Introduction
This is a course in the craft of writing, specifically the craft of writing in the humanities.  I choose the word craft carefully.  Writing can be art, and the greatest written works are among humanity’s greatest achievements.  Whence the genius for such works derives is an eternal mystery, and one can no more teach someone to be a great novelist, dramatist, or poet than one can teach someone to be the next Joshua Bell or Kevin Durant.  But the writing most of us need to perform in order to achieve success in our academic and professional careers, communicate with our colleagues, friends, and the public, and clarify and record our own thinking fortunately does not fall into that mysterious and lofty category.  It is more like carpentry:  one learns to build a table that will stand solidly on its own, support whatever weight it is supposed to bear, and be aesthetically pleasing.  While we may not all be able to produce a Chippendale, all of us can learn to make a serviceable and attractive table (maybe a step up from Ikea) if we are given the tools and are willing to apply ourselves.  Likewise, we can all learn to write prose that helps us achieve our professional goals.  That is fortunate, because few skills are as important to your overall success in your course-work and your life as your ability to take your thoughts and put them down on paper in such a way that they reach a reader’s mind more or less unaltered, and that your reader then finds them persuasive.  Do that poorly and you need to prepare yourself for a life of misunderstandings, frustration, and disappointment; do it well and some degree of success is nearly certain.  Ultimately, this course aims to provide you with skills that will help you convey your ideas effectively, both in future course-work and professionally in your chosen field.

The Students as Scholars Program and its Objectives
This section of English 302 is participating in GMU’s “Students as Scholars”(SAS) program. Across campus, students now have increased opportunities to work with faculty on original scholarship, research, and creative activities through their individual departments and the OSCAR office (http://oscar.gmu.edu).
Assignments in English 302 will help prepare you to be contributors to knowledge in your field, not just memorizers of facts. You will

• understand how knowledge is created and transmitted in a field/discipline
• understand key methods and conventions of scholarly research in your field/discipline
• articulate and refine your own question for scholarly inquiry
• situate your investigation in an ongoing context/conversation in your field
• and design a final project that adds new perspectives and/or data to the conversation

In order to achieve the goals of the SAS program, it has designated the following Student Learning Outcomes.  For primarily text-based research that prepares students to make original contributions, students will

• SLO-1, Discovery: Understand how they can engage in the practice of scholarship at GMU
• SLO-2, Discovery: Understand research methods used in a discipline
• SLO-3, Discovery: Understand how knowledge is transmitted within a discipline, across disciplines, and to the public
• SLO-4, Inquiry: Articulate and refine a question
• SLO-5, Inquiry: Follow ethical principles
• SLO-6, Inquiry: Situate the scholarly inquiry [and inquiry process] within a broader context
• SLO-7, Inquiry: Apply appropriate scholarly conventions during scholarly inquiry/reporting

Specific assignments in this course will be tied to various objectives from this list, but on the class calendar and on the specific assignment.

Texts and Materials
You must own the following:

Writing with Style: Conversations of the Art of Writing (third edition) by John Trimble
MS Word (either the PC or the Mac version) or Apple’s Pages
A writer’s handbook
A flash-drive or portable hard-drive on which you keep your document files
A good dictionary

Trimble’s book is short, engaging, and filled with clear and helpful advice.  As the subtitle suggests, his style is relaxed and conversational.  Many students have told me it is the only book on writing they have ever enjoyed and kept using long after the class is over.  I strongly suggest you mark it up thoroughly as you read it to make it specifically useful for you. 

A financial note: I know the bookstore is pushing the renting of textbooks, and that even with books you buy, it tells you that you will get back money if you do not write in your books.  But think of it this way: you are spending tens of thousands of dollars to attend college and acquire an education. The best way to make use of books you are studying is to gloss them heavily.  Indeed, you cannot get the full benefit from them if you do not do so. Does it make sense to get less than the full value of your education so that you can someday get back enough money for two or three lattes or one mediocre pizza?  Maybe the situation is different with a biology textbook that costs $275, but a paperback? And if that does not convince you, consider this: do you think Barnes & Noble, which owns our bookstore, is really trying to do you a favor with those offers?  Fact is, the company makes more money on used textbooks than new ones, and even more money on rented textbooks. Write in your books!

I use MS Word’s Comment function to mark your major writing assignments.  For that reason, you must have some version of MS Word — not Works, not an open-source program that mimics Word, though Apple’s Pages is also acceptable.  Patriot Computers (in the Johnson Center) sells MS Word and MS Office to students at a large discount.  Meanwhile, anyone who does not keep copies of his or her work on a flash-drive or portable hard-drive these days is asking for trouble. (Note: keeping them “in the cloud” or online sounds great until you try to access them and for some reason wireless or internet access is slow or non-existent.) We will sometimes be working in a computer classroom, and you will need to access and save files, so you must bring your flash-drive or portable hard-drive with you to every class.

You must own a good writer’s handbook.  When you make grammatical and stylistic errors, I will point them out and expect you to look them up in a handbook.  Some of the better handbooks are Muriel Harris’s Prentice-Hall Reference Guide to Grammar and Usage, Diane Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference and Rules for Writers, and Andrea Lunsford’s The Everyday Writer.  Many others are available.  I do not care which handbook you own, as long as it is relatively recent.  If you do not own any of them, buy one.  The primary difference between them is the way they are organized; the material is mostly the same.  Some of you may own the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White, which is wonderfully short and filled with good advice (and some that is idiosyncratic and even a little weird), but it does not deal with grammar in any comprehensive way, so you should consider it supplemental to these others

For this course you also must own a good dictionary.  I know you are all used to using the dictionaries built into your computer or available on the web; I often use OneLook.com, which accesses several dictionaries at once.  However, dictionaries built into computers tend to be relatively feeble, and web-based dictionaries are inconvenient when reading.   An actual text dictionary is more useful.  Be careful, though, because anybody can call a dictionary “Webster’s”; the name is now in the public domain and means nothing.  The best reasonably-priced dictionaries available are the Merriam-Webster Tenth Edition, The American-Heritage Dictionary, and The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is even better, though more pricey ($175).  My favorite inexpensive dictionary is the Little Oxford English Dictionary, which is hardcover but only about six inches by four inches, quite portable, and about $10 on Amazon (it is on my Amazon book-list).  Of course, the complete Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest dictionary in the world, though unwieldy in its two-volume “Compact” edition ($400) and prohibitively expensive ($1300-$8000, depending on the binding) in its full-sized version.  You may access the complete OED through the Mason library databases, though again web-based dictionaries are much less convenient than a book.

Course Requirements
Exercises and Quizzes
Exercises will be short assignments designed to prepare you for the major essays.  You will complete them and bring them — sometimes multiple copies of them — to class, where we will discuss them and work with them in groups.  If you do not attend class that day with the exercise in hand, you cannot get credit for an exercise.  Note that sometimes I collect exercises, and other times we work with them in class, so I simply check to make sure you have brought your completed work with you.  I do not accept exercises late or by e-mail for credit. Sometimes I may also give quizzes on material you we have read or discussed in class.  I do not announce them in advance, and they cannot be made up due to absence.

Peer Responses
For every major writing assignment, you will receive the works of some of your peers.  Using guidelines I provide, you will offer your help and advice on each essay, submitting your response both to your peers and to me.  I will grade these based primarily on the apparent effort and attention given and their organization, secondarily on the quality of advice you offer.

Major Writing Assignments and Reflective Commentaries
You will produce three major writing assignments of different types during the semester.  Each will be judged on the basis of how well it fulfills the assignment, including issues of purpose, structure, tone, audience, persuasiveness, style, grammar, and format.  Initially, you will submit each essay to a group of your peers for their feedback.  Note that this version of the assignment should not be a first draft.  Inevitably, you will improve your own work by revising it on your own, so it is a waste of everyone’s time to make us do what you could already have done.  The work you submit should represent the best you can do, and will be judged accordingly.

After receiving feedback from your peers, you will then revise the assignment and submit this revised version to me for my evaluation  I will evaluate it according to a rubric designed specifically for that assignment.  Each major assignment must be accompanied by a reflective commentary that describes your experience and details the changes you made and the reasons for them during the revision process.  You may also be required (or choose) to submit a second revision of our first major essay in order to address problems I have noted. If you do, the revised grade will be averaged with the initial one. Note, though, that you may not submit a revision of that essay if you did not submit it initially.

Please submit your assignments as .doc or .docx files.  Also, I insist you always keep back-up files of your work on a flash-drive or portable hard-drive; in 2013, claiming a computer glitch destroyed your essay is like claiming your dog ate your homework.

Class Participation
I believe that learning requires an active engagement on the part of both the students and the teacher.  You cannot simply sit back and expect to receive knowledge the way a child receives a tetanus shot.  At the very least, you must participate by paying close attention to everything that goes on in class.  Ideally, you should also ask questions and risk exposing your ideas to your classmates.  A writing class, especially, is a cooperative venture — as much workshop as class — and cannot be conducted solely via lecture.  Also, that many of the class’s activities depend on your participation, and failing to contribute fully, whether through absence or lateness, for example, will affect your scores on these assignments.  Note this comment from the student handbook:  “Students who fail to participate (by virtue of extensive absences) in courses in which participation is a factor in evaluation may have their grades lowered.”

The Metacognitive Essay
At the end of the semester, SAS requires you to submit a metacognitive essay, in which you reflect on your experience in the course and evaluate your own progress as a writer.

Attendance
A healthy percentage of success in life depends simply on showing up where and when you are expected.  If you are the kind of student who has trouble showing up, you will struggle in any composition class.  On the other hand, students who never miss a class tend to do well in my courses.

Note that absences or lateness on the days your peer group meets are particularly disastrous. Even being late for a peer response session will result in a penalty to your peer response grade.

Although absences are always bad, if you know ahead of time that you will be absent, you should tell me. Regardless, you are absolutely responsible for finding out what happened in class.

Policy on Late Work
Much of this course is conducted as a workshop, which means you submit your work to your peers as well as to me.  Your peers depend on you.  For that reason, the penalties for lateness are severe.  Assignments are due when specified.  I do not accept exercises or peer responses late.  Revisions receive a 10% penalty to the points available per day or part of a day of lateness, meaning that a revision that you send to me one day and one hour late will receive a 20% penalty to the available points.  Note that it is your responsibility to examine your message after you send it to be certain you successfully attached the document. Consistent lateness will virtually guarantee failure of the course.

Evaluation
The points available in this course are as follows:

Be on time.  Arriving late is disruptive.  Running a class is like driving a stick-shift:  it takes time to shift up to cruising speed. When you walk in after the agreed upon starting time, you interrupt the class and make it start out again in first gear.  It is rude.  However, arriving late is still better than missing the class.  If you do arrive late, come in as quietly as possible and take your seat.  If the class is engaged in a group activity, come to me (of course you should wait a moment if I am actively talking with students) and ask me to place you in a group.

The outside world should not intrude on our class.  Please disable any cellular telephones, text messaging devices, pagers, and devices with alarms, or leave them behind.  Reading and sending text messages, especially, is extremely disrespectful to the class.  Any student who texts during class will receive no credit for being in class that day.

You may bring a laptop computer or tablet to class, and we may occasionally meet in a computer classroom.  Computers can be extremely effective writing tools, especially if you do not treat them as if they are just typewriters hooked up to TVs.  However, they can also prove tremendously distracting.  Reading e-mail unrelated to the class or cruising the web is disrespectful and will be result in you being considered absent that day, which also means that you will not receive credit for any exercises due.

Wait until the class actually ends to pack up.  Few things are more annoying than having to raise my voice at the end of class because people are sliding their books off the desks and unzipping and zipping their backpacks.

While I know that you have other obligations, our class is not the time to fulfill them.  Doing work unrelated to the course during class is not allowed.

Attendance implies body and mind and so requires consciousness.  Putting your head down on the desk or closing your eyes because you are tired is unacceptable at any level above nursery school.

At any moment, one of three things will be happening in the class:  either I will be talking, a student will be talking (asking or answering a question, participating in a class or smaller group discussion), or everyone will be concentrating silently on the task at hand.  In every case, courtesy demands that you pay attention, and not engage in your own private conversations.  But please feel free to ask questions and express your ideas — that kind of talking demonstrates your involvement and is generally a good thing.

The class is only 75 minutes long.  You should seldom, if ever, need to leave the classroom otherwise.  If the need arises, and you can’t wait, by all means go in peace.  I trust you will return quickly, and not abuse my patience and generally kind disposition.

Honesty
George Mason University’s Honor Code requires all members of this community to maintain the highest standards of academic honesty and integrity. Cheating, plagiarism, lying, and stealing are all expressly prohibited.  In fact, the list of offences is redundant:  cheating is fraud; plagiarism is theft.  These are the two clear felonies of the academic community. Note: the GMU Honor Code has been revised for this semester.  If you have not examined it recently, please do so.

Plagiarism means using judgments, opinions, research, or phrasing from another source without giving that source credit. Common knowledge does not fall into this category, but knowledge researched, compiled, or organized by a particular person does.  Writers give credit through the use of accepted documentation styles, such as parenthetical citation; a simple listing of books, articles, and websites is not sufficient.  This class will include direct instruction in strategies for handling sources as part of our curriculum.  However, students in composition classes must also take responsibility for understanding and practicing the basic principles of good scholarship. To avoid plagiarism, meet the expectations of a U.S. academic audience, give their readers a chance to investigate the issue further, and make credible arguments, writers must

1) put quotation marks around, and give an in-text citation for, any sentences or distinctive phrases (even very short, 2- or 3-word phrases, if they are distinctive) that writers copy directly from any outside source: a book, a textbook, an article, a website, a newspaper, a movie, a song, an interview, an encyclopedia, a CD, a baseball card — whatever

2) completely re-write (not just change a few words) any information they find in a separate source and wish to summarize or paraphrase for their readers, and also give an in-text citation for that paraphrased information

3) give an in-text citation for any facts, statistics, or opinions which the writers learned from outside sources (or which they just happen to know) and which are not considered “common knowledge” for the target audience (this may require new research to locate a credible outside source to cite)

4) give a new in-text citation for each element of information — meaning not rely on a single citation at the end of a paragraph, because that is not usually sufficient to inform a reader clearly of how much of the paragraph comes from an outside source

5) include a Works Cited or List of References list at the end of their essay, providing full bibliographic information for every source cited in their essays.

While different disciplines employ different citation styles, and different instructors may emphasize different levels of citation for different assignments, writers should always begin with these conservative practices unless they are expressly told otherwise. Writers who follow these steps carefully will almost certainly avoid plagiarism. If writers ever have questions about a citation practice, they should ask their instructor.

All of that said, let me be clear.  Any act of academic dishonesty will result in my reporting you to the honor committee and recommending failure of the course (not merely the assignment).  In every case in which I have done this, the honor committee has accepted my recommendation, and in several cases has imposed additional penalties.  This may sound harsh, but you will find similar guidelines at every college in the country.  It does not get any more serious than this.  I will use available plagiarism-finding tools to check your essays as I see fit.

The University Writing Center
The university’s Writing Center, located in Robinson A114, is one of the best resources you will find on campus. It has an outstanding website that offers a wealth of online resources for student writers. You can schedule a forty-five minute appointment with a trained tutor to help with any phase of the writing process. The Writing Center even offers some services online, but please plan ahead and allow yourself at least three days to receive a response.

Note Regarding Students with Disabilities
Students with documented disabilities should present me with a contact sheet from the Disability Resource Center as soon as possible so that together we may plan appropriate accommodations.  If you are a student with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see me and contact the Office of Disability Resources at 703-993-2474.  All academic accommodations must be arranged through that office.

My Responsibilities
In this syllabus, I spell out clearly what I expect of you.  What may you expect of me?  You have the right to expect that I am knowledgeable about the subject, that I will be prepared for class, that I will return your assignments to you reasonably promptly, that I will indicate clearly where you need to apply yourself in order to improve as both a reader and as a writer, and that I will give you positive feedback whenever possible.  It also means that you can count on my honest evaluation of your work.  If I say something positive, believe it.  If you perform poorly, I will certainly let you know.  However, I will not chase you:  if you are struggling, ask to meet with me.  More fundamentally, you can expect that I want you both to succeed and to enjoy the experience, and will do everything within my power to help.