Syllabus Justification: Rhetoric and Composition I; English 103, Fall 2017

Instructor: Amy Bayliss

Course Description and Objectives

The goals of this course are in alignment with those set by Northern Illinois University’s English
department’s first year composition program. The course description and objectives have been
taken from the First Year Composition program materials.

Required Texts

This course is participating in the first-year composition book package program that is aimed at
providing the best resources for students at a lower cost. The four books in the package were
carefully chosen by a committee made up of English department faculty and staff. ​Make Your
Home Among Strangers ​is a novel that will be used as the subject of analysis in the first six
weeks of the course. This novel will also be used by the first-year experience course as NIU’s
2017-18 Common Read allowing for a bridge between those courses. This will help students
practice thinking across courses as well as within them.

Easy Writer ​is a fairly comprehensive and compact handbook that provides student with a variety
of information, strategies, and short articles on writing topics as well as samples and guides. ​An
Insider’s Guide to Academic Writing e​ xpands more deeply on some of the topics covered in ​Easy
​ tudents have selected readings in both of these texts throughout the semester.
Writer. S

Team Writing ​will not be used in this course but comes as part of the First Year Composition
book package.

Assignments and Assignment Sequence

There are six graded assignments on this syllabus: a short narrative that serves as a writing
sample, four 1,250 – 1,750 word essays, and a 1,500 word reflection paper that accompanies an
e-portfolio of work. This assignment sequence will allow for revisions of the assignments –
which is a central skill of focus for the course. A previous version of this syllabus had a seventh
assignment (a reimagining of the narrative) which has been cut from this syllabus. This cut has
allowed more time for revisions of the analysis, persuasive, and reflection essays. Particular
stages of the essays focus on thesis and argument refinement.

Composition 1

The first composition is due at the end of the first week of the semester. This is a short
(750 – 1,000 words) narrative that serves foremost as a low-stakes assignment to kick off
the semester as well as a writing sample. This will allow me to do a preliminary
 investigation into the student’s writing and assess for unique needs. For example, I will
attempt to engage any ESL students in a dialogue about their needs and introduce them
to the services of the ESL center. This assignment is also intended to get students
oriented to the classroom procedures and the electronic teaching environment.

The topic for the first prompt focuses on identity – in keeping with the focus of the
University’s Common Read for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Compositions 2-4

Composition 2 is a rhetorical analysis paper that asks for attention to detail with regard to
thesis statements, argument structure, and global organization in the writing process.
Using the Common Read, ​Make Your Home Among Strangers​, students must analyze the
text for rhetorical devices, make a claim about the text that arises from those rhetorical
devices and support that claim with evidence.

Composition 3 is a visual analysis paper that will continue the course’s focus on thesis
development, argument structure, and global organization as well as expanding to include
a focus on paragraphing. Keeping with a course oriented towards questions of identity,
students will analyze visual texts for representations of identity by focusing on elements
of visual rhetoric.

Composition 4 is a persuasive essay in which students must take and defend a position
from a set of sources provided to them. This essay also continues to build on thesis,
argument, and paragraph structure skills, and will add sentence level revision. This paper
will ask students to consider the conventions for “playing well with others” as well as
sentence level attention to rhetorical strategy.

For compositions 2 and 3, students will develop their essays by handing in three versions of the
paper: a thesis statement and brief outline or proposal, a first draft, and a final draft. Composition
4 and 5 have a draft and a final draft submission. After the 1​st ​and sometimes 2​nd ​submission,
students will receive feedback on their writing in the form of one on one conferences with the
professor and guided peer review sessions. This process is intended to emphasize the iterative
nature of writing and the importance of communally built knowledge.

Composition 5

Composition 5 is a longitudinal reflection which asks students to analyze and examine their
progress as writers. As the closing assignment for the semester, students will be expected to
demonstrate a familiarity with the skills they have been practicing over the course of the
semester.
Grading: ​This course uses NIU’s first-year composition’s standard grading system.

Rubrics: ​The course will use rubrics as a way of keeping writing goals consistent and assisting
students with evaluating their progress as writers. Evaluative rubrics will not be used for grading
but will be provided (along with grades and summative comments) as feedback on student work.
Those rubrics will be incorporated into the longitudinal journals of writing advice students create
over the course of the semester.

Attendance and Participation: ​As a community of writers, attendance and participation is of

vital importance for all students’ success in the course. As such, 20% of students’ course grade
will come from attendance, in-class work, and participation. Students will rewrite the main
points of the course readings as instructions to themselves for writing. As the semester
progresses, students will be encouraged to characterize those instructions in terms of their current
writing projects. These instructions will be recorded in an online journal through the One-drive
function of their student Office 365. The journals will be revised into a brief personalized
handbook as part of the e-portfolio assignment. This personalized handbook will account for half
of their participation points for the semester.

Computer-mediated composition ​The course meets weekly in a computer lab to allow for
explicit instruction, activities, and workshop time for basic computer literacy skills as they relate
to academic life and the writing process. This also meets the recommendations set out by
Northern Illinois University’s English department for English 103. As technologies like
word-processing, learning management systems, and social media have changed the context
within which writing is occurring, the writing classroom must adapt to those changing contexts
by incorporating technical literacy skills.

‘Paperless’ Classroom ​This course is designed as a paperless one; all major assignments will be
turned in via our LMS (Blackboard) and all course materials (except for textbooks) will be
distributed on the LMS as well. I have chosen a paperless classroom model in order to reduce
student costs and reduce the environmental impact of my course. I believe that this is a useful
step in establishing the academic community’s largely unanimous position on global climate
change to my students.

Conferences ​In order to provide individualized feedback on student writing, well as a supportive
atmosphere for new students, one on one conferences will be held three times over the course of
the semester. A corner-stone of my teaching philosophy, the student writing conference provides
a unique opportunity for student-teacher collaboration on writing projects.