Welcome to CO 122

CO 122: Analytic and Persuasive Writing
Professor Kathleen Robinson
Fall 2008


Texts:
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd Edition. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.

Various Class Readings (Provided via www.engrade.com)

Course Description: Welcome to Analytic and Persuasive Writing! First and foremost, I want to address the importance of analysis and persuasion in our culture and our ethos. Every day, we are faced with the issue of getting our voice heard, whether it be as we order our morning coffee, call into a local talk radio show, create and maintain a facebook or myspace page, or deal with instructors and classroom settings. In a sense, all communication involves analysis and persuasion. With this in mind, our ability to communicate our needs, desires, and fears to a willing audience is ingrained in our psyches. At our core are our stories, our remembrances, and our perspectives, and it is these areas that we attempt to use to engage us in the human community. However, each human community and culture utilizes different methods of discourse and each of these methods appears with a specific vernacular and subsequent rules. Yet at the core of each of these human communities and cultures appears a common structure and desire: the desire to speak and the desire to understand. Those two desires are our goals for this course.

Specifically, we will focus on learning how to witness, understand, embrace, and create utilizing our need to be heard. We will examine how are need to understand our various communities and cultures teaches us the necessary clues and reminders necessary for engaging in the cultures. We will create meaningful explorations that focus on our roles as individuals within the sub-sected cultures that we engage with on a daily basis. We will share these explorations and will learn what it means to be us through analysis and what it means to “persuade” others to listen to our stories.

The journeys that we have all taken to arrive at this point are not arbitrary; in fact, our journeys have brought us to this place in our pursuit of knowledge. This pursuit is ours, and by that, I mean, I, too, am part of this Socratic inquiry into knowledge and understanding. With this inquiry, we will utilize texts, as reading material and a means from which to craft our own narratives and explorations. We will write; we will revise, and ultimately, we will create our own knowledge.

Course Resources:
Purdue U’s OWL (Online Writing Lab): http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
http://ecandp2008fall.blogspot.com/ - blog for class (used daily)
http://www.engrade.com/ – class site for grades and daily activities
http://academics.eckerd.edu/facultywiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=21907- Wiki for more information

Requirements: I expect you to:
· attend all class meeting, having done the required reading and having completed all required work (see attendance policy below);
· propose, draft, write, and (possibly) revise 3 essays of various lengths and purposes. Submit each essay in a folder, along with any planning, rough drafts, signed peer review comments from draft workshops, revisions of your proposal, and any other materials and notes that represent the various stages of your work, including notes, photocopies, or printouts from any sources you have used. Essays must be handed in on time. Late papers will be docked one letter grade per day (not per class period), unless you get my permission for an extension one week before the due date;
· turn in an annotated bibliography journal that you maintain throughout the course; I will collect them unannounced.

Grade Distribution:
Essay #1: Personal memoir 20%
Essay #2: Cultural Theme/Analysis 25%
Essay #3: Academic Social Action/essay 25%
Writing and Reading Annt. Bibliography 15%
Participation and Homework 15%
(“Participation” includes quizzes, peer reviews, attendance, and class participation)


Attendance: As noted above, regular attendance is required. Your class grade will be lowered for poor attendance, down to and including an “F.” Specifically, you are permitted two cuts. For each absence after that, I will lower your participation grade by two parts of a grade (for example, your grade would go from a B+ to a B-, from an A to a B+, etc.). If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to get the assignments and complete the work (you may make up in-class assignments only if you tell me beforehand that you won’t be in class). If you miss class on the day a written assignment is due, make arrangements to send it along with a classmate.

Office Conferences: Plan on having at least two conferences with me this semester to discuss your written work (at any stage of the process) and your progress in the course. Missing conferences will count as absences.

Writing Resources: On a regular basis, you should take your ideas and your written work to the Writing Center (which is right in this room). At the WC, trained tutors will help you with any piece of your writing at any stage of the process. WRITING CAN ALWAYS BE IMPROVED.

Essay Format: Your papers should be typed or word-processed, using black ink, double-spaced, with approximately one inch margins on all sides. No odd fonts, please (fonts should be 11 or 12 points). No separate title page should be used. Place the date, my name, and the assignment (e.g.: Essay #1: Cultural Analysis) in the upper right hand corner of the first page; write your name on the BACK of the last page of the essay, in the bottom right corner. Center your title above the text on page one and double space beneath it. The title should not be underlined. Number all the pages (not necessarily page one), and fasten pages with a staple. Give me the essay in a folder with pockets.

Revision Policy: In line with the concept of writing as a process, you may re-write any and all of your essays to improve your grade. Your revision grade will be the average of the original essay grade and the revision essay grade. In order to revise an essay, you must speak to me during my office hours at least once before you submit the revision. The revision is due before the next essay’s rough draft due date.

Plagiarism: We will go over plagiarism early in the semester. Plagiarism demonstrates contempt for ethical standards, your instructor, and your peers. If you are caught plagiarizing, a citation will be put on file with the Dean and you will fail that assignment (and possibly the course). Get caught plagiarizing again (in any course), and you will be dismissed permanently from Eckerd College. As well as being a statement of your refusal to take part in the learning process, plagiarism is cheating. DON’T DO IT.

Accommodations: Eckerd College and I encourage qualified persons with disabilities to participate in college programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation in this course or have questions about physical access, please tell me as soon as possible.

Reminder: By the first semester of your junior year, you will turn in a writing portfolio to help us determine your writing competency. Therefore, keep EVERYTHING you write for this class (as well as from any of your other classes).