ENGLISH 100

 

Joe Glaser, CH 11, 745-5763

Joe.Glaser@wku.edu

 

Text: Good Reasons: Designing and Writing Effective Arguments, 3rd ed., Faigley and Selzer

Course Design: We'll read, discuss, and write about a number of essays and writing issues. Grammar as such is not a feature of the course, but we will cover grammatical topics as they come up in your writing. The class may involve some group work and oral reporting.

Your grades will be based on approximately eight writing assignments (80%), and your scores on quizzes, exercises, and class participation (20%). Late work will be penalized one letter grade for each class session it is late without a valid excuse. You may miss two quiz or exercise assignments with no penalty, but further misses will count against your average. If you pass all quizzes and get all exercises in on time, you qualify for a 5-point bonus toward your class net average—enough to go from a B (85%) to a A- (90%).

Attendance Policy:  You are allowed up to three unexcused cuts. After you've missed three classes, I'll want valid excuses. Anyone missing more than six classes without a cast-iron excuse (something like a hospital stay) will be penalized five points per cut on his or her final average or asked to drop the class.

General Education Goals: This course is part of the A.1. (Organization and Communication of Ideas) general education requirement at WKU.  The course will help you attain these general education goals and objectives:

1. The capacity for critical and logical thinking

2. Proficiency in reading, writing, speaking

The goals of the course are to introduce students to college-level writing and critical reading, to give students instruction and practice in writing and reading college-level essays, and to make students aware of how various audiences and rhetorical situations call for different choices in language, structure, format, and tone.  Students receive instruction and practice that allows them to clearly articulate their audience, purpose, and rhetorical situation for writing assignments.  Reading assignments stress how and why authors make rhetorical choices and are designed both to immerse students in written language and to develop critical thinking, reading, and writing skills.

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