W233 - Intermediate Expository Writing

Instructor:  Kevin Smith  

Office:  CM143

Office Hours:   By appt. 

Home Phone:  260.422.6108

Email:  1kmsmith@verizon.net or smithkm@ipfw.edu 

Required Text

• Bishop, Wendy, and Pavel Zemliansky, eds.  The Subject is Research: Processes  and Practices.  Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2001.

Recommended Text

• Hult, Christine A., and Thomas N. Huckin. The Brief New Century Handbook. 3^rd  ed. New York: Longman, 2005.

How things will work in the online environment

• This is a class in which you are required to take an active part in your own learning.
• As the course will meet online, you will be required to take responsibility for your own education; this means that you will need to complete the readings, postings, journals, and writing assignments whenever they are due.
• I also expect you to contribute to the online class discussions, including your ideas and writings in various rhetorical contexts, and to participate in writing groups; this includes meeting deadlines for all assignments.  The frequency of your contribution and the merit of that which you contribute will be considered during evaluation.   Please note that participation in online groups will count towards 15% of your final grade.        
• Plagiarism (using someone else’s words, thoughts, or ideas without proper attribution) is not tolerated at IPFW—whether intentional or not.  Deliberately plagiarized writing will automatically receive a zero and may result in your failing the course. 

REQUIREMENTS

Writing

• You will complete a variety of assignments designed to develop writing skills, including readings and journal response from the text, research activities, and editing tasks. 
• You must ask permission to change topics and show all required prewriting and drafting work for the new paper.
• Drafts and final copies of papers must be typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font, with 1” margins all around.
• You must go through the writing process for each paper in order to pass this course.  This means that for each of the major essays, you will write a first, rough draft, a second polished draft that will be peer-edited in small online groups, and a third, revised draft that I will grade.  You should submit all prewriting exercises and materials used to write an individual paper together

Journals

• We will be doing a fair amount of reading in this class.  So that you read actively and alertly, thereby learning from the readings, you will be expected to write a reading response journal for all assigned readings.  It’s automatic—if I assign a reading, you have a journal to do.  In the journal, avoid summarizing the readings—I’ve already read them.  Make the journal useful to you by responding to the reading. 
• For many of the readings, there are specific questions on the course page that I want you to make sure you answer in your journal, but do not just briefly answer the question for that reading.  Use your response to the questions as a starting point for response.  For those readings without questions on the course page, and for when you can’t think of what to write, do one or more of the following:
  • Compare and contrast the information in the readings to your experiences.
  • Discuss the three most important points. 
  • Discuss the specific connection of one reading to other readings. 
  • Discuss key words and terms. 
  • Explore the metaphors in the reading. 
  • Respond to one or more of the questions at the end of the chapter. 
• Whatever you do, THINK, through writing, about the reading. 
• Journals should be approximately one typed page in length and will be due the week the reading is assigned. 

Evaluation

• Your final grade will be based on the following percentages:

All work will be graded on the following percentage scale:  

A 90-100

B 80-89

C 70-79

D 60-69

F 59 and below 
 
 

Course Goals:

Upon completion of W233, you should:

• Demonstrate critical thinking in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences through the interrelated activities of reading and writing in those disciplines.

• For example, you will annotate, respond to, and analyze primary sources and scholarly secondary sources for the purpose of evaluating, synthesizing, and interpreting your own writings and those of peers and professionals.

• Read critically and write clearly and persuasively in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

• For example, you will summarize, paraphrase, abstract, reference, and document the writings of others for the purpose of writing original thesis-driven papers.

• Apply methods of inquiry appropriate to the humanities, social sciences, and sciences so that you move beyond mere reporting of information to make original contributions to knowledge.

• For example, you will identify and formulate significant research, and write with authority your own thesis-driven papers using the conventions of those disciplines to make contributions to knowledge in those disciplines.