CSUDH Summer Bridge 2017

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Instructor: Dean Ramser

Email:dramser@csudh.edu Office: LCH B330 (conferences M/W 6am-8:15am)

SIL: Veronica Vega

Welcome to the Summer Bridge Program in English! The Program is made up of twenty English department faculty members and over twenty-five Supplemental Instruction Leaders, all of whom are strongly committed to student success. We have worked together over the past year to design an intensive and engaging six-week composition course that is the first step in your journey as a college writer. We have committed to employing methods of teaching and evaluation that are ethical, transparent, and accessible. We recognize and seek to build upon your academic strengths and previous experiences. We are very excited to be a part of your first summer at CSUDH!

We seek to guide and support you in your new role as a college writer by introducing you to terms, concepts, and practices that are writing-specific. You will complete two major assignments that ask you to engage with these terms by thinking and writing about the writing of others as well as about your own writing. We will ask you to reflect on your engagement with the course’s terms, concepts, and practices as a way of helping you develop a preliminary theory of writing that you can use in a variety of contexts throughout your time at CSUDH and beyond. You will conclude the course by presenting your theory of writing to the classroom community.

Learning to become an effective college writer requires time, persistence, patience, trust, and a certain amount of courage. During the next six weeks (and beyond), you may experience intellectual discomfort, ambiguity, contradiction, and uncertainty. We think these experiences are an important part of your development as a writer and thinker, and we are committed to creating a sense of safety for you, granting you permission to struggle and even at times to fail in the attempt. We hope the aspects of the course that challenge or frustrate you will also motivate and engage you. We hope to support your life-long pursuit of intellectual inquiry and help you understand the transformative power of your own writing.

Course Outcomes

Over the course of the six-week program, you will engage in daily writing activities, discussions, reflection, and peer collaboration designed to help you realize the following outcomes:

Define and practice using key rhetorical terms, including rhetorical situation, audience, genre, reflection, and transfer in classroom discussion and activities as well as in both formal and informal writing assignments;
Discuss and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres, media, and rhetorical situations in order to begin to develop intellectual and rhetorical flexibility;
Begin to develop flexible strategies for reading and composing, including drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing;
Practice giving credit to the ideas of others in writing;
Begin to recognize and practice common conventions related to academic writing, including the use of grammars, punctuation, and spelling;
By the end of the course, develop your own theory of writing, reflectively drawing upon the key rhetorical terms, classroom activities, and course assignments.
For syllabi of DSP pilot sections only: Reflect upon your writing strengths and challenges by completing a Directed Self-Placement module, which will recommend your Fall 2017 writing course.

Required Texts

The 2017 Summer Bridge Reader (Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” and Megan Garber’s “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter” – drawn from 2017 SB Reader
Readings, video links, and other resources posted to Google Drive (insert URL here)

Key Terms/Concepts of the Course

The following key terms/concepts are fundamental to the field of college composition. Understanding and applying these key concepts will help you build the skills and knowledge necessary to become a successful writer in your composition courses, across the college curriculum, and beyond. Therefore, in this this class you will repeatedly read about and apply the following key concepts in sustained fashion, with increasingly complexity and detail, throughout the term:

rhetorical situation – the circumstances in which you write/communicate,

including the writer/speaker, purpose, audience, topic, context, and culture

audience – the intended or imagined readers/recipient(s) of your writing/communication

genre – the frame within which your writing/ideas/communication take shape (e.g., in the form of an essay, business memo, PowerPoint, YouTube playthrough, podcast, etc.)

reflection – to examine and analyze your own writing/communication and related practices in order to better understand their meaning and impact

transfer – the ability to apply the writing-related knowledge and skills you’ve learned in your composition class to new contexts and situations (e.g., new assignments, different courses, at work, etc.)

Writing Requirements

All of the formal written assignments listed below, including all drafts for each, must be completed in good faith and turned in on time in order to receive credit for the course.

Major Assignments:

Assignment #1: Analysis & Reflection: Genre, Audience, & Rhetorical Situation
Assignment #2: Analysis, Re-Mediation, & Reflection: Composing in Two Modes
Assignment #3: Reflection in Presentation
The Final Portfolio

For Assignments #1 and #2, you will receive detailed written and oral feedback from your instructor and SIL, but no grade will be assigned. The instructor’s feedback will address the your paper’s strengths as well as areas needing clarification, refinement, or improvement. This feedback will guide you as you revise the assignment for inclusion in the Final Portfolio. Your Final Portfolio will be evaluated on a “Credit”/“No Credit” scale and your official course grade will be recorded as either “Credit” (CR) or “No Credit” (NC).

Additional Assignments:

5-8 Exploratory writing journal entries
Daily informal in-class writing
The Working Folder: In the Working Folder you will collect everything you write, and everything written to you (by peers, your instructor, etc.) over the course of the entire term. Keeping a thorough, organized Working Folder will be key to your success on the Final Portfolio, and you will work with and reflect upon its contents periodically over the course of the term. It is important for you to bring your Working Folder with you to every class and workshop session in order to be fully prepared for each day’s activities and assignments.
At least two individual writing conferences with the Supplemental Instruction Leader and at least one individual writing conference with the instructor (to be scheduled with your SIL and instructor)
Thoughtful, active, and responsible engagement in class discussion, preparation for class, and in-class informal writing

Additional Course Components

SIL Workshops:

The Summer Bridge Program in English integrates Supplemental Instruction Leaders (SILs) as a key component in helping you build skills as a critical thinker and effective writer. SIL-led in-class activities and workshop sessions are tied to class assignments and constitute a crucial component of class participation and citizenship. You are required to attend and participate in every instructor-led class meeting and every SIL-led workshop session. In excess of two absences and/or NCs for instructor-led class meetings or SIL-led workshop sessions without a documented medical excuse may result in a final course grade of “NC.” The course is structured to ensure that you have opportunity to work with your instructor and SIL for every major writing assignment. Failure to do so will render you ineligible to hand in the assignment for final evaluation. Additional SIL activities (whether in-class or in a workshop session) may be counted towards assignment or course grades at the discretion of the instructor, i.e., a peer-editing session scheduled during a workshop might factor into a series of required steps or drafts in a scaffolded writing assignment.

Students earn credit for SIL sessions by meeting all of the following criteria: 1) Being present and on time for class meetings; 2) Completing all reading and writing assignments on time; 3) Participating in all in-class activities.

Conferences: one individual conference in my office

Journals: Community HIP/SLICE “Fix-It” Journal- observe one issue in your community: write notes, take photographs if possible, and see how this issue connects with the required readings (10 pages)

Common BOOK- notes, reflections, exercises (10 pages or more)

Expectations for Drafting & Revising

Assignments #1 and #2 will ask you to work through a multi-draft process to develop your formal writing through a scaffolded progression. For each assignment you will complete:

Draft #1, The Discovery Draft: This draft generally reflects your initial engagement with the assignment and your attempts to discover what you want to say about it; it may include brainstorming, free-writing, thought mapping, storyboarding, or some other early-stage writing activity, and it should contain at least several full paragraphs that begin to formally respond to the assignment.

Draft #2, Work in Progress (WIP): The WIP generally responds to all parts of the assignment, including the reflection section, though some parts may be better developed than others. It should consist primarily of complete thoughts/sentences that are organized into paragraphs, including an introductory paragraph that states the paper’s main idea, point, or thesis.

Draft #3, The Polished Draft: This draft should respond in full to all parts of the assignment. It should reflect the best work you are capable of at this point in the session, and while it should be as developed and polished as possible, you will be asked to reflect upon and revise it in the final weeks of the course after receiving instructor and SIL feedback. The final draft will then be presented in the Final Portfolio for evaluation.

Writing Resources

Supplemental course materials: [https://wordpress.com/posts/deanramser.wordpress.com]

The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL): https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Course Policies

Grading:

This course uses the Portfolio Method, which means your writing won’t be formally “graded” until the end of the course when you submit the Final Portfolio—a collection of your revised, polished work, plus selected artifacts. This method of delayed grading will allow you to marshal all of the skills and knowledge you gain throughout the summer in your final writing products, before you receive a formal grade.

Your Informal Writing includes journal entries, in-class activities, and all other writing that is not part of the Formal Writing assignments described below. Informal Writing will be evaluated based upon the following:

The quality of your thinking
Development of your ideas in depth and detail
Your engagement with the process, e.g.,
- Did you address any specific prompts, questions, or guidelines that may have been provided?
- Did you take the assignment seriously, using the time provided for the assignment productively?
- Did you produce the assigned quantity of writing? etc.

On informal work you will typically receive minimal feedback that is designed to let you know how closely you are fulfilling assignment expectations. At times this feedback will also emphasize what you are doing well or where you need to focus on improvement (e.g., analysis, use of evidence, development of ideas, etc.). Feedback on informal writing will NOT typically address technical/mechanical issues in your writing (e.g., grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.). Informal writing and classroom activities will generally be “graded” using a ✓, ✓+,✓-or similar system.

For the Formal Writing Assignments #1 and #2, you will complete a series of required drafts and workshops. Assignment drafts and workshops are critical to your development as a writer, and you cannot pass the course without completing the assigned drafts on time and in good faith. You will receive detailed written and oral feedback on drafts from your SIL and instructor, but no letter grade or percentage will be assigned. The feedback will address global issues such as:

Organization
Development of a clear sense of purpose (beyond the fact that you’ve been given an assignment to write)—Does the audience understand your goal(s) or what you are trying to accomplish in this composition?
Addressing the audience appropriately and effectively
Persuasive, detailed interpretation and analysis of issues, experiences, texts, etc.
Development of your ideas using evidence from your own experience, observations, writing, reading, or other sources you may have engaged for this class

You will also receive feedback on technical/mechanical aspects of your writing, which will specifically identify recurrent patterns of error. You will be expected to study and practice correcting such issues in the context of your own writing, perhaps through the use of an error log. In general, your assignment’s strengths as well as areas needing clarification, refinement, or improvement will also be addressed. This feedback is designed to help you revise the assignment effectively for evaluation in the Final Portfolio. Drafts will be “graded” using a ✓, ✓+,✓-or similar system, but no letter grade or percentage will be assigned.

The Final Portfolio is the culminating assignment of the course. For the Final Portfolio you will collect and showcase your revised, polished writing at the end of the term for formal evaluation. You will also include the text of Assignment #3, the Reflection in Presentation, which will articulate your final Theory of Writing and relate it to your Portfolio’s contents. Revision is a required element of the Portfolio, and I will also expect to see improvement on issues suggested for revision in feedback on your drafts, in patterns of error, and general areas where you may have struggled in your writing. The Final Portfolio will be evaluated on a “Credit”/“No Credit” scale, and your official course grade will be recorded as either “Credit” (CR) or “No Credit” (NC).

Technology & Printing:

You will write in class and in your SIL workshop every day for a variety of purposes, including working on drafts of your formal assignments. Therefore you will need to bring a laptop to class with you every day unless otherwise instructed. Laptops are available for checkout through the Summer Bridge program. You will also be required to print copies of your writing at various stages, including copies to be used in peer-review workshops. You can print for free in either the ETE (SCC 1102) or EOP (WH D-350) offices from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. You can also print at the Toro Copy Center (WH-A-214 or LIB G-149) or the printing kiosk at the Loker Student Union Information Desk for 15 cents/page.

Attendance & Tardies:

If you have more than two absences in either your class or SIL workshop, you may receive a grade of NC (“No Credit”). Three late arrivals or early departures equal one absence.

Comportment and Participation:

It is expected that you bring all assigned readings to class and that you are on time. It is also expected that you participate meaningfully in class discussion. Please do not bring someone to our class who is not enrolled unless you have received prior permission from the instructor. You are expected to be a responsible classroom citizen, taking care to respect others in your words and actions. This includes making sure your phone and all other noise-making devices are turned off or muted.

Academic Integrity:

Both the SIL and I will guide and support you through every stage of your assignments, which will ask you to work with and document sources appropriately and collaborate with others to develop your assignments. I assume and expect that all work you hand in for evaluation is your own, and when you work with sources or consult with others about your work, you will practice giving credit to the ideas of others when it is due. Our shared goal is to help you develop and preserve the integrity of the work you submit and take pride in your writing products. In keeping with departmental policy, I reserve the right to request an electronic copy of any work you hand in to me. Cases of suspected academic dishonesty may be reported in writing to the Chair of the English Department. See me with any questions about this policy; also, you should familiarize yourself with the University’s Academic Honesty Policy in the University Catalogue. It is available online at: http://www4.csudh.edu/university-catalog/2016-2017/general-information/academic-integrity/index.

Student disAbility Resource Center:

This class welcomes students with disabilities. By law, disabled students are entitled to accommodations either in- or outside of class that will allow them to complete assignments and other course requirements using through the Student disAbility Resource Center program. SDRC strives to make all of the University’s educational, cultural, social, and physical facilities and programs available to CSUDH students with disabilities. It is the sole responsibility of the student to have a complete SDRC file. It is also the student’s sole responsibility to request specific accommodations from the SDRC in a timely manner. For more information, visit their web page: http://www4.csudh.edu/sdrc/.

The Assignment Sequence

Assignment #1: Analysis & Reflection: Genre, Audience, Rhetorical Situation

Description: For Assignment #1 you will write an essay that moves beyond summary to analyze and make connections between the concepts of genre, audience, and rhetorical situation. You will draw evidence from course readings and other materials to support your analysis. You will also reflect on your analysis of the assigned texts and begin to develop a theory of writing.

You must first define the key terms genre, audience, and rhetorical situation and investigate the connections between them within the context of [the rhetoric handbook/relevant course materials]. Next, you will explore how the key terms operate in a secondary text by closely analyzing how the text’s creator/author uses genre, handles the rhetorical situation, and appeals to an audience. Applying the key rhetorical terms to the secondary text will help you develop a richer understanding of genre, audience, and rhetorical situation as well as increase your understanding of a socially relevant topic or issue. This segment of your paper should be at least 1,000 words long.

The final section of your essay will consist of a reflection piece where you begin to develop your theory of writing by considering the concepts of genre, audience, and rhetorical situation and how they relate in both general terms and in terms of your own writing in the analytical essay. Have you enacted your theory of writing in your own composition? This segment of your paper should be 300-500 words long.

List of possible texts:

Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” and Megan Garber’s “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter” (drawn from 2017 SB Reader)

Assignment #1 Due dates:

Assignment #1, Journal Entry #1: First half of Week 1
Assignment #1, Journal Entries #2 & #3: Second half of Week 1
Assignment #1, Draft #1 due: First half of Week 2
Assignment #1, Draft #2 due: Second half of Week 2
Assignment #1, Draft #3 due: First half of Week 3 (1,300-1,500 words total, typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, MLA format)
Assignment #1, Working Folder check: Second half of Week 3

Grading: You will receive detailed written and oral feedback on this assignment from your instructor and SIL throughout the writing process, but no grade will be assigned until the Final Portfolio. The feedback will address your assignment’s strengths as well as any areas needing clarification, refinement, and/or improvement. This feedback will guide you as you revise the essay for inclusion in your Final Portfolio.

Assignment #2: Analysis, Re-Mediation, & Reflection: Composing in 2 Modes

Description: For Assignment #2 you will write an essay in which you analyze a newly assigned text or set of texts. In this assignment you will also revisit the key terms genre, audience, and rhetorical situation, expanding and refining your understanding of how the terms relate to each other in the context of the newly assigned text(s). As with the first assignment, you will draw evidence from course readings and other materials to support your analysis. You will also reflect upon your analysis of the assigned texts and continue to develop your theory of writing. Assignment #2 should be at least 1,000 words long.

Once you have written a second, more polished draft of the analytical essay, you will create a composition in an entirely new genre to communicate to a specific audience about that same topic. You will draw upon your work in the course up to this point to help you make the rhetorical choices necessary to create an effective composition in a second genre. You should choose the second genre based on your analysis of the rhetorical situation and the way in which you wish to respond to it. The work of “re-mediating” your analytical essay into a new genre will also help you refine your analytical essay into a polished draft. In the analytical essay and in the re-mediated composition, you will need to strategically target your specific audiences and consider additional information and evidence as well as audience expectations.

In addition to re-mediating your analytical essay, you will also write a rationale of 300-500 words explaining the relationship between your analytical essay and your re-mediation of the topic. The rationale should explain how and why you chose the second genre for re-mediation, and discuss the particular strategies you used in the re-mediation.

Finally, as with Assignment #1, you will write a 300-500 word reflection that is a continued exploration of your developing theory of writing. In your reflection, you will consider the following:

How do your writing and re-mediation choices impact your audience and vice versa?
What are the affordances and limitations of each genre?
What are the affordances and limitations of the rhetorical situations in which you are composing?

As in Assignment #1, you will also consider the relationship between your theory of writing and your actual composing practices. How do your own composing practices influence your theory of writing?
List of possible texts:

Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” and Megan Garber’s “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter” (drawn from 2017 SB Reader)

Assignment #2 Due Dates:

Part I:

Assignment #2, Journal Entries #4 & 5: First half of Week 3
Assignment #2, Analytical Essay Draft #1 due: Second half of Week 3
Assignment #2, Analytical Essay Draft #2 due: Second half of Week 4 (1,000-1,250 words minimum, typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, MLA format)

Part II:

Assignment #2, Journal Entry #6 due: First half of Week 4
Assignment #2, Re-mediation Draft #1 due: Second half of Week 4
Assignment #2, Composition in Two Genres Draft #1 due: Start of Week 5
- Analytical essay Draft #3 (1,000-1,250 words)
- One re-mediation of the analytical essay
- A rationale for the re-mediation and a reflection (600-1,000 words)

Part III:

Assignment #2, Composition in Two Genres Draft #2 due: End of Week 5 (1,750-2,250 words, typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, MLA format)
Assignment #2, Working Folder check: Beginning of Week 6

Grading: You will receive detailed written and oral feedback on this assignment from your instructor and SIL throughout the writing process, but no grade will be assigned until the Final Portfolio. The feedback will address your assignment’s strengths as well as any areas needing clarification, refinement, and/or improvement. This feedback will guide you as you revise the essay for inclusion in your Final Portfolio.

Assignment #3: Reflection in Presentation

Over the past five weeks you have written reflectively about your composing processes and what you’ve learned about writing, with the goal of understanding and applying what you have learned. The work of reflection gives you the opportunity to deepen your knowledge regarding writing and related practices. In Assignments #1 and #2, you began developing a theory of writing and considered its relationship to your own composing practices, asking yourself: have I enacted my theory of writing in my own compositions? In this final assignment, you will be returning to your theory of writing and composing a reflective essay that addresses several questions, including (but not limited to):

What was your theory of writing before coming into this course?
What is your current theory of writing?
How has your theory of writing developed or changed with each piece of composing?
What has contributed to your theory of writing the most?
What is the relationship between your theory of writing and how you have developed your ideas and created meaning through your work in this course?
How will your theory of writing inform your revision of Assignments #1 & 2?
How might your theory of writing be applied to other situations both in the classroom and beyond?

For each of these questions, you will need to support your ideas by giving examples from your previous writing assignments in this course and then explaining why and how your examples are relevant.

After you have written in response on the questions above, you will choose a genre in which to present your work to the class—a PSA, a Prezi presentation, a TED-Talk type video, a podcast, or any genre you may desire that is approved by the instructor. Pick the genre you feel best represents your goals for your final course reflection, and in your reflection explain

Why did you choose that particular genre for your presentation?

How will your chosen presentation genre affect the final product of your written reflection?

You will then present your theory of writing to the class on the final day of the term.

List of texts:

Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” and Megan Garber’s “The Revolutionary Aims of Black Lives Matter” (drawn from 2017 SB Reader)
What you’ve written for Assignment #1
What you’ve written for Assignment #2

Assignment #3, Reflection in Presentation due dates:

Assignment #3, Draft #1 due: By the end of class in the first half of Week 6

Assignment #3, Reflection in Presentation: Presented to class on final day of the course

The Final Portfolio

The purpose of the Final Portfolio is to showcase your best thinking and writing for final evaluation. It is further an opportunity for you to demonstrate what you have learned about writing this term—the practices of writing, the key terms/concepts, and specific skills you may have acquired or expanded. Think of this assignment as another move in the evolution of your theory of writing, and a chance for you to fully explore and even celebrate yourself as a writer and creator of meaning and knowledge. You will collect your coursework over the entire term in the working folder, and the portfolio will include your final, revised drafts of Assignments #1 and #2 as well as the text of Assignment #3, the Reflection in Presentation. In addition, you may include a range of other possible artifacts, including (but not limited to) journal entries/informal in-class writing, excerpts from feedback received from your instructors and/or peers, and any other items that illuminate your engagement with the key concepts, readings, assignments, and activities of the course. You must have completed all assignments on time and in good faith in order to receive credit for the portfolio. It is important for you to understand that none of your major course assignments will be formally “graded” until submitted in the form of the Final Portfolio, so it is not possible to pass the course if you do not submit a Final Portfolio. Your Final Portfolio will be evaluated on a “Credit”/“No Credit” scale, and your official course grade will be recorded as either “Credit” (CR) or “No Credit” (NC).

Final Portfolio due: End of Week 6, and must include the following, in addition to selected artifacts

Reflection in Presentation TEXT
Assignment #1, REVISED Final Portfolio Draft
Assignment #2, Analytical Essay, REVISED Final Portfolio Draft
Selected Artifacts, which should speak to the purpose and point you wish to communicate in the Final Portfolio

dean ramser

Composition

CSUDH Summer Bridge 2017

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