Rhetoric 105 Course Description

Section: G1, 3-4:15 MW, 119 English
Instructor: Derek Van Ittersum
Email: idvan@uiuc.edu
Phone: H: 367-9411  O: 333-2976
Office:  288 English Building
Mailbox: 192 English Building
Office Hours:  2-3 pm Wednesday and 5-6 pm Thursday and by appointment

You can best reach me through email, as I will usually be checking it multiple times throughout the day.

Required Texts:

Writing Analytically (Rosenwasser and Stephen), 3rd edition.
Rules for Writers (Hacker), 4th edition.
Packet of readings, available from Notes and Quotes:
502 E John St, Champaign, 344-4433
Please bring all texts to class every day.

Course Description:

Rhetoric 105 is a course designed to familiarize you with academic writing—both its production and reception.  In order to achieve this, you will be writing frequently and we will be looking closely at your work as well as a selection of readings.  In addition to this close examination of various pieces of writing, we will also be using a rhetoric textbook that will give us a common vocabulary for examining written works.  This textbook should also give you some ideas and strategies to try out in your own writing.  We will not, however, be using the textbook as some sort of magic formula that will give us the secret recipe for creating A papers every time.  In reading the selections from the packet, or your own works, we will be testing, and possibly revising, the ideas and advice given in Writing Analytically.  In other words, the discussions in class and my spoken or written comments on your papers will not be aimed at showing you a “correct” way to write but at probing the issues under investigation, often by asking you to consider the implications of these issues for your own writing.  Throughout the class we will be considering what seems to make the approaches taken in given pieces of writing—both yours and the pieces we read—more or less useful or satisfying.

As we study the reading selections in conjunction with WA, expect that we will go over some issues on multiple occasions.  The question of how to address an audience, or the best way to present evidence will more than likely come up again and again.  Expect that you will need to pay close attention to these issues, to find the subtle differences as they return rather than simply restating what was mentioned before.  Each writing assignment you complete will need to reconsider these issues as well.

This course will stress (as will I) the importance of revision and drafting.  I think this is important for many reasons.  First, we will be dealing with difficult texts that may require more than one reading in order to grasp the complexity of the author’s argument.  Writing about these works and your understanding of the author’s arguments will help you develop more complex understandings of them.  Revising your own writing will help you make your analysis more involved.  We are not looking for “easy” answers as writers or readers in this course, and I believe that writing and re-writing are incredibly useful tools for developing more complicated, involved ideas.

Class Discussion and Group Work

To help you with this re-visioning process, you will work often in groups looking at each other’s work.  We will also look at anonymous papers as an entire class.  This is an invaluable opportunity for us to both learn from each other’s ideas and strategies, as well as for you to receive feedback on the effects of your work.  In these sessions it will be most useful for us to look at the examples of writing as things that we can learn from, rather than pieces of inadequate writing that we must somehow “fix,” but we will speak more about this in class. 

Class discussion and small group work will constitute a major portion of classroom activity.  Be prepared to contribute to the discussion every day, as I will sometimes call on you to join in.  Active participation need not be defined as speaking at length on the issue at hand; sometimes a well-timed question examining some of our unspoken assumptions can turn the discussion in a productive direction.  In addition to this, remember that just as I value revision in your writing, I also value revision within class or group discussion.  There are no “right” answers when it comes to writing, and everything is always up for contestation.  We should work as a group towards developing ideas and then testing those ideas for weaknesses and strengths, and then revising them to start the process over again.  I will value those comments that work to synthesize previous discussion and attempt to contextualize the speaker’s ideas with those that have been presented before.

Class discussions are intended to engage both the ideas present in the readings and student papers and the strategies used in these texts.  This means that I can’t guarantee the quality or outcome of discussions: those will depend on what each of us can contribute, how well we can make the discussions “work” as collective attempts to interpret, inquire, and learn about particular writings and approaches to writing.  Your responsibility—both to yourself and others in the class—will be to participate as fully as you can in those attempts.  While my responsibility lies in focusing the discussion on particular issues related to the course as raised by the readings or your response to them, you shouldn’t expect me to tell you what to conclude from a particular discussion.  My role will be not to give you answers (if I seem to, you should question them) but to help you to ask better questions and to arrive at better answers for yourself.

You should expect me to treat all ideas fairly and to work to address your concerns as writers as best I can.  You should also expect me to provide what may seem like a lot of comments on your papers.  I will attach comments to your paper that explain what I see you doing in the paper, the moves you make and the particular strategies you employ.  The comments will often direct your attention towards comments I make directly on the margins of your paper.  You should read these comments in conjunction with each other, and if you come to see me about a paper I will expect that you have read and attempted to make sense of these comments in relation to your own ideas about your work.

If you find yourself needing help outside of class with anything (the readings, or a writing assignment), please come to see me during my office hours or make an appointment.  The University also sponsors a Writer’s Workshop, which I would highly encourage you to make use of during the semester.  You can make an appointment by calling 333-8796.  Remember—if you’re going to the workshop for help with a specific assignment, take the assignment sheet with you!

Grading:

All papers will be given a letter grade.  Rhetoric department policy states that you must hand in all papers in order to pass this class.  I have explained what good classroom discussion consists of in the previous section, but if it is unclear to you how your participation will be evaluated, please ask.  Your rough drafts and homework will be marked with a “check” system.  A check plus indicates that you have done particularly insightful or well thought out work, a check indicates that you have successfully completed the assignment, and a check minus indicates that I don’t believe you have exhibited the necessary effort to complete the assignment.  I will not accept late homework and late papers will be assessed a penalty of 1/3 grade for each calendar date past the original due date the paper is turned in.  Putting late papers in my mailbox does not count as turning them in unless you have made arrangements with me.  If you know that you will have difficulty completing an assignment or paper on time, or if a crisis in your life arises and you are not able to do the assignment in the required time, please contact me as soon as you can.

Attendance:

As you can see, participation is an important part and percentage of your overall grade.  I value your contributions to the discussion, especially on peer review or class workshop days.  If you will need to be absent on those or any other days, please let me know or talk to the Dean’s office.  Arriving to class late will also negatively affect your participation, because class is disrupted by latecomers.  If you think you will be late on a consistent basis for whatever reason, please see me as soon as possible.  I will warn you if your tardiness is becoming excessive, and further late arrivals will hurt your participation grade.  I will also follow the University’s attendance policy, where more than two weeks of absence lowers your grade dramatically.

Plagiarism:

Representing others’ work as your own is a serious offense in academic writing.  To prevent this, we will be discussing how to properly document outside sources in your work.  However, any student caught plagiarizing will be subject to University procedure.