten minutes to spend individually. We are going to look at the big picture: what you've done and what you still have to do.

* You want to know how you're doing in this course, and I hope to tell you in great detail.

* I want to know what you're going to do to improve your writing in the second half of the course, and I will expect you to have reflected on that and be ready to discuss it.

Our big-picture view will be rooted in your writing, which is what this course is all about.

Assignment: Portfolio

Before class on Monday, October 25, send me an email that I will call your portfolio. It will contain the ten pieces of writing that you have done for this course, clearly labeled and in chronological order.

You should add one new paragraph at the end that addresses the important topic we will discuss during our meeting: what you're going to do to improve your writing in the second half of the course.

7th out of class writing assignment

For Tuesday, November 1 before class, write a short report of several sections (two paragraphs, one list) that offer for my approval what you propose to do for essay at the end of the course. You will be able to work on this assignment during class next week while we have individual meetings.

Constraints on the essay

general topic: Buffalo architecture, especially your chosen building, in the past, present (1990-2011), and future.

length: at least 1,500 words

structure: intro, body, conclusion

other criteria - bottom of reports page

Highly recommended: images

Your short report due before class, Oct 31

Your report should have the following headings:

Essay Topics

A discussion of possible topics for the essay. You have only 1,500 words for the essay (not for this short report), so give it a narrow focus. Propose three or four, at least, and discuss the pros and cons of each. Does there seem to be enough information readily available? Will it hold your interest for the next month?

Sources

An annotated list of at least five primary data sources. The annotation is a couple of sentences saying what you will use this web site (or printed document) for.

Inferences

A discussion of some inferences that you can draw from the data. This will be the hard one. What two or three pieces of data can you put together to say something else about architecture in Buffalo, in the broad sense of not only the buildings themselves, but the life that was lived in and around the buildings?

Formal definition: An inference is a conclusion, but it's a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning rather than the many, many other ways we have of reaching conclusions (making decisions and solving problems).

October 24, 26

In class this week, we're going to have individual conferences while you work on your proposals due next Monday, October 31, as described above.

October 31, November 2

We are going to discuss your essay topics and the three kinds of paragraphs that are in an essay.

Your in-class writing assignment is to send me the information to fill out your row of the table on the reports page:

title
topic (< 15-word description)   
main reader (audience)
reader's need / purpose / interest
rhetorical mode
organizing principle

It's too early for a thesis statement, but you can see that it's coming soon.

November 7,  9

Only about half of you completed the in-class writing assignment for November 2. Your assignment for today, November 7, is to complete or refine last week's assignment.

Send me the information to fill out your row of the table on the reports page:

title
topic (< 15-word description)   
main reader (audience)
reader's need / purpose / interest
rhetorical mode
organizing principle

I'm adding two more: hook and context

What are you going to use to capture the reader's attention. You know who the reader is, the questions he/she has, the decision that he/she needs to make or the problem to solve. What might catch his/her interest, might tell him/her, oh, this essay sounds interesting because it may address this decision that I have to make? Of the many things that could hook that reader, what will you use?

The context is the way you further solidify your standing with the reader. Let them know that you know where they're coming from (the context of their problem or decision).

The final thing that will get the reader to read the essay is your promise of what they'll get out of it. This is your thesis statement. You aren't ready to write a thesis statement yet, but feel free to try out some tentative thesis statements and run them past me.

In class Monday Nov 7:

* Moving toward thesis statements: review of your progress on the table on the reports page

* The best day to visit at least some of our buildings.

* What we want to put in the Community 101 brochure.

November 14, 16

workshop on opening paragraphs

and the stucture of body paragraphs

assignment: introductory paragraphs

body paragraphs

Nov 16 - more workshop

November 21

Field trip - meet at circle in front of Main bldg 2:45 PM

modified: November 2011
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/eng100/syllabus.htm