COURSE DESCRIPTION AND GRADING SCALE
ENGLISH 302-N14
Advanced Composition – CRN 12929
SPRING 2007
MONDAY
Instructor: J. Johnston
Office: Robinson A 455
(H and Fax) 703.368.1704 (W) 703.368.1160
E-MAIL: jjohnsto@gmu.edu
OFFICE
HOURS: Monday
This section of English 302 focuses on advanced writing and research skills in such fields as biology, chemistry, physics, civil and electrical engineering, computer science, health and fitness, nursing, earth systems science, geography, geology, health science, math, medical technology, physical education, systems engineering, computer engineering and health, fitness and recreation resources. Students should endeavor to develop a flexible, literate writing style appropriate to a mature mind both in and out of these areas. Development of an individual, yet field-appropriate vocabulary and tone are primary, as is development of audience awareness. Familiarity with research techniques and sources--whether cyber, human or paper--is also essential.
MATERIALS FOR THIS COURSE
- There is no print text for this class; readings will be done online, using both links provided in the syllabus and link collections e-mailed to the class by the instructor. Thus, it will be essential to have regular computer access and to check e-mail before each class meeting.
- Regular access to computer with e-mail and World Wide Web capabilities, plus printer with DARK ribbon or cartridge. The computer may be either on- or off-campus. Since assignments are often constructed and/or critiqued in class, off-site work should be in a format compatible with the software loaded in our classroom. All assignments are available on the instructor's website at URL's linked to the syllabus. Although assignments will be discussed in class, text summaries of all assignments are therefore available at all times, complete with goals, instructions and grading criteria.
- GMU computer account (free to
students) with user ID and password, or other working e-mail account.
Students who do not begin the semester with an account should apply
on-line or in person on the
- Willingness and ability to use GMU's libraries in Fenwick, the Johnson Center, and if necessary the Prince William and Law School campuses, plus possibly the Washington Research Library Consortium. Students new to GMU's libraries may receive free orientation sessions, which the library staff provides near the beginning of each semester. See the calendar of orientation sessions. These sessions may also be used as an Event credit. Our class will also visit the library on our campus early in the semester for a training session.
Optional materials include:
- A research handbook, either the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.) for students in the sciences or social sciences, or the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (5th ed.) for students in the humanities. Both are available on-line if preferred (links are given in the syllabus) or can be purchased from the GMU bookstore, Barnes and Noble, Waldenbooks, Borders, etc. Please be aware that since this is a natural sciences section, instruction will be provided for APA, CBE and engineering formats ONLY; MLA will not be taught. Students are responsible for correct MLA or APA format for all papers, whether or not the text is purchased.
- The User's Guide to Mason is available in the Copy Shop (Room 117 in the Johnson Center) for those unfamiliar with GMU's computer support, at a cost of about $1.00.
- Diana Hacker's A Writer's Reference is recommended for those seeking a highly readable handbook of correct grammar and English usage. Her A Pocket Style Manual is an abridged but cheaper version of the same thing.
NOTE: In addition to the reader for this course; some readings are on-line. Some are listed on the syllabus, and are no less required than paper texts, while others will be introduced in class. Therefore, missing a class means not only missing instruction, but also missing needed readings.
Grammar will be taught in this class only occasionally, on an as-needed basis for the whole group. Please see the instructor if a particular grammar question plagues you.
COURSE OVERVIEW
This course falls roughly into four sections:
· An opening exercise exploring the library, personal, professional and Internet materials specialized to each student's field of study. This will be supported by a class session with a university librarian and will produce the first paper of the semester, the Publication and Authority Paper, as well as a review of the Elements of a Scientific Paper.
· A section in which the student explores and critiques the appropriate content, formats and approaches to placement within his/her proposed field. A general exploration of current resume and job application options will be followed by preparation of an actual or prospective resume with support documentation.
· A research component, including a brief proposal for research leading to an independent research project related to the student's field. If desired, the student may substitute a research review for this project, and
· A poster presentation prepared as a group and involving all group members, exploring an unresolved ethical issue now confronting professionals in the field. This will be presented before the class at the last regular class meeting.
PLEASE NOTE: since the English Department requires a research component in all sections of English 302, anyone not completing the research project will FAIL THE CLASS.
Students will also select one of two options to be completed independently in the course of the semester: to attend two university events and submit brief synopses/evaluations, or to read and annotate the MLA or APA handbook, as appropriate. Either option is equally acceptable. The events choice, in particular, is widely adaptable to fit the student's interests or educational needs. Note that events outside the university must be cleared with the instructor IN ADVANCE.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
As explained in "General Education at George Mason University," English 302 is an integral part of the general education curriculum at George Mason. The mission of the General Education Program is to educate, liberate, and broaden the mind, and to instill lifelong love of learning. In conjunction with each students' major program of study and other electives, minors, or certificates, this program seeks to produce graduates with intellectual vision, creative abilities, and moral sensibility, as well as the skills to assure a well-rounded and useable education. The General Education Program seeks four specific goals: 1. General education courses should first ensure that all undergraduates develop skills in information gathering, written and oral communication, and analytical and quantitative reasoning. 2. General education courses should expose students to the development of knowledge by emphasizing major domains of thought and methods of inquiry. 3. General education courses should enable students to attain a breadth of knowledge that supports their specializations and contributes to their education in both personal and professional ways. 4. General education courses should encourage students to make important connections across boundaries (for example: among disciplines; between the university and the external world; between the United States and other countries).
This advanced composition course is designed to help you develop effective written communication and analytical skills, which are critical to the learning of every well-educated student. In addition to requiring a minimum of 3500 written words from each student, the English Department has identified the following objectives for English 302:
- To prepare students for the diverse demands of writing in a major and in the workplace by building upon the objectives noted for 100/101
- To introduce students to ways of thinking, organizational techniques and formats typical in certain disciplines through more specialized sections in Business, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Technology, and Social Sciences
- To help students identify and use research resources (print and electronic) and documentation styles preferred in their major
- To guide
students to appropriate support services, including the
METHODS OF INSTRUCTION
Principal methods of instruction in this class will include:
|
INSTRUCTIONAL TYPE |
EXAMPLE |
|
Direct instruction |
Presentations by Student Services, Library Instructional Staff, Career Development representative, instructor |
|
Guided Practice |
Workshops on writing skills, citation formats, analysis of journal articles, grammar and punctuation as needed, etc. |
|
Online tutorials and mastery exercises |
university web site materials on plagiarism, editing, and documentation |
|
Guided and independent research |
library orientation with hands-on practice, location of appropriate articles for research review |
|
Group processing activities |
editing student drafts, proofreading citation entries, preparation of oral presentation on ethics |
COURSE REQUIREMENTS/GRADING POLICY
In all General Education English classes (English 100, 101, 201
and 302), students must achieve a grade
of C or higher to receive credit for the course. Students with averages
of C- or lower will receive an NC (No Credit) for the course.
In order of weight, assignments will carry the following percentage values:
Elements of a Scientific Paper 5%
Plagiarism Test 5%
Netiquette Quiz 5%
Resume Analysis 10%
Resume 10%
Publication and Authority Paper 15%
Writing Group Participation 10%
Group Oral Presentation 10%
Research Paper 20%
The final examination is optional; it may be attempted if a student wishes to seek a grade higher than the one achieved from the semester's work. The final examination, if attempted, is worth an additional 15%. It will be averaged in after the other grades for the semester have been computed. If a student chooses not to take the semester exam, the assignments listed above will determine the final course grade, with no penalty for not attempting the exam. Again, anyone not completing the research project will FAIL THE COURSE.
On the last day of regular classes, each student will be informed of his/her semester grade to date and must then choose whether or not to take the exam. Students electing to take the exam will receive exam preparation instructions at that time. Any student electing the exam but not appearing on the scheduled date and time will be assumed to have elected to receive the grade earned as of the last scheduled day of classes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Essential outlines of each assignment, along with goals and grading criteria, are provided as links to the syllabus. However, they are not exhaustive; they are simply summaries of the basic requirements. Please note: As previously mentioned, this is not a correspondence course, additional instructions for each assignment will be given in class. They are as much a part of the final evaluation of each paper as the online support.
LATE ASSIGNMENTS
All work is due on the date specified in the syllabus. Unless by prior arrangement with the instructor, late work will be penalized one letter grade for each week or portion thereof and two letter grades thereafter. This penalty cannot be removed from work resubmitted or revised.
In addition, late work may be delayed in being graded and returned to you; delay is usually one week but may be more. Please keep this in mind if planning to resubmit a paper, especially near the end of the semester. No work will be accepted after the date indicated on the syllabus as the last day to submit rewritten assignments.
ATTENDANCE
Attendance is not graded in this class. However, missing any substantial art of class instruction or activities has the following disadvantages that the student is responsible to overcome:
- missing instructions for writing assignments
- lack of workshop preparation in formatting and writing skills
- nonparticipation in writing and presentation groups
- serious lack of consideration and support for other members of one’s writing group
Be aware that writing is a time-intensive activity. It is thus very difficult to make up any significant amount of lost time. Anyone who must unavoidably miss class is advised to notify the instructor as promptly as possible to avoid falling behind.
POLICY ON PLAGIARISM
In a research and writing course, it is especially important that students respect the intellectual property of others. Especially in thesciences, integrity of results falls under acute scrutiny from fellow professionals. All students are therefore expected to scrupulously observe all GMU policies as well as individual instructors' guidelines. Please read and observe the English Department's Statement on Plagiarism below.
Plagiarism means using the exact words, opinions, or factual information from another source without giving that source credit. Writers give credit through the use of accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation, footnotes, or end notes; a simple listing of books, articles, and websites is not sufficient. Plagiarism is the equivalent of intellectual robbery and cannot be tolerated in an academic setting.
Student writers are often confused as to what
should be cited. Some think that only direct quotations need to be credited.
While direct quotations do need citations, so do paraphrases and summaries of
opinions or factual information formerly unknown to the writers or which the
writers did not discover themselves. Exceptions to this include factual
information which can be obtained from a variety of sources, the writers' own
insights or findings from their own field research, (what has been called
common knowledge). What constitutes common knowledge can sometimes be
precarious; what is common knowledge for one audience may be so for another. In
such situations, it is helpful to keep the reader in mind and to think of
citations as being "reader friendly." In other words, writers provide
a citation for any piece of information that they think their readers might
want to investigate further. Not only is this attitude considerate of readers,
it will almost certainly ensure that writers will not be guilty of plagiarism.
Learning—especially writing--relies upon mutual communication and trust, both student to student and student to instructor. It is especially dependent upon students' intellectual honesty and commitment to do their own work without inappropriate assistance. If, however, that trust appears it to have breached, it is with greatest reluctance that the instructor will submit student work for analysis by Turnitin.com, with which GMU has a current contract. Turnitin uses phrase matching software to determine whether information in a student's writing has been attributed to its source(s). If results show consistent lack of attribution, appropriate academic penalties will be applied.
FORMAT
Each assignment has related instructions in a link to that assignment in the online version of the Syllabus. The format for each assignment is presented in the file of instructions. Please refer to the Syllabus itself at http://mason.gmu.edu/~jjohnsto/sylln14s07.htm
Assignments submitted electronically MUST be in Word (.doc) or Acrobat (.pdf) format, especially if sent as attachments. GMU's e-mail will not read Mime, NotePad or WordPerfect documents, and regards zipped documents as possible viruses. Therefore, any material sent in any of these formats cannot be accepted and may not even arrive.
Finally, any assignments or correspondence should be directed to the instructor's GMU e-mail: jjohnsto@gmu.edu. A Google or other search will reveal other e-mail addresses, but all GMU-related correspondence is handled through that address and only that address.
Mail sent to other addresses will receive no response.
NOTE: Be careful when responding to mail sent to the class list. The Registrar's Office provides the capability to e-mail the whole lass from its online registration site, but requires the sender to use whatever mail program is resident on the machine (s)he is using rather than GMU's mail program, which is web-based. DO NOT reply to the mail address used for class mailings, but to the GMU address above.
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
In accordance with English Department policy, each student will submit a minimum of 3500 words in the course of the semester, which will serve as the basis for the course grade. Any student with a documented disability which could impact the completion of this requirement should give the instructor a faculty contact sheet at the beginning of the course so that appropriate arrangements can be made in a timely fashion. Students in need of documentation are urged to contact the Disability Resource Center at 703.993.2474. Documentation is required to obtain course adaptations to ensure that students receive appropriate support and assistance for success in the class.
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