ENGLISH 1510: Writing and Rhetoric 1

“Education and the 21st Century”

Section 153: T, Th. 12PM-1:20
Tupper 301
Instructor: Andrew Pinkerton
Email: ap537916@ohio.edu
Office: Lindley Hall N394
Office Hours: T, Th 10:30am - 12pm (or by appt.)

Welcome! This course will provide an overview of rhetorical writing and beginning composition. As English 1510 students,
you will learn to analyze rhetorical situations in terms of audience, contexts, purpose, mediums, and technologies and apply
this knowledge to your reading and writing. You will also extend your understanding of how writing and other modes of
communication (such as visual and audio elements) work together for rhetorical purposes.

The theme of this course is meant to complement the course objectives and learning outcomes. As we study rhetorical writing
strategies and analytical methods, we will also consider the current climate of education. We will read examples of literacy
narratives and consider their social and cultural implications. We will read essays, poems, and scholarly writing from
creatives and professionals alike, trusted individuals who make the study of education their primary concern. As many of you
are in the beginning stages of your academic career, the research unit of this course will allow you to investigate topics in
education that may turn out to guide your development within your chosen discipline. You will spend a good deal of time
considering yourself as an academic in this course, along with developing your skills as an analytical thinker and writer. Get
ready to view yourself as part of a dynamic community of scholars, and your work as part of the greater conversation at large.

REQUIRED TEXTS: "They Say / I Say" (3rd Edition) by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
The Elements of Style (4th Edition) by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS: In addition to the textbooks listed above, you will be required to read a fair number of
articles and periodicals uploaded to our class Blackboard. You will be required to print out the readings before class in order
to best come prepared for class discussion. You are expected to read all assignments before class on the day they appear on
the schedule. Some of these readings are difficult, even though they span a small number of pages. If you read assignments
only the night before we discuss them in class, it is unlikely that you will have absorbed them as fully as is necessary for truly
effective learning and class participation.

UNITS AND REQUIREMENTS:

This class will be compromised of four units: Introduction to Analysis, Introduction to Collegiate Research, Introduction to
Persuasive Writing, and Reflective Synthesis. You will also create an academic portfolio as part of the final unit. We will
practice the art of scaffolding in this class. Each unit will consist of one minor assignment leading up to, and preparing you
for, one major assignment. There will also be several in-class assignments to build up to each major assignment. The
discussion board posts will also work to prepare you for your major papers and projects. You will write a reflective statement
for each of the first three major assignments which will prepare you for the fourth unit, the Reflective Synthesis. To get credit
for your major projects, you will need to complete each step of the process on time and to the best of your abilities.

Unit one: Introduction to Analysis

Minor: Textual Analysis (Due Monday, January 29th at midnight)
Major: Comparative Analysis (Due Friday, February 9th at midnight)

Unit Two: Introduction to Collegiate Research

Minor: Annotated Bibliography (Due Monday, February 26th at midnight)
Major: Substantial Research Paper (Due Friday, March 9th at midnight)

Unit Three: Introduction to Persuasive Writing

Minor: Fieldwork Memorandum (Due Friday, March 30th at midnight)
Major: Solution-Oriented Proposal (Due Monday, April 16th at midnight)

Unit Four: Reflective Synthesis

Minor: Synthesis Paper (Due Friday, April 27th at midnight)
Major: Final Portfolio (Due Monday, April 30th at midnight)

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Attendance and Participation: Your regular attendance is mandatory in class – attendance sheets will be passed around
throughout the semester (but not necessarily every class) and your attendance will be factored into your grade. If you know
you need to miss class, let me know ahead of time. More importantly, your participation in both formal and informal
discussions will be essential to making this course engaging, interesting, and fun. I would like to hear from all of you during
the semester – you all have unique opinions and personal experiences to bring to the table. Please share them! You are also
expected to be respectful during discussions as well as give others the opportunity to speak. Early on in the course we will
establish a set of guidelines together for how to facilitate discussions in our classroom.

Discussion Board Postings: In addition to traditional class participation, routinely you will share your ideas about our course
topics with your classmates in a Blackboard discussion forum. The goal of this requirement is to allow you to discuss ideas or
questions with classmates in an informal, but highly accessible manner beyond the boundaries of our scheduled class time. It
is designed to help you expand your critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving skills. Further, being able to express
and discuss ideas openly with others is an essential professional skill for success in most careers. You will complete eight
discussion board posts total, each consisting of at least two thoughtful, articulate, and grammatically-correct paragraphs on
specified prompts. Some of these posts will be in response to something we are reading for class while others will ask you to
consider yourself as a writer, an academic, and an educated human.

Peer Responses: In addition to the discussion board posting requirements as listed above, you will also respond to your peers
in at least four of the discussion forums over the course of the semester. As so with your posts, your responses must be
thoughtful and articulate, and must consist of at least one full paragraph. You are more than welcome to respond to as many
discussion posts as you would like, as often as you would like. Doing so will make the discussion boards livelier and will
benefit you as you prepare for your final projects. Making more than the minimum requirement of 4 responses will help
assure that you earn the maximum points possible for this requirement. As with posts, while responses may use informal
language, you are expected to present ideas in relatively error-free writing (i.e., no typos, grammatical errors, texting
abbreviations, etc.).

In Class Assignments, Free-writes, and Pop Quizzes: There will be a number of in-class assignments, free-writing activities,
and pop reading quizzes during the semester. They are designed to complement the course and they do not require any
preparation on your part besides completing the readings and staying abreast with the course itself. We will also be watching
a number of short videos over the course of the semester that will also complement my lectures and the texts. There will
occasionally be free-writing activities based on material presented in class. These assignments will count toward your
participation grade and will not typically be scheduled. You should attend class on a regular basis to ensure you do not miss
these assignments.

Final Portfolio: As part of the final unit you will create a portfolio intended to transfer the skills you’ve learned in 1510.
Ideally, this portfolio will also serve to represent your academic identity. The portfolio will be entirely online and will serve
as a way for you to practice with multimodality, interfacing with new technologies, and transferring your writing to electronic
environments. We will use the Weebly platform to design our portfolios, though if you have experience with other website-
building platforms you are welcome to utilize them as long as they meet the standards for the portfolio requirements.

BLACKBOARD (Bb): It is imperative you have regular access to Blackboard and that you check it often for updates and
announcements, and to engage with the supplemental material. We will use Bb often, so I suggest you familiarize yourself
with the site. You can also use the site to connect and collaborate with/email other students. Throughout the semester you
will be required to submit essays and drafts electronically to Dropbox through Bb, a program used to submit work online and
to safeguard against plagiarism. You will also use Blackboard to conduct discussions in forums designed to promote online
conversation and multimodal learning.

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GRADING SYSTEM:
I will not place a letter grade (e.g., A, B, F) on assignments; rather, I will provide written and verbal feedback on your work
throughout the class. My comments are the best indicator of how your work is measuring up to my expectations for college-
level composition; however, to supplement my feedback with a clear indication of where you stand, I will also use the
following system to credit your work:

 0 = No credit
 √– = Credit: Some areas of concern that will result in 0 if continued in future work (“1” on Blackboard)
 √ = Credit: Work is excellent (“2” on Blackboard)
 √+ = Credit: Work is exceptional (“3” on Blackboard)

I generally give a check-minus as a warning for a concern with an assignment. It is your responsibility to come see me, if the
justification for a grade seems unclear to you. After the warning, subsequent reappearances of the issue will result in a 0 for
each appearance. At the halfway point of the semester we will hold one-on-one conferences and I will check in with you
regarding your letter grade. I will clearly communicate where you stand and what you would have to do to achieve the grade
you are aiming for. The “check system” is off-putting at first, but it is designed to promote a higher sense of personal
responsibility and accountability, both of which are needed to succeed in a collegiate atmosphere.

GRADES:
Course requirements will add up to 100 percent distributed as follows:


Attendance and Participation (to include reading

responses, quizzes, peer review, revised drafts) 15%
Discussion Board Postings and Peer Responses 15%
Unit 1 20%
Unit 2 20%
Unit 3 20%
Final Portfolio 10%
Total 100%

Grade Scale:
Letter grade value ranges are as follows:
A 93-100% B 84-86% C 74-76% D 64-66%
A- 90-92% B- 80-83% C- 70-73% D- 60-63%
B+ 87-89% C+ 77-79% D+ 67-69% F Below 60%

COURSE POLICIES
 Email: I use e-mail to communicate important information about the class. You are responsible to check your school
account daily. Please note that I do not check my email on weekends, and I generally do not check it at night. Emails sent
after 5:00 p.m. on Fridays will receive a response on the following Monday. When you send me a message, please do so
through your OU email account, and please practice proper email etiquette.
 Community Writing: Our class will function as a community of writers, which means your peers will often read and
critique your work. Please submit work you are comfortable sharing.
 Typed work: All out-of-class work must be typed and formatted according to MLA guidelines. All submitted homework
and projects must use Microsoft Word, or be Word compatible.
 Complete drafts: Peer Review drafts must be complete and ready for classmates’ feedback on the assigned dates in order
to get credit.
 Late Assignments: I will not accept late assignments.
 Class Culture: Everyone in our class, including me, must remain civil and courteous at all times. We will often have
opportunity to share our opinions and beliefs, but no racist, sexist, heterosexist, ableist or any other negative
communication harmful to an individual or group will be tolerated. Whether something is offensive or not will be
determined by the people whom it might offend or their advocates.
 Technology: Please do not text, Facebook, surf the internet, etc. during class. Students who do so will be marked absent
for the day.
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Attendance Policy: Because classroom discussion is a central part of the learning process in this course, students are expected
to attend all class sessions. Please note the following policies:
 Regular participation counts for 15% of your final course grade.
 If you miss more than three classes, I will consider your absences excessive, and your overall course grade will be affected.
I will deduct 1/3 letter grade for each absence after three absences.
 Email me to tell me that you will be absent.
 Absence is not an excuse for late work. Late work will not be accepted. If you miss class for any reason, including athletic
events, you are responsible for 1) contacting me, 2) turning in your work on time/early, and 3) finding out from a classmate
what you missed in class.
 I take attendance at the beginning of class. If you arrive late, you risk being marked absent.
 If you spend the class session doing work for other courses, texting, etc., I reserve the right to mark you absent.

AUTHORING SOFTWARE:
All submitted homework and projects must use Microsoft Word, or be Word compatible. Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus is
available at no charge to OHIO students through Ohio University OIT:
http://store635.collegestoreonline.com/ePOS/form=robots/catalog.html&this_category=95&store=635.
Additionally, be sure to save your work often, on a flash drive and through an online storage system such as Drop Box, OU’s
Box, or Google drive.

PLAGERISM:
Cheating, whether by claiming another’s ideas or work as your own (fraud) or making up or falsifying information
(fabrication), will result in a course grade of F and a report to the OU Office of Community Standards. You are at all times
responsible for handling sources ethically by acknowledging the author and source of directly borrowed ideas and language
in your writing.

Academic Dishonesty: Plagiarism is defined by the Ohio University Student handbook as a Code A offense (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 less than 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.
Academic Misconduct Information: http://www.ohio.edu/communitystandards/academic/students.cfm
Please, if you are not sure how to avoid plagiarizing, either see me or a writing center tutor.

STUDENT WRITING CENTER (SWC):

When writing your papers, you should consider taking advantage of the Student Writing Center (SWC). Regardless of your
writing ability, you will benefit from discussing your paper and your ideas with a trained writing center tutor.

The SWC is located in Alden Library on the 2nd floor and provides free scheduled and walk-in face-to-face appointments as
well as online appointments. Tutors can assist with any stage of the writing process, from understanding the assignment to
looking at a near-completed draft. You can get help with developing your thesis or main idea, organizing or developing your
content, working through tricky grammatical issues, or any other writing concerns. Visit http://www.ohio.edu/writing/ to
learn more!

CLASSROOM ACCESSIBILITY:
Let me know as soon as possible if you need an accommodation to work successfully in this class. This classroom strives for
full accessibility, and it is not necessary for you to have an official accommodation letter from Disability Services to request
changes to the classroom that will better serve your needs as a student, although you are encouraged to explore the possible
support they can offer if you are a student with a disability. If you do have a letter from Disability Services, please let me
know.

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COURSE OBJECTIVES:
The course will focus on the following areas and objectives. By the end of the semester, you should be able to

 Rhetorical Knowledge: recognize the elements that inform rhetorical situations. This understanding should enable you to
produce expository texts that:
o Have a clear purpose
o Respond to the needs of intended audiences
o Assume an appropriate stance
o Adopt an appropriate voice, tone, style, and level of formality
o Use appropriate conventions of format and structure
 Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing.
o Use reading and writing for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
o Analyze relationships among writer, text, and audience in various kinds of texts
o Use various critical thinking strategies to analyze texts
 Cultural Competencies.
o Recognize presuppositions and consider how they shape what we perceive as “reality.”
o Recognize that beliefs and arguments are framed by specific cultural contexts
o
Communicate with diverse audiences through recognizing that genres and conventions are specific to
communities.
o Reflect on how privilege impacts ourselves and others, while exploring options that seek to balance the
playing field.
 Knowledge of Composing Processes.
o Understand writing as a series of steps that includes generating ideas and text, drafting, revising,
o Recognize that writing is a flexible, recursive process
o Apply this understanding and recognition to produce successive drafts of increasing quality
 Collaboration.
o Work with others to improve your own and others’ texts
o Balance the advantages of relying on others with taking responsibility for your own work
 Knowledge of Conventions.
o Employ appropriate conventions for structure, paragraphing, mechanics, and format
o Use a standard documentation
o Control syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling and editing
 Composing in Electronic Environments. To the extent that technology is available and appropriate,
o Understand the possibilities of electronic media/technologies for composing and publishing texts
o Use electronic environments to support writing tasks such as drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and
sharing texts

Your continued enrollment in this course constitutes your acceptance and understanding of the policies outlined in this
syllabus and all attached OU or English Department policies and your commitment to adhere to all policies and employ your
best efforts to accomplishing course objectives and outcomes.

MAY WE ALL HAVE A CREATIVE AND FRUITFUL SEMESTER TOGETHER.