Welcome to English 101. This website contains assignments and other materials needed for the course.
Course Materials
Materials are grouped into the following categories:
- Main ideas of the class. These nine ideas are the core ideas that every assignment in this class is designed to get across. Take them with you and use them whenever you have to write anything, whether a job letter or a philosophy paper or a report or anything else.
- Syllabus, containing course policies (DOC file).
- Homework Calendar, listing all the homework assignments for the quarter, including smaller assignments not listed on the syllabus (DOC file).
- Expectations of students and professor
- Homework – Grade Correlation This graph shows the relationship between homework scores and overall grades over 8 quarters of English 101. Although there is a lot of variability caused by other factors, the overall trend is clear: a 72% correlation (very high) between homework scores and final grade. People who do their homework consistently tend to do better, on average, than those who do not.
- Grade Guideline, showing what grades mean to me.
- Paper Format for all essays
- Email Forwarding
- Inclement Weather Policy
This is where I will post material as we develop it in class. This includes assignment instructions, readings, class notes, and so on. I will try to organize it logically as the amount of material increases so you can find everything easily.
Self-Assessment of the Argument Paper. I wrote up new instructions for the required self-assessment for this paper because the criteria used to evaluate the paper are different.
Essay 3 (Argument Essay). First draft due Monday, May 7; second draft due Monday, May 14. Please post your draft to Blackboard under “Discussions: Essay 3 Papers” and bring a printed copy to class on Monday.
Sample Outline from class on Friday, May 04, 2012, developed in class, using the methods described on Wednesday and Thursday (what do you have to prove to prove the thesis; why is it true; what are its component parts).
Building an Argument Notes from class on Wednesday, May 2 and Thursday, May 03, 2012.
Constructive Criticism Questions for the Expository Essay
Principles of Citation, covering the basics (why, what, and how) of citing sources.
Essay 2 (Expository Essay). First draft due Monday, April 23; second draft due Monday, April 30. Please post your draft to Blackboard under “Discussions: Essay 2 Papers” and bring a printed copy to class on Monday.
Lecture notes from April 17, 2012. This was my talk about making an informational or expository essay more interesting and informative.
Homework due Tuesday, April 17, 2012, including some questions about technology that we discussed on Monday.
Reading for Monday night, April 9, 2012:
- Plan Proposal and
- Questions (the questions I asked you to write about on Friday, together with your answers, and my lists showing all the topics and writing styles that were mentioned in those comments).
Please read and come to class prepared to discuss and decide on Tuesday.
First Essay, Second Draft, due Monday, April 16.
Constructive Criticism, which we used for peer review of the personal reflection.
First Essay: Reflection on Cultural Interaction
Readings on Technology
Here are some readings on the topic of technology that I thought might be helpful for our second assignment. Of course there are lots more. These are just a few things I came up with. If you have ideas for more, feel free to post them to the Blackboard Discussion board or let me know.
I will also post a few things to Blackboard that require restricted access.
- An 2010 interview with Clay Shirky, who writes about technology and media. This interview helped influence my decision to junk my syllabus because of what he says, near the end, about not learning to write in college.
- Here’s another Shirky piece, this time in response to the question, “How has the Internet changed the way you think?” Very thoughtful piece, much briefer than the interview above, picking up on some of the same themes but developing them differently, with an interesting analogy to chemists in the 1600s.
- An article from Slate.com on “Why social media is going to force the U.S. to adopt less cynical foreign policy” Appropriately enough, I got this from a tweet on the Shoreline library’s Twitter account.
- The Ebbtide, Shoreline’s own newspaper, ran an article recently about competition that the school is facing from free online sites.
- “The New Literacy: Stanford study finds richness and complexity in students' writing. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Stanford researcher Andrea Lunsford finds that today's students are writing more than ever before - but it may not look like the writing of yesterday.” This article, while focused on writing, clearly involves the impact of technology.
- The Stanford Study of Writing, which the previous article discusses, for those who want more detail.
- Low-Tech Magazine is an online magazine devoted to “doubts about progress and technology.”
- The Zooniverse is a website that allows ordinary people to participate in scientific research with nothing but a little spare time and a web browser. According to one of the organizers, it is also educating people about how science works and making it possible for them to be more involved in shaping the direction of research. You can hear him interviewed on Seattle’s own KUOW on the program Weekday. I thought it was an interesting example of a creative use of technology.
- This program from Radio Netherlands includes a story about a woman whose name and photo were used without her permission on a pornographic Facebook page. She describes her ordeal in finding the people who did it and getting the page removed. (This story is the fourth in the program so scroll down to find Susan Arnout Smith.)
- “Drone pilots have a front-row seat on war, from half a world away” By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2010. This article is an example of expository or informative writing focusing on a single technology and using that to raise important questions about how technology is influencing our society and our lives.
- History of the keyboard. I went looking for examples that related to one of the topics mentioned in class, and found a couple on keyboards (there are more; this is all I had time for).
- The Typing Life: How writers used to write. by Joan Acocella, from The New Yorker, April 9, 2007. This article is a review of a book about the history of the typewriter. It is another example of how looking closely at a single technology can open up surprising vistas of thought and experience. Incidentally, more information about the philosopher Nietzsche’s experience with the typewriter can be found in Chapter 2 of The Shallows, which is on reserve for our course at the library on campus.
- Writing Round, a New Yorker blog entry by Derrick Koo from October 10, 2010, examines various devices that have been used to translate thoughts into writing, with links to lots of interesting information elsewhere.
More items will be added to the list as I have time.
Old Material
This is everything that was on the website at the start of the quarter. I have kept it here for reference and in case we need to use it later.
- Essay I (DOC file)
- Essay II (DOC file)
- Sample Expository Essay (PDF), with call-outs showing the required elements of the assignment, and revised to make a more successful paper.
This sample discusses an essay in which the theme is not directly or obviously stated. Rather, much of the deeper meaning is conveyed through physical description. A major part of interpretation of an essay like this involves showing how physical detail conveys the theme. For example, the sample paper observes, "The fact that the blackberry continued to grow, taking on a new shape, shows the persistence of the life cycle." The physical detail of the blackberry conveys the theme, which is not stated directly. Thus, for an essay like this, analysis may require nothing more than simply explaining how the theme is present in places where it is not obvious.
- A second sample expository paper, this one analyzing an essay whose theme requires some more digging.
This sample, by contrast, analyzes an essay where the theme is much more directly stated. In a situation like that, interpretation must go beyond simply pointing out that the theme is present, because readers can see that much for themselves. Instead, the analysis should show not only that the theme is there, but also what the essay implies or reveals about the theme. For example, the paper points out that "By rejecting the social norms they are some of the few with a chance of adapting in their society. This is the cost of proper adaptation." Here the theme itself may be clear-most readers could see that the women are adapting to their situation-but the implied statement about the theme is not. The second sentence brings out the part that the author left unsaid but clearly implied. This is the task of interpretation.
- Here is a sample passage analysis in a DOC file. It presents the paragraph and then presents it again, this time with numbers to label the different tasks it is performing, and relating those to P.I.E.
- Essay III (DOC file)
- A sample paper (PDF), evaluating speeches by Barack Obama (warning: video starts playing automatically) and Cynthia McKinney on race in America. The sample paper includes comments in the margin pointing out the required elements (summary, evidence analysis, reasoning analysis, counter-argument, etc.).
- Tips on the thesis statement
- Tips on writing about assumptions. This document points out some common mistakes in writing about assumptions and discusses the use of qualifiers.
- Connecting the dots (class notes from 2/22/10). This document discusses how to relate individual assumptions to an author’s thesis, and then connect that analysis to your thesis on whether the author is persuasive or not.
- Portfolio Details
Essay I (Personal Narrative)
Essay II (Expository Essay)
Here is the essay we will analyze for our second assignment.
Essay III (Argument Essay)
- The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, from the December 2010 edition of The American Prospect.
- “The New Jim Crow” in PDF format, with paragraph numbers added for reference
- Race and the Drug War, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, from the June 1999 edition of Counterpunch.
- “Race and the Drug War” in PDF format, with paragraph numbers added for reference
These Writing Links offer helpful advice on key writing issues. Specifically, you can jump to any of these topics:
- Sentence Boundaries
- Paragraph Structure
- Thesis Statements
- Transitions, including Introductions and Conclusions
- Concision
- Sentence Variety
- Quotations
- Research
Here are specific exercises and handouts from our class.
The The Writing and Learning Studio (TWLS, formerly the ASC), Room 1501
TWLS provides instructional handouts and texts, a comfortable study environment, and drop–in tutoring for students in any discipline who want to work on college reading strategies, study skills, research papers, essays, or other kinds of writing assignments. Additionally, TWLS offers variable credit courses on topics such as note–taking, memory improvement, research writing, test–taking, and grammar.
