FSTY 1311: Rhetoric and Composition I

Our final week of the semester will be a whirlwind. Here’s how we’ll wrap up the semester:

• On Monday, we will discuss techniques for revising your controlled research papers, then we will review the procedures for delivering your Big Idea presentations, which you will give on Wednesday and Friday. Remember, your oral presentation can be no longer than three minutes, and you can only use five slides. Before you come to class on Monday, you should have rough sketches of your five slides and a rough draft of what you plan to say in your oral presentation. Bring these items with you to class.
• Your Big Idea Proposal is due before class begins on Wednesday. Please refer to the assignment sheet for instructions on how to submit your document. During class on Wednesday, we will listen to oral presentations by the following students (in this order): Rebeca, Warner, Daniel, Danielle, Lisa, Todd, Cherie, Meret, John, and Charity.
• On Friday, we will listen to oral presentations by the following students (in this order): Jocelyn, Cole, Vladimir, Alex, Sam, Naji, Jenny, Emy, James, and Charline.

Your only assignment during finals week is to submit your revised controlled research paper, which is due no later than Monday, December 6, at 1:30 p.m. (our official final exam period, scheduled by the university).

I was impressed by the drafts of your Big Idea proposals that I read during class today, and I’m glad to see that so many of you have made good progress on this assignment. This weekend, you should review your peers’ feedback on your drafts and revise your document with their suggestions in mind. For some of you, this will mean making small changes. For others, this will mean overhauling the entire proposal. The good news is that your proposal isn’t due until Wednesday, December 1, so you still have time to turn your rough draft into a beautiful finished product.

On Monday of next week, we will discuss the difference between persuasive written documents and persuasive oral presentations. Before you come to class, please read “PowerPoint Is Evil,” by Edward Tufte, and “In Defense of PowerPoint,” by Donald Norman. Think about these two essays, then be ready to answer (with specific details) these two questions: What is the worst PowerPoint presentation you’ve ever seen? What is the best PowerPoint presentation you’ve ever seen?

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, we won’t meet as a class on Wednesday or Friday. However, if you would like to discuss your Big Idea proposal with me before the break, you can stop by during my regular office hours on Tuesday afternoon.

Next week, your Big Idea should really begin to take shape. By the end of the week, you will have a complete draft of your proposal, ready to be reviewed by your classmates. Here’s how we’ll spend our time in class:

• On Monday, we will discuss principles of visual communication and consider how you might incorporate these principles into your Big Idea Proposal. Your only homework for the weekend is to complete the Big Idea Drafting Exercise that we started in class on Friday.
• On Wednesday, we will continue working on the Big Idea Proposal, and we will prepare ourselves to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that evening. Before you come to class, please read this handout about attending theater productions, as well as this Discovery Guide about the play (especially pages 4–8). Please remember that we will be attending the play on Wednesday evening at 7:30 and that attendance at this event is not optional.
• On Friday, we will conduct an in-class peer review exercise for the Big Idea assignment. You should come to class with three printed copies of your proposal letter. Your letter might be less-than-perfect, but it should meet the length requirement (1000–1300 words) and be formatted like a letter. In addition, please read this handout on revision from the University of North Carolina before you come to class.

If you have any questions about these plans, or if you want to discuss your Big Idea with me, please stop by my office during office hours or email me.

I hope our class discussion about people with Big Ideas helped you think about your own Big Idea. I know I was impressed by the range of people and topics that you discovered, and I hope you’ll keep our discussion in mind as you begin drafting your proposal.

Next week, we will focus on writing the first draft of your Big Idea proposal. Here’s how we’ll spend our time:

• On Monday, you should come to class with a short proposal (200–300 words, typed) that answers the following questions: What is your big idea? What is your plan for putting your plan into action? I will give you feedback on your proposal by Wednesday. In addition, please read pages 99–110 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class and bring your book with you.
• On Wednesday, we will analyze several fundraising letters to better understand what makes proposals successful (or unsuccessful). You should bring a description of the imagined audience for your proposal (again, shoot for 200–300 words). This description should explain who the person is, why he or she might be interested in your Big Idea, and what you plan to do to persuade this person to support your proposal with money, time, legislation, etc.
• On Friday, we will consider how proposals are shaped by the media in which they are composted. Please read pages 523–533 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class. In addition, bring a brief description (you guessed it—200–300 words) of your “current situation” for the Big Idea Proposal. At this point, you shouldn’t be presenting your solution to the problem; rather you should be describing the unresolved problem or unrealized opportunity that your Big Idea will address. In other words, try to describe how things are right now, not how they’ll be when your proposal is accepted.

If you have any questions about these brief assignments, or if you want to discuss your Big Idea with me before we meet on Monday, just let me know.

I hope the peer review activity on Wednesday helped you sharpen your focus as you work on finishing up your controlled research paper. The final version of your research paper is due on Monday before class begins. Please be sure to follow the instructions on the assignment sheet for submitting your essay.

On Monday, I will introduce our final project for the semester. This assignment builds on Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin, so if you have not finished reading that book, that’s your homework for Week 11. Please bring your copy of Three Cups of Tea to class each day next week. On Monday, I’ll explain more about the assignment and how we’ll spend our time in class for the rest of the week. Before you come to class on Wednesday, please read pages 171–179 in the Norton Field Guide.

[Update: On Friday, we will discuss the Big Ideas you have found on your own. Before you come to class, research a person or an organization with a Big Idea and write a short description (200-300 words) of the idea and how the person/organization enacted the idea. Bring your printed description to class and be ready to tell us about what you found. If you need a good starting point, you might want to look at the TED archive, the list of MacArthur Fellows, the list of Ashoka Fellows, or this Ask MetaFilter question I posted a few days ago.]

One final reminder: If you plan to submit a revised version of your annotated bibliography, you must do so by 1:00 p.m. on Friday, October 29. Please complete the revision process in Google Docs and send me an email notifying me that your bibliography is ready to be evaluated.

I hope our week of analyzing effective essays has helped you think about your controlled research paper and identify some strategies that you can use to strengthen your arguments. If you’ve been keeping up with my advice throughout this week, at this point you have the makings of a rough draft for your essay.

Next week, we will focus on revising those drafts into polished essays. In order to give you the time you need to complete your essay, I am not assigning any other readings next week. Hence, all of your energies for this class should be focused on your essay. Here’s how we’ll spend our time in class:

• On Monday, you should come to class with three printed copies of your draft. You will work with one of these copies in class, and the other two will be used for a peer review activity with your peers. Your draft might not be polished, but it should be complete (i.e., 1200–1500 words, with at least four sources). Our review activities next week depend on everyone being prepared, so I’m giving you fair warning right now: If you come to class without three printed copies of your paper, you will receive no credit for Monday’s activity or Wednesday’s activity.
• On Wednesday, will will complete the peer review activity that we started on Monday. Again, it is essential that everyone comes to class prepared, and we’ll discuss exactly what that means on Monday.
• I will be attending an academic conference on Friday, so we will not meet as a class. Please note that this does not mean you have nothing to do while I’m gone. I strongly encourage you to work with your classmates to complete a final round of editing and proofreading sometime before Monday, November 1, when your essays are due.

One final reminder: If you would like to submit a revised version of your Annotated Bibliography for re-evaluation, you must complete the revision process in Google Docs and send me an email before 1:00 p.m. on Friday, October 29, notifying me that your bibliography is ready to be evaluated.

I really enjoyed our individual conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday. At this point, all of you have a solid thesis statement (or at least a draft of one), and you should be working on the assignment I gave you in the conference: write, write, write! For the past month, we have been discussing the six articles that are the basis for this research paper, so you should have no trouble writing about this topic at length. Your first draft won’t be pretty, but that’s OK—just keep writing. By the time you come to class on Monday, you should have several (translation: not just one or two) pages of written text. It’s fine if your first draft is hand-written, stream-of-consciousness, unformatted prose. Just bring what you have written to class on Monday.

All three days this week, we will be analyzing the short articles on pages 83–96 of the Norton Field Guide, then applying the techniques used in those articles to your research papers. I assigned these articles for Week 7, but we didn’t have enough time to discuss them. Please reread these articles, bring your book with you to class each day, and be ready to critique (or defend) the positions taken by these three authors. You should also bring the latest draft of your research paper to class each day.

One last note: The end of Week 8 marks the midpoint of the semester, and I will be submitting individual progress reports for each of you this weekend. If you have any questions about your midterm grade, you can login to Blackboard to see your scores on each component of your grade. The annotated bibliography is NOT part of your midterm grade, but I will have those graded and returned to you within the next few days.

Next week we will take a short break from our normal classroom activities for two special events:

• On Monday, we will hold our class session at the Scarborough-Phillips Library, where one of the university’s librarians will introduce you to the library collection and show you how to use online databases in your research. Please do not go to our normal classroom on Monday; instead, we will meet inside the entrance of the library promptly at 1:00 p.m. Come ready to ask any questions you have about conducting research and using the library’s resources.
• Our class session on Wednesday will be replaced by individual conferences with me. By early next week, you should have a solid thesis statement for your controlled research paper. I would like to meet with each one of you for 15 minutes to discuss your thesis and the rough outline for your paper. To accommodate your schedules, I have created time slots on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Attending your individual conference will count as your attendance for Wednesday’s class session. We will not meet as a class that day. (IMPORTANT: This does not mean that the large lecture section is canceled on Wednesday. I expect to see all of you there at 2:00 p.m.) I will circulate a sign-up sheet in class on Friday; please make sure to write down and remember your appointment.
• We will not hold class on Friday due to Founder’s Day, a St. Edward’s University holiday.

As you can see, next week will be quite different from the norm, but our odd schedule does not mean that this is a week off. You should be making steady progress on your controlled research paper throughout the week. By the end of Week 8, you should have a finalized thesis statement and an outline for your paper. We’ll talk more about these items during your individual conference.

It’s been an incredibly busy week, and you have earned a little break. We won’t have any reading assignments this weekend, and I hope you’ll take a few days to relax and recuperate. Here are a few quick updates about next week:

• On Monday, I will introduce the next major assignment: the controlled research paper. Yes, it’s the biggest assignment of the semester, but the good news is that all of the work you have done for the annotated bibliography assignment will provide a nice foundation upon which you can build your research paper. You don’t need to read anything for Monday’s class; just arrive well rested and ready to focus.
• On Wednesday, we will talk about how to develop a research question and thesis statement for your controlled research paper. Please read pages 375–383 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class.
• On Friday, we will look at three short articles that argue for a specific position. Please read pages 83–96 in the Norton Field Guide, and come to class ready to critique (or defend) the positions taken by these three authors. In addition, you should submit the final draft of your annotated bibliography before you come to class on Friday. Please refer to the assignment sheet for instructions on how to upload your document to Google Docs and share it with me. [Update: Please remember to bring your completed Thesis Statement Exercise, from Wednesday's class, as well as an original research question that you plan to use to guide your work on the controlled research paper.]

Generally speaking, I was impressed with your annotated bibliography drafts in class today. Some of you have more work to do than others, but I’m confident that everyone can complete this assignment before next Friday’s deadline. As I mentioned in class today, I highly recommend using the peer review exercise instructions as a guide for your revision process. You can download a PDF copy of that exercise on the Readings page. If you have any questions about putting the finishing touches on your bibliography, please come see me during office hours on Tuesday or Thursday.

Next week, we will continue our work on the Annotated Bibliography assignment by exploring two more tools for analyzing and evaluating arguments made by authors. We’ll wrap up the week with a peer-review workshop designed to help you put the finishing touches on your annotated bibliographies. Here’s a quick rundown of how we’ll spend our time:

• On Monday, we will discuss Aristotle’s three “proofs,” then apply them to the articles we’ve been reading over the past few weeks. Please print out and read “Three Ways to Persuade,” by John R. Edlund, before you come to class. In addition, make sure you bring all six articles for the annotated bibliography to class.
• On Wednesday, we will discuss logical fallacies, then examine the articles we’ve been reading for signs of fallacious reasoning. Please read the tutorials on logical fallacies from the University of North Carolina and Purdue University before you come to class. In addition, make sure you bring all six articles for the annotated bibliography to class.
• On Friday, we will conduct a peer-review workshop for the Annotated Bibliography assignment. Please bring three printed and stapled copies of your annotated bibliography, which should contain all six entries in completed format. In addition, please remember that Friday is the final deadline for two additional assignments: the interview with a professor (please bring your signed sheet to class) and the final revision of your literacy narrative (please email me through Google Docs before class begins). I realize that this makes Friday a very heavy day; hence, I strongly encourage you to complete and submit the interview and revision assignments earlier in the week. I will accept those assignments at any time up until class begins on Friday.

Last but not least, I hope your meetings with Carl this week were helpful. At this point, you should be making steady progress on your six annotations. If you’re stuck, or if you feel like you need additional help with your annotations, please don’t hesitate to come see me during office hours next week.

I hope you enjoyed our class debate today as much as I did. I love seeing so many minds working so hard all at once! By now, you’ve probably come to the realization that summarizing and analyzing complex articles is no easy task. Our reading quiz on Wednesday and our journal assignment today made it clear to me that we still have a ways to go when it comes to reading deeply. We will keep working on these skills over the next few weeks as the Annotated Bibliography assignment continues, and I’m confident that these exercises will help you write more effective bibliography entries.

Next week, we will read the last two articles for the Annotated Bibliography, then focus on pulling everything together into proper bibliography format.

• On Monday, we will continue our discussion about how to write effective summaries. Please read pages 408–419 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class. In addition, you should print, read, and be ready to discuss “Mind Over Mass Media,” by Steven Pinker (linked on the Readings page.)
• On Wednesday, we will review MLA guidelines for formatting our bibliography entries. Please read pages 425–440 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class. You should also print, read, and be ready to discuss “The Internet Won’t Damage Your Brain—But it Might Ruin Your Life,” by Dave Pell (linked on the Readings page.)
• On Friday, we will discuss some strategies for organizing electronic files and using digital resources to streamline the research and writing processes. If you have a laptop computer, please bring it with you to class. In addition, please read pages 230–234 and review pages 235–241 in the Norton Field Guide.

Last but not least, you need to meet with Carl sometime during Week 5 to review one (or more) of your entries for the Annotated Bibliography assignment. Carl will contact you with the times he is available to meet, and you should come to your meeting with a finished draft of your entry. If you would like to meet with me after you’ve met with Carl, I am always happy to see you during my office hours!

With the literacy narrative behind us, we’re ready to move fully into our next big project: the annotated bibliography, which will prepare us to write excellent research papers.

• On Monday, I will introduce the four additional articles we will read for the annotated bibliography assignment, and we will discuss how to summarize the key points of an article. Please read pages 111–124 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class and bring your book with you. You should also bring your copies of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and “Our Cluttered Minds.”
• On Wednesday, we will discuss reading strategies and explore the differences between reading for pleasure and reading for research. Please read pages 352–366 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class. [Update: Please also read "Does the Internet Make You Smarter?" by Clay Shirky (linked on the Readings page).]
• On Friday, we will conduct an in-class group analysis activity. I’ll explain more about this activity on Monday and Wednesday, but the important thing is that you come to class in a debating mood. [Update: Please read "Attached to Technology and Paying a Price," by Matt Richtel (linked on the Readings page).]

Finally, two quick reminders: First, if you didn’t name the file for literacy narrative correctly in Google Docs, or if you didn’t set up the sharing permissions correctly, please fix your document as soon as possible. Your file should be named “Full Name – Literacy Narrative,” and it should be shared only with email hidden; JavaScript is required. Second, if you haven’t been keeping up with the readings (especially the articles by Carr and Lehrer that we discussed in class today), please make some time this weekend to catch up. These articles will serve as the basis for the annotated bibliography assignment, so you need to be very familiar with them.

If you have any questions about these plans, or about anything else related to FSTY 1311, please leave a comment on this post or send me an email.

This week, we’ve been reading some excellent literacy narratives and trying to understand what makes them successful. I hope these readings, along with our peer-review activity in class today, have helped you with your own literacy narrative.

Next week we will wrap up our unit on literacy narratives and begin talking about our next assignment—an annotated bibliography of several articles that will help you prepare for the research paper assignment. Here’s a breakdown of how we’ll spend our time in class:

• We won’t meet on Monday, due to the Labor Day holiday. However, over the weekend, you should synthesize your reviewers’ comments from Friday’s peer review activity and begin incorporating them into your literacy narrative.
• On Wednesday, we will spend one final day talking about our literacy narratives and how to turn rough drafts into final drafts. Please read pages 235–246 and 333–337 in the Norton Field Guide before you come to class and be ready to ask any final questions you have about the literacy narrative assignment.
• On Friday, you will submit a printed copy of your literacy narrative at the beginning of class. In addition, you should upload an electronic copy of your essay to your Google Docs account and share it with me before you come to class. (I will show you how to do this in class on Wednesday.) Friday will also mark the start of our second unit—the annotated bibliography. Please read pages 400–403 in the Norton Field Guide, as well as “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr (linked on the FSTY 1310 syllabus and which you should have read for that class on Wednesday) and “Our Cluttered Minds,” by Jonah Lehrer. (Bring printed copies of both articles to class.) [Update: For those of you without NY Times accounts, I have put a PDF copy of "Our Cluttered Minds" on the Readings page.]

If you have any questions about these plans, please leave a comment on this post or send me an email. I’ll see you in class on Wednesday—until then, I hope you enjoy your Labor Day weekend!

Congratulations on surviving your first week of college! I know this first week has been hectic and perhaps a little overwhelming, but I think you’re doing a wonderful job so far. Our class discussions have been lively and thoughtful, and I hope to see that continue throughout the semester. If you are one of the students who hasn’t been participating in class, please don’t hesitate to jump in—I hope I’ve made it clear that I want to hear from you during class.

Next week, we will focus on the Literacy Narrative assignment, and we will also spend some time talking about the writing process. Please complete the following tasks before you come to class next week:

• For Monday, please read pages 29–37 and 219–225 in the Norton Field Guide. In addition, please print out and read “A Homemade Education,” by Malcolm X, which can be found on the Readings page of the class website. (The password for the Readings page is listed near the top of the printed syllabus I handed out on the first day of class.) Your homework for the weekend is to brainstorm several ideas for your literacy narrative, and you should bring your best three ideas to class on Monday. You don’t need to start drafting your essay, but you should bring some written notes, not just ideas in your head.
• For Wednesday, please read pages 324–332 and 343–351 in the Norton Field Guide, and print out and read “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, which also can be found on the Readings page. By Wednesday, you should have settled on a topic for your literacy narrative, and you should bring a draft of your first paragraph to class.
• We will spend the entire class period on Friday in a peer-review workshop, so you should have a complete rough draft of your literacy narrative by this day. Please bring three printed copies of your essay with you to class.

Last but not least, a few reminders: if you are waiting on the bookstore to get more copies of our textbook, please borrow a copy from someone else in class until your book arrives. If you didn’t submit your one-page response to the Beloit College Mindset List, please slide it under my door (211 Premont Hall) sometime this weekend. The deadline for submitting these responses is Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.

This has been a great first week of class, and I look forward to hearing your ideas for your literacy narratives on Monday. Until then, enjoy your weekend!

Welcome to FSTY 1311: Rhetoric and Composition I. This website will function as the online headquarters for our class this semester. Each week, I will post an update to the website with details about coming week, deadline reminders, links to helpful resources, etc… I plan to use SEU’s Blackboard site to record your grades, but otherwise, everything related to this course will be posted here. If you ever wonder what’s due on a particular date, or what you need to read before you come to class, you can check this website for the answer. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can email me or stop by my office (211 Premont Hall) during my office hours (T/Th 1:30–3:30, F 9:00–11:00).

A bit about me: I’m a new assistant professor at St. Edward’s University. For the past six years, I have been completing my graduate work at Iowa State University and teaching classes in ISU’s English Department. I study the relationship between technology and communication, and I love experimenting with new technologies in the classroom and in my personal life. I’m married to a brilliant freelance writer and we have two daughters. Austin is a little hotter than we expected, but we’re slowly adjusting to the climate.

I am very excited about getting to you know all of you and working with you this semester to strengthen your skills as readers and writers. This will be a rigorous course, and I know some of you detest writing or don’t think of yourselves as good writers, but I am confident that all of you can succeed. Who knows, you may even discover that you’re better at writing than you thought.

We’re going to dive right in to rhetorical analysis this week, so you’ll need to complete the following readings before our next two class sessions:

• Before you come to class on Wednesday, please read the entire Beloit College Mindset List, as well as Eric Felten’s response to the list in the Wall Street Journal. In addition, please read pages 3–8 in the Norton Field Guide to Writing and bring that book with you to class.
• Before you come to class on Friday, please read pages 9–17 and 21–28 in the Norton Field Guide to Writing and bring that book with you to class. You will also submit your one-page response to the Mindset List at the beginning of class on Friday.

Finally, a quick note about this website. Throughout the semester, I’ll be asking you to respond to posts on this website. To help you get comfortable with that process, please add a comment to this post telling me a little bit about yourself and what you hope to get out of Rhet/Comp I. Before you post, a couple of warnings: (1) Your classmates will see what you write, so don’t include anything intended just for me. (2) This website is public, so we will stick to using first names only. Also, please be sure to use the same email address every time you post to the class website.

Without further ado, let’s hear from you!