Harvey Mudd College
Writing 1, Section 4
MWF 8:00 - 8:50 a.m.
Fall 2020
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Prof. Bill Alves
E-mail: alves @hmc.edu
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Prof. Jeff Groves
E-mail: groves @hmc.edu
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Purpose and Objectives:
This course is an intensive reading, thinking, and writing seminar designed to help you develop effective writing strategies that will apply across the various disciplines taught at HMC and beyond. Course readings, though not long, are rich and subject to interpretation, and each text will require close, careful and repeated readings. The course will offer a collaborative environment, including peer and full-class review of your writing. Extensive instructor feedback is intended to help you think of writing as an ongoing, creative process, rather than a task that results in a final product beyond revision. You will develop, and substantially and repeatedly revise, one analytical essay and one reflective essay during the course of this half-semester. The culmination of your written work will be collected in a portfolio at the end of the half semester, and will be evaluated by your instructors and at least one outside reader. The class will also work through a series of style exercises aimed at improving the ways you use words and phrases to communicate ideas.
All disciplines require, in some form, the ability to compose clearly articulated and properly qualified claims that can be supported with evidence. This course is the first component of a broader effort across departments to develop these abilities. It will prepare you to move into subsequent course work, and provide a solid grounding in the most broadly applicable writing skills and practices.
Theme and Readings:
The act of writing demands something to write about. In this course, the sources will be short fiction of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Borges's stories often lie on the frontiers between fables, fantasies, essays, and mysteries, as they self-reflexively ponder the nature of knowledge, creativity, and existence. However, this is not a literature course, and little class time will be available for discussions or lectures about the stories. Therefore, we will move some of the discussion outside of the classroom in the form of participation in electronic forums on
Sakai. You will be required to post significant and substantive responses to the assigned stories during each of the first two weeks of class.
In addition to these thematic sources, we will be using Williams and Bizup's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace. It's important that you get the twelfth edition, available at Huntley Bookstore and elsewhere. You can order it online through Huntley or another vendor. Please purchase the book, as it will be required in future courses as well as this one.
Learning Objectives:
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Compose clearly articulated, properly qualified, and well-motivated claims that can be supported with evidence.
- Develop those claims into carefully reasoned, evidence-based arguments that cohere within and between paragraphs.
- Write clear and concise sentences and cohesive paragraphs in the service of a compelling and engaging style.
- Properly document sources and acknowledge outside influences.
- Recognize differences in conventions of expression across disciplines.
Expectations:
This is a seminar course, meaning that we will devote class time to discussion, writing, exercises, peer editing, and other activities that depend on everyone's active and thoughtful participation. You will benefit from others' participation, and you have an obligation to participate in return. Because this is a short but intensive course, we expect that you will complete assignments on time and will come to class meetings prepared. We reserve the right to refuse late work.
You will be writing and editing frequently in class, often in Google Docs. Therefore you will need to have a browser or text editor open in addition to the video conferencing software. These may be on separate devices, but please do not have any other apps open.
Class attendance is mandatory, though absences may be excused because of illness, family emergency, or religious holidays with documentation from the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs or Student Health. If you cannot attend, please let us know in advance if possible or as soon as you can after the fact. If an event in your life, public or private, is creating conflicts with class beyond what can already be dealt with in the framework we have set up, please feel free to discuss it with us or the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs.
Online Requirements and Etiquette:
Because this is a seminar, your participation is valued and crucial for everyone's learning. Because of the pandemic, we have to learn a somewhat different mode of interacting through remote conferencing software. For everyone's best experience, please do your best to follow these guidelines:
- Minimize distractions as best you can, ideally by being alone in a room during class.
- Arrive to class punctually; we may not be able to admit you immediately if you are late, and latecomers can be distracting to others.
- Join the meeting using your first and last name. If we don't recognize a name, we may not let that person join the class. This way we will also know who is speaking.
- Mute yourself when you are not speaking. If background sounds of unknown origin are disrupting class, we may need to mute everybody.
- Don't use other apps while in class except to take notes or participate in other in-class writing activities. Do not chat privately or text during class.
- Please use your video camera when conferencing (unless you have to temporarily leave the room). Everybody's experience is enhanced if we can see each other while talking, but let us know if this is a problem.
- Prepare needed materials before class, so that you don't have to go look for your textbook or files we'll be discussing.
We will not be allowing recording of class sessions in Zoom because everyone should feel free to speak openly and to make mistakes. However, this policy is not a license to speak thoughtlessly or disrespectfully. Everyone who is registered for this course belongs here and has valuable contributions to make to our class. Our diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and viewpoints will enrich the classroom, and our mutual respect will grant us all the grace to make mistakes and learn from them.
Contact:
We invite and expect you to email your instructor for appointments to discuss your work. We are also happy to respond to emailed questions, generally within 24 hours during the week or a little longer over the weekend. Please send us emails only through your HMC email account (name@hmc.edu or name@g.hmc.edu).
Written Assignments:
In addition to in-class writing assignments, you will complete online writing assignments, one polished paper that will undergo multiple, graded revisions with specific deadlines, and one final essay that reflects on your writing process. The final portfolio will contain the polished paper and the reflective essay. You will submit your assignments electronically, usually to your dropbox on
Sakai. Please familiarize yourself with the use of Sakai as soon as possible.
Course Grade:
You will receive a single grade of high pass, pass, or no credit for the half-semester. Your grade for this course will take into account your performance on assignments (including your use of the Writing Center), the evaluation of all versions of your paper, external readers' evaluations of your final portfolio, and your participation. In order to pass the course you will need to complete and submit all paper drafts, required revisions, and a portfolio.
Because this is a seminar, your attendance and active participation is crucial and affects not only you but everyone in the class. Therefore a significant component of your course grade will be determined by participation.
All good writers seek outside readers to review and comment on their ideas and writing.
The HMC Writing Center is an excellent resource for getting trained readers' comments and advice at any stage of the writing process, from developing ideas to polishing papers. You may schedule an appointment with a Writing Center consultant through the center's website,
www.hmc.edu/writingcenter/. You are required to meet with a Writing Center consultant at least once before the end of the third week of this course. That way you will have time to visit again before portfolio time if you find it helpful.
Honor Code:
The HMC Honor Code applies to all of your work for this class, both during class time and after hours. Writing is a social act, and collaboration on writing projects is fine, even expected, but your work must ultimately be your own. If you received help from your classmates, from the Writing Center, or even from your mother, it is customary to acknowledge that help in writing (you should add an Acknowledgments section at the end of your essay). All references to other texts or others' ideas must be properly cited, and you are expected to call on those sources only in service of creating your own work. In other words, your own intellectual work must be readily apparent as the driving force of your writing. The Honor Code works at HMC because we trust each other to make it work.
Accommodations:
Harvey Mudd College strives to make all learning experiences as accessible as possible. If the unusual circumstances of this semester present problems for your learning or completion of assignments, please contact us or the Office of Academic Affairs. If you need accommodations for a documented disability, please talk to us or contact the Disability Resource Center (abibbens@hmc.edu). You will find information about disability resources on the college website:
https://www.hmc.edu/ability.
Course Schedule
(Topics may vary according to class progress, though assignment due dates will not):
| Week |
Monday |
Wednesday |
Friday |
| 1 |
10/12
Preliminaries; overview of the course.
Jorge Luis Borges. |
10/14
Discussion of readings; writing clarity and points to be made.
Due: Assignment 1: read and respond to
"The Circular Ruins" and "The Library of Babel"
(on Sakai);
read Williams Lessons 1 and 2. |
10/16
Discussions of readings; the thesis.
Due: Assignment 2: Read and respond to
"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius";
read Style handout and Search & Destroy and contribute on Bad Sentences Sakai forum |
| 2 |
10/19
Thesis development.
Due: Assignment 3: read and respond to
"The Garden of Forking Paths";
Read Williams Lesson 7 and the Thesis handout
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10/21
Due: Assignment 4: read and respond to "Blue Tigers";
read and respond to example papers. |
10/23
Required conferences to discuss proposed theses.
Due: Assignment 5: submit proposed theses.
|
| 3 |
10/26
Paragraph structures, introductions.
Due: Assignment 6: read Williams Lesson 8;
Read the outline handout and submit a reverse outline of example paper.
Submit an outline in the format given. |
10/28
Characters, actions, nominalizations, and sentence-level clarity.
Due: Assignment 7: read Williams Lessons 3 and 4 and submit the assigned exercises;
edit previous forum post. |
10/30
Workshop first paragraphs, citations, use of evidence, format checklist.
Due: Assignment 8: review Williams Lesson 8 and the handout on introductions;
submit draft of first paragraph. |
| 4 |
11/2
Revision strategies, in-class writing exercises.
Due: Assignment 9: Fill out the Search & Destroy and Format checklist forms;
submit your paper v. 1 to your Sakai dropbox |
11/4
Paper revision conferences
Due: Assignment 10: read Williams Lesson 5 and submit the assigned exercises
Edit paper paragraph |
11/6
In-class editing assignment.
Due: Assignment 11: read Williams Lessons 6 and 9 and submit the assigned exercises;
edit paragraph. |
| 5 |
11/9
Peer review (2x2)
Due: Assignment 12: Submit paper v. 2 and self-assessment form |
11/11
Titles, documentation styles, revision practice
Due: Assignment 13: William motivation edit |
11/13
Other types of writing.
Due: Assignment 14: Williams global coherence edit |
| 6 |
11/16
Cross-section peer editing.
Due: Assignment 15: Paper v. 3. |
11/18
Disciplines, methodologies, use of evidence, and writing terminology.
Writing Across the Disciplines
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11/20
Peer edit reflective essay.
Due: Assignment 16: Reflective Essay v. 1.
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| 7 |
11/23
Writing Across the Disciplines.
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11/25
No class
Due: Portfolio Due (Tuesday 11/24 11:59 p.m.) |
11/27
No class
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Page maintained by Bill Alves; last updated on October 9, 2020.