Roberts

TEXTBOOK(S): For 2008, OR ENG 1060 classes will be reading Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Supplemental reading will be provided in class at no additional cost.

Americans with Disabilities (ADA) NOTIFICATION: Students requiring special assistance (including those affected by the Americans with Disabilities Act) should contact the ACCESS office (phone number and office location), which will inform the instructor of any special conditions pertaining to their learning.

PRIVACY (FERPA) NOTIFICATION: In compliance with federal law (FERPA), no personal information of yours (including grades) will give given out without your written consent.

CATALOG COURSE DESCRIPTION: Prerequisite: Appropriate Reading/Writing Placement.

Students in this course acquire academic literacy skills (or continue their studies after having completed Academic Literacy I, ENG 1055) by engaging in reading and writing as a holistic process. Further, students will apply reading and writing as processes, working with higher level reading material, and producing academic writing. Students will also demonstrate knowledge of the conventions of the English language, develop strategies for locating and correcting their own patterns of error, demonstrate literacy skills appropriate for different audiences and purposes, and use computer technology as a literacy tool.

General Education is the foundation of every student’s program, regardless of area of study and is intended to impart common knowledge, intellectual concepts and attributes. Attributes specifically identified for this course encourage students to:

We will be teaching and learning these attributes in depth in the class throughout the semester, using both learning objectives and learning activities.

Exit from ENG 1060 will be determined by a review of the student’s impromptu and his/her reading and writing and portfolio to the review committee made up of ENG faculty at the college who rate the work pass/fail. Instructors will not rate their own students’ portfolios.

STUDENTS MUST BE PASSING THE CLASS FOR THEIR COMPLETED PORTFOLIO TO BE REVIEWED. STUDENTS MUST HAVE A PASSING EXIT PORTFOLIO TO PASS THE COURSE AND MOVE TO THE NEXT LEVEL OF ENGLISH!

Some students may need more than a semester to progress to the next English level; if so, they may be eligible for a CP (continuing progress) mark at the end of the semester. This mark does not negatively impact their GPA, but means they do have to register and pay to repeat the class. Students receiving Financial Aid should check with the campus aid office to understand the CP mark and implications for future awards.

· A common reading and multi-draft expository assignment based on the campus-wide text, including the very first draft and at least two subsequent drafts of the essay.

· A multi draft expository essay on an instructor-chosen prompt, including the very first draft and at least two subsequent drafts of the essay.

· Evidence of having worked with at least two different reading strategies, one of which should be a common annotated piece.

During the semester, I will show students the rubrics faculty use to evaluate both the reading and writing pieces in the portfolio.

CLASS METHODOLOGY: In order to achieve these outcomes, students read several core texts in class and out of class, and write numerous responses in class and out of class, at least three of which are formal essays, and one of which is done entirely in class. English 1060 classes at OR use a workshop format. Students get the best results when they develop personal responsibility for meeting deadlines and staying on task during class time. Students work collaboratively to complete different activities throughout the class period, and are also asked to work independently during class and outside of class. Students may in any given week receive more than six hours of work to be done outside of class; please budget time for this. As the semester progresses, there is less and less time when I am leading the entire class through material at the same time, with an increasing number of individual and/or group tasks to complete at each session.

Classroom Behavior: Maturity & Civility: Most students are paying for this course with someone’s hard-earned money, so I must prevent any disruptions of the learning process. Please be conscious of behavior in class. We should all expect civil behavior and conduct ourselves with respect for teacher, tutor, and student, despite frustrations that occur in daily life and group settings. Disruptive behavior of any kind, including excessive talking or noise, constantly being off task, and other forms of non-verbal disruptive behavior, or the use of the electronic devices, internet or cell phone for non-classroom activities, interferes with many people’s concentration, so don’t do any of these things in this classroom during class time. Violators will be asked politely once not to engage in such behavior; and if asked more than twice to cease such behavior, will be required to leave class. Once asked to leave students have to meet with the Dean of Students before permitted to return, and the absences incurred are still counted like any other absences.

Cell phones, pagers, and ALL other electronic communication devices must be kept out of sight and turned off. No texting, IM-ing, checking messages, or any other usage during class. If you forget to turn off your phone, and it notifies you of a call or message, the civil thing to do is quickly silence your device and put it away. If a student repeatedly violates the policy he/she will be dismissed from class, resulting in an absence for that class AND a deduction of points for missed deadline. A second dismissal will result in a visit to the Dean’s Office. If a student has an extenuating circumstance, the civil thing to do is let your instructor know that you may need to excuse oneself from the room. An alternative is to silence the phone and get up quietly as one would to use the restroom or get a drink of water, to attend to an emergency. Students who are gone more than 15 minutes or who do not return promptly will receive an absence.

· Assignments are due at the beginning of class if they were homework, or at the end of class, if they were in-class assignments. There is a penalty for missing deadlines. Students are responsible for all assignments being turned in on time even if they are absent at the time they are due.

· Only in extenuating circumstances that one can document (death in family, or serious illness) will I accept late work without grade penalty. I reserve the right to refuse to grade and give credit for work more than two weeks late. This policy applies to in class as well as out of class assignments, and to peer editing. Students cannot receive full credit for peer editing if they are not ready to participate on the due date – Full participation means students have work to be reviewed and they fully participate in the review of other students’ work.

· Attendance and Participation are one in the same. Students must attend AND participate, which means arrive on time, return from break on time, stay until the end of class, and BE ON TASK during class; even if students don’t have all the assigned “homework” prepared by the start of class they need to be in class, or they compound penalties and deadline problems. An absence is defined as not attending at all, arriving more than 10 minutes late, or leaving early. Class conference time with the instructor or peer group work is NOT the time to ask for help making up missed assignments; only a student who has completed all his/her own work should devote time to helping absent students get caught up. Be sure to use office hours and e-mail when necessary.

· I deduct points for every hour (not just each day or whole class that students miss. Once a student has missed more than 12 hours, I reserve the right to assign a point penalty great enough that the student will be failing the class, and I cannot accept his/her portfolio for review. Inform those who make demands on your time of this! If students have missed 12 hours and THEN suffer a major problem (severe illness, death in the family, etc.), I’ll need documentation to consider making an exception to the above policy.

· Incomplete and CP grades are given at the instructor’s discretion. Incomplete grades are reserved for students who have completed 70% of the coursework with a passing grade, and due to emergency or illness, don’t complete their portfolio on time. CP grades are for students who are not passing due to problems with reading or writing tasks (not due to absence). In addition, all faculty can and many do assign an F grade to students who stop attending. It is the student’s responsibility to withdraw from a class to avoid an F or even a WF grade. If a student must withdraw but is passing, he/she can request that faculty assign a WP grade. The counseling service can help students understand the impact of these grades on GPA or financial aid status.

I use a point system – course grade is based on the percentage of points earned of the total points available. The total available varies from tern to term. There is not much if any opportunity to “make up” points by doing something extra, but there are always enough points to miss some and still get a good grade. For instance, if there are 200 points, and 90% is an A-, one can still miss 19 points. Points are only applied to a final grade upon receipt of a passing portfolio. If a student fails portfolio review, academic literacy instructors cannot assign a grade of D or higher. All assignments, even those not part of the mandatory portfolio, count toward a student’s course grade in this section .

77-79 = C+ 00-59=F [CP=continuing progress, for timely submission of a complete but failing portfolio]

Please note that my policies about participation, missed, and late work can have a cumulative effect on a student’s course grade! For example, a student who does not have a complete peer draft and thus does fully participate in peer group on the scheduled due date loses points that cannot be made up – which will diminish that student’s point total/final grade.