Reading and Composition
1A English
Dr. Jeff Jung
This course
emphasizes the formulation and verbal expression of complex, critical thinking.
Looking at a variety of readings, we will develop the skills necessary to engage
a text actively, identify key issues and weaknesses, and produce writings that
demonstrate comprehension, logic, and imagination. Successful students will be
able to do the following:
We will work on all of the above writing skills while considering a variety of readings from the disciplines of psychology, biology, advertising, and law. You will also read a novel selected from a group of texts that share a common concern: critiques of the present and warnings about the future. What’s responsible for the things we don’t like about our world and the way it’s heading? What exactly are those things in the first place? Each of our readings asks these questions, attempting to identify what’s gone wrong, why it went wrong, and what we might do to make it right. Our job as writers in this class will be to be sure we understand their claims, supplement their arguments with those of our own, and argue where we do not agree.
This course will be taught entirely on line. Assignments, discussions, submission of work, contact between student and instructor, and readings besides the textbooks listed above will all be accessed through a web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Firefox. You can also contact me in person during my office hours at El Camino, communicate via e-mail during my virtual office hours, or work with tutors at the College’s Writing Center.
Though we will have no real-time meetings, you are required to read, participate in discussions, and complete assignments according to a fixed schedule. The course is more flexible than a conventional class, but it is NOT a “work at your own speed” enterprise. To do well in the class, you must be self-disciplined enough to keep up without constant live reminders from a teacher, and you must have regular access to a computer, whether at home, school, or elsewhere. Students who do not access the site AT LEAST three times per week are unlikely to do well.
No special knowledge of computers beyond that required to write papers with the word processor of your choice is required. You should be comfortable with the idea of surfing the web and know how to cut and paste text material. I return feedback in Microsoft Word documents, so while you may write your essays in any word processor, you will need access to Word when reading my feedback (which you can do at your convenience).
Be aware that any technical problems other than those caused by the professor are your responsibility. If you lose a paper due to your own computer’s malfunctioning, that is not a valid excuse worth even bringing up.
Because no physical documents are produced in this class, it is especially important that you keep an electronic copy of everything you submit for a grade, as well as a copy of the graded version. If any document becomes lost and you are unable to supply a copy, I will have no choice but to treat the document as if it were never submitted. Keep copies for your own protection!
Our course is divided into five units. Each unit lasts for three weeks and has a definite opening and closing date. All work for each unit must be completed by the closing date and cannot be turned in for late credit. You are free to begin a unit’s work at any time and to work at your own pace within the three weeks of each unit, but the amount of credit and feedback your work receives depends on when you submit it, as explained below.
During each unit, you will be required to do the following: 1) read selections from our text(s) and on the web; 2) complete exercises via the web; 3) participate in a Discussion Forum; 4) optionally submit an outline for an essay to the Discussion Forum; and 5) submit a 4-5 page essay.
Each unit is divided into three timespans for turning in your work, which I call the green zone (first 14 days), yellow zone (middle 4 days) and red zone (last 3 days).
Green Zone: Essays turned in during this time period will receive comments and 10% extra credit. All discussion messages must be posted to the Discussion Forum during this time period to receive credit. If you want response to your Outline before you write the essay, you must post it to the Discussion Forum during this period. Try to do your work within this time period as much as possible to get the most out of this class.
Yellow Zone: Essays turned in during this time period will receive limited feedback instead of being returned with line-by-line commentary. Nothing posted to the Discussion Forum from this point onward will receive credit. Try never to submit your essay later than this period, as doing so puts your grade in jeopardy.
Red Zone: Essays turned in during this time period will not receive any feedback, making it unlikely that you will improve your writing or raise your grade. Try to use this time period only for true emergencies, and do NOT make a habit of turning your essays in during this period.
Note: Despite the advice given above, last semester about 90% of the class chose to turn all their work in during the last few minutes of the Red Zone. Almost none of them passed the class. Of the few students who regularly turned in work during the Green Zone, all passed.
Once a unit's closing date has passed, THAT'S IT. No late work accepted for credit beyond the closing date for any reason.
Each unit has one Discussion Forum attached to it. In the instructions for each unit, you'll be given the specific details as to what you must write about. Your grade is based on quality, not on word counts, but students who earn an A typically write about 250-350 words during each Unit. That could all be in one post but is more likely split up into two moderate sized posts and perhaps a couple of replies to other students. Again, I grade based on quality so trying to fill up a word count by flooding the board with meaningless replies would hurt more than help your score.
For each Discussion Forum, you'll be given a choice of questions to write about. If you want to write about a question that someone else has already written about, you're expected to read ALL messages posted by other students in the thread before posting your own so that you do not duplicate something already written. Not only will duplicate messages not receive credit, you may be penalized for 'littering' the board if your message is blatantly a copy of someone else's.
Messages are judged primarily for how well the writer uses specific information and logical arguments to defend the answer. Correct grammar and punctuation plays a smaller role. Don't use web-speak abbreviations and acronyms -- this is an English class.
For each unit, you will write an essay of 4 or 5 pages. The essay topics for each unit will be described in that unit's instructions.
All essays will be submitted through a web page called the Homework Submission page, which asks you to identify yourself and the assignment you're submitting. You can access this page from the course's Home Page. All essays need to conform to the MLA style requirements that you’ll learn during class. Always send them through the Homework Submission page, not by private email (where they would get lost).
Dr.
Jeff Jung
Email:
eccenglish1a@gmail.com - Always write “1A” in the subject line of your e-mail or it will not
be seen!
Office: Humanities
Office
hours (live): T 5p.m.-6p.m. and W 5:30p.m.-6:30p.m.
Office hours (virtual): Th/F 11a.m.-12p.m.
Phone: 310-660-3593 x3336 (contact via email preferred)
The Home Page
Quite simply, you access the course by going to http://www.elcamino.edu/faculty/jjung and clicking the English 1A link. If you forget this address, you can always find it by starting with http://www.elcamino.edu and following the links for faculty, then for Jeff Jung.
The Home Page contains late-breaking announcements, and it's very important you remain aware of them. It also contains links to everything else you'll need: instructions for each Unit, access to the Discussion Forum, access to the Homework Submission page, and feedback to your essays. The first thing you should do when starting the course is to read any announcements and then click on the Unit 1 link to see the first reading and writing assignments. There, you'll find 1) the list of readings either in a book or online; 2) online exercises; 3) a link to the Discussion Forum for the Unit; 4) a link to the Homework Submission page used for turning in the major essay; and 5) the deadlines for the green, yellow, and red zones.
Note that you have a great deal of freedom and flexibility in structuring your time for each unit, which is bad news for those who don’t structure their time wisely. You should start work on all components of the unit as soon as the starting date passes, and you should try as hard as possible to complete that work in the first days (green zone) of the unit. In no way are you expected to sit idly for days and then try to complete everything a day or two before the closing date of the unit.
Submitting Essays
Our class has five long essays (Essays 1-5). When told to submit an essay, you do NOT send it by regular email; instead you use the Homework Submission link found on each Unit page.
When your essay is ready, go to the appropriate Unit page and click on the Essay link. You'll be taken to a page where you must identify your class, your name, and the name of the assignment being submitted. You'll then need to copy and paste your essay into the web page. You may lose some formatting when you do this, but don't worry about it. I do not ask you to send essays as attachments.
You must also submit your essay to
a second site called www.turnitin.com
where it will be checked for illegal
copying/plagiarism. I cannot give credit for an
essay that is not also submitted to this site. This applies to all five essays
but NOT to the messages you post on the forums.
The process is very simple, and if you need help, detailed instructions are
available at Student Quickstart Guide
You will need two pieces of information to use the site:
Class ID: 3078812
Password: spring
To set up your turnitin account, click
here and select Student from the menu that appears.
After I have responded to all the essays, I will post a link on the Home Page to a downloadable Microsoft Word document that contains all the submitted essays combined into one file (with the names removed for privacy). You can find your own essay and my comments, as well as look at other essays, their comments, and the grades they received. This is a very valuable learning tool.
Please note that my comments on the essays are only visible in Microsoft Word and are done through Word's Comment feature. This consists of yellow highlighting or red brackets, which, when you hold your mouse over it, reveals my messages to you. If you can't see any colored markings at all after downloading and opening the feedback file, click Tools:Options from within Microsoft Word and make sure the Screen Tips box on the View panel is checked. There will also be comments at the end. Make sure you are able to read all my feedback and tell me if you can’t, for this is the primary way you will learn in this class.
Posting a Message
Each Unit has a Discussion Forum associated with it, one section for discussing the readings and another for (optionally) posting the outline of your essay in progress.
The first time you use the Discussion Forum, you will have to register. Be sure to use the same email address that you used when taking the syllabus quiz at the start of the semester, and be sure to identify yourself by your full name (if you use a handle, nicknames, or abbreviation on the Forum, you will not receive any credit).
I generally stay out of the discussions in the hopes that they will run themselves. However, I occasionally participate to correct discussions that are going off topic or are not specific enough, or to give suggestions for other directions for discussion. It's to your benefit to look for and read these messages of mine so you can make your own contributions stronger and get high grades.
IMPORTANT: Receiving Credit for your Forum Participation. To receive credit for the work that you put into your discussion messages, you must consolidate all of them into a single document and send it to me via the Homework Submission Page any time after the Green Zone ends but before the Red Zone ends (so, any day during the Yellow or Red Zones). The easiest way to do this is to keep a Word document that has a copy of all your discussion posts as you write them (you should do this anyway, as a backup). Once the Green Zone ends, go to the Homework Submission Page, identify yourself, choose the appropriate Discussion Forum number from the list of assignments, and copy and paste the contents of all messages that you have written for the unit into the assignment window. Though I will read your messages on the board throughout the semester, I will only look at those set through the Homework Submission Page when it comes time to assign a grade. Remember, just send all messages for the Unit together at one time after the Green Zone ends, not one by one as you write them.
Doing Exercises
Each Unit will direct you to another website to do a number of exercises. You'll need to register at that site (supplying your full name and the same email address you used when beginning the course with the Syllabus Quiz).
E-mailing
Send any private questions about your work or the course to eccenglish1A@gmail.com, but don't forget to put 1A in the subject line. Also, the Discussion Forum contains a board for Class Questions, and if you think others could benefit from your question, please post it there instead of e-mailing it privately.