McMahon Syllabus English 1A Spring 2016
Office H121P
Office Hours: Mon and Wed: 2:30-3:45; Tuesday and Thursday: 12:30-1 and 3:30-4:15
Email: jmcmahon@elcamino.edu
Course Catalog Description:
This course is designed to strengthen the students’ ability to read with understanding and discernment, to discuss assigned readings intelligently, and to write clearly. Emphasis will be on writing essays in which each paragraph relates to a controlling idea, has an introduction and a conclusion, and contains primary and secondary support. College-level reading material will be assigned to provide the stimulus for class discussion and writing assignments, including a required research paper.
Course Objectives:
- Recognize and revise sentence-level grammar and usage errors.
- Read and apply critical-thinking skills to numerous published articles and to college-level, book-length works for the purpose of writing and discussion.
- Apply appropriate strategies in the writing process including prewriting, composing, revising, and editing techniques.
- Compose multi-paragraph, thesis-driven essays with logical and appropriate supporting ideas, and with unity and coherence.
- Demonstrate ability to locate and utilize a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites.
- Utilize MLA guidelines to format essays, cite sources in the texts of essays, and compile Works Cited lists.
Student Learning Outcomes:
Upon completion of this course, students will:
1. Complete a research-based essay that has been written out of class and undergone revision. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to thoughtfully support a single thesis using analysis and synthesis.
2. Integrate multiple sources, including a book-length work and a variety of academic databases, peer-reviewed journals, and scholarly websites. Citations must be in MLA format and include a Works Cited page.
3. Demonstrate logical paragraph composition and sentence structure. The essay should have correct grammar, spelling, and word use.
Students with Disabilities:
It is the policy of the El Camino Community College District to encourage full inclusion of people with disabilities in all programs and services. Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class should contact the campus Special Resource Center (310) 660-3295, as soon as possible. This will ensure that students are able to fully participate.
Academic Honesty and Plagiarism:
El Camino College places a high value on the integrity of its student scholars. When an instructor determines that there is evidence of dishonesty in any academic work (including, but not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or theft of exam materials), disciplinary action appropriate to the misconduct as defined in BP 5500 may be taken. A failing grade on an assignment in which academic dishonesty has occurred and suspension from class are among the disciplinary actions for academic dishonesty (AP 5520). Students with any questions about the Academic Honesty or discipline policies are encouraged to speak with their instructor in advance.
Attendance Policy: Students are expected to attend their classes regularly. Students who miss the first class meeting or who are not in regular attendance during the add period for the class may be dropped by the instructor. Students whose absences from a class exceed 10% of the scheduled class meeting times may be dropped by the instructor. However, students are responsible for dropping a class within the deadlines published in the class schedule. Students who stop attending but do not drop may receive a failing grade.
Student Resources:
- Reading Success Center (East Library Basement E-36)
Software and tutors are available for vocabulary development & reading comprehension. - Library Media Technology Center - LMTC (East Library Basement)
Computers are available for free use. Bring your student ID # & flash drive. There’s a charge for printing. - Writing Center (H122)
Computers are available for free use. Free tutoring is available for writing assignments, grammar, and vocabulary. Bring your student ID & flash drive to save work. Printing is NOT available. - Learning Resource Center - LRC (West Wing of the Library, 2nd floor)
The LRC Tutorial Program offers free drop-in tutoring. For the tutoring schedule, go to www.elcamino.edu/library/lrc/tutoring .The LRC also offers individualized computer adaptive programs to help build your reading comprehension skills. - Student Health Center (Next to the Pool)
The Health Center offers free medical and psychological services as well as free workshops on topics like “test anxiety.” Low cost medical testing is also available. - Special Resource Center – SRC (Southwest Wing of Student Services Building)
The SRC provides free disability services, including interpreters, testing accommodations, counseling, and adaptive computer technology.
Books You Need to Buy for This Class
Book One: Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, by Paul Fussell
Book Two: Acting Out Culture, 3rd edition, edited by James S. Miller
Book Three: Rules for Writers, 8th edition by Diana Hacker
Other Materials You Need: 3 large size blue books for in-class exams
Total Words Written in Semester: 8,000
Three In-Class Essays, 500 words, 75 points each, 225 points total
Essay 1 from Acting Out Culture is 1,000 words
Essay 2 from Acting Out Culture is 1,000 words (we’ll discuss options during lectures)
Essay 3 from Acting Out Culture is 1,000 words (we’ll discuss options during lectures)
Essay 4 Class: A Guide Through the American Status System is 1,000 words
Peer Edit Rough Draft for Final is the essay's first 1,000 words (of 1,500) Failure to bring the rough draft to peer edit class day results in 25-point deduction from essay.
Essay 5: Final Argumentative, 1,500-Word Research Paper Based on Chapter 4 “How We Learn” from Acting Out Culture (approx. 5 pages) 150 points
Attendance
Gold Standard: You miss one class or less; you are tardy once or less, and you show up to class prepared to discuss the readings because you are keeping up with the readings. 50 points.
Silver Standard: You miss two classes; you are tardy once or less, and you show up to class and show evidence of keeping up with the readings. 40 points.
Bronze Standard: You miss three classes; you are tardy once or less, and you show up to class and show evidence of keeping up with the readings. 30 points.
Students who miss more than 3 classes and/or consistently show up to class without doing the reading get ZERO attendance points.
Grand Point Total: 825
Late papers reduced a full grade. No late papers accepted a week past due date.
You Must Use turnitin to submit essay and bring hard copy on due date
Each essay must be submitted to www.turnitin.com where it will be checked for illegal copying/plagiarism. I cannot give credit for an essay that is not submitted to this site by the deadline.
The process is very simple; if you need help, detailed instructions are available at http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/student-quickstart-guide
You will need two pieces of information to use the site:
Class ID and Enrollment Password, which I will give you first week of class
Classroom Decorum: No smart phones can be used in class. If you’re on your smart phone and I catch you, you get a warning the first time. Second time, you must leave the class and lose 25 points. Third time, you must leave the class and lose 50 points. The above also applies to talking and doing homework from other classes.
Essays 1-3 will be based on options discussed in class.
Essay 4 based on Class by Paul Fussell
In a 4-page typed essay, support or refute the argument that your matriculation through college, and the major you have chosen (or not), is inextricably entwined with the class status anxieties analyzed in Paul Fussell’s Class. In other words, argue for or against the idea that fear of falling short of America’s status system—a code system that is much more complicated than income level alone—is a significant driving force in your college studies. What evidence is there, or not, that you are beholden to class status codes? What evidence is there, or not, that you have rejected America’s class status script and have carved your own path, so that you love learning for its own sake? Are you an aspiring bourgeois consumer? Are you an “X person”? Explain. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
Alternative Option:
In a 4-page essay, defend, refute, or complicate Fussell’s assertion that class is not as mobile as the American Dream purports it to be; rather, social class is more fixed like a caste system. Successful essays will show a clear and accurate reading comprehension of Paul Fussell's Class by integrating the book's major principles into your essay. You must have a Works Cited page referring to Class, and two other sources.
Essay 5, Your Final Research Paper: Chapter 4 “How We Learn” from Acting Out Culture (Choose One Below)
First Option
In a 5-page essay, not including Works Cited page, support, refute, or complicate the argument that the assigned selections from Chapter 4 evidence that American education is more about protecting private business interests, maintaining class bias, and asserting mass control than it is about promoting real empowerment such as critical thinking, independence, and freedom.
Second Option
In a 5-page essay, not including Works Cited page, support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s argument from “Degrading to De-grading” that the American grading system is a travesty of education that kills learning, compromises teaching, and entails other kinds of abuses.
Your guidelines for your Final Research Paper are as follows:
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research.
You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Reading and Writing Schedule
1-18 Holiday
1-20 Introduction, syllabus, turnitin.com, Essay 1 Writing Options (START NOW), importance of critical thinking
1-25 Acting Out Culture selections from 1-25 to 3-21: “Markets and Morals 40-49” and “Our Baby, Her Womb”; writing your thesis, fragments
1-27 In-Class Essay of 500 words in bluebook for 75 points.
2-1 “How the Poor Are Made to Pay for Their Poverty” 380-385 and “Why I Make Terrible Decisions” online essay by Linda Tirado; paragraphs and PEEL method, MLA in-text citations, comma splices
2-3 Typed Essay 1 Due. “People Like Us” 62-67; types of thesis; pronoun errors
2-8 “The Great White Way” 68-70; “Flipside of Internet Fame” 90-92; Top 20 Writing Errors
2-10 “Unspeakable Conversations” 96-112; Methods of Introductions and Conclusions
2-15 Holiday
2-17 “Green Guilt” 25-30; “Understanding Black Patriotism” 52-55; importance of brainstorming, dangling modifiers
2-22 “How Companies Learn Your Secrets” 134-149; signal phrases, PEEL paragraphs, clauses and phrases
2-24 Typed Essay 2 due; “Prudence Or Cruelty?” 172-175; counterarguments, paragraph transitions, parallelism
2-29 “Wages of Sin” and “Eat Cake, Subtract Self-Esteem” 181-202; essential and nonessential clauses
3-2 “Is Anorexia a Cultural Disease” online essay by Carrie Arnold; “The Repugnant Myth of the Poor’s Unhealthy Eating Habits” online essay by Kali Holloway; “Obesity-Hunger Paradox” 219-222; subordination and coordination
3-7 “The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” 444-448; “The Flight from Conversation” online essay by Sherry Turkle; mixed sentence structure, appositives
3-9 “The Empathy Deficit”; “Sherry Turkle’s ‘Reclaiming Conversation’” online book review by Jonathan Franzen; 464-469; possessive case
3-21 “The Touch-Screen Generation” 484-499; comma rules
3-23 Typed Essay 3 due; Paul Fussell’s Class 15-23; review grammar errors
3-28 Paul Fussell’s Class 24-75; who and whom
3-30 Paul Fussell’s Class 76-127; subject-verb agreement
4-4 Paul Fussell’s Class 128-188; passive and active verbs
4-6 In-Class Essay 2 for 75 points
4-11 Typed Essay 4 due; Acting Out Culture “From Degrading to De-Grading” 238-249; argumentative thesis and the dialectical method; beginning your research
4-13 Acting Out Culture “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong” 252-270; writing a draft, invention, prewriting, research, planning, and composing; finding database sources
4-18 Acting Out Culture “Against School” 271-279”; evaluating sources; constructing arguments and effective thesis statements
4-20 Acting Out Culture; “Learning in the Shadow of Race and Class” 287-295; annotating, summarizing, and paraphrasing sources; framing the debate in your introduction
4-25 Acting Out Culture; “Blue-Collar Brilliance” 280-286; integrating sources into your research paper; using signal phrases
4-27 Acting Out Culture “Preparing Minds for Markets” 301-314; documenting sources in MLA format; revising
5-2 Acting Out Culture Chapter 6 Review; research paper checklist; Works Cited format; revise thesis statements in class
5-4 In-class writing exam #3 based on Acting Out Culture, Chapter 6
5-9 Peer Edit: Your first 1,000 words of Final Essay Due; evaluating database sources
5-11 Final 1,500-word essay due
Important Dates for next two weeks in Spring 2016
January 27: In-class quiz on readings on "Markets and Morals" (40) or "Our Baby, Her Womb" (418). Bring a large blue-book to class.
February 3: 4-page typed essay with MLA Works Cited page and no fewer than 3 sources is due. You must submit a hard copy to class on that day and submit to turnitin.com with the following:
Class ID: 11343332
Password: mountebank
In a 4-page typed, double-spaced essay with 3 sources in your MLA Works Cited page, develop a thesis that explains how "Market Triumphalism," discussed in Michael Sandel's "Markets and Morals," helps explain the moral bankruptcy in Arlie Russell Hochschild's "Our Baby, Her Womb."
Half of English 1A Students Drop. Why?
- Students come to class with severe grammar deficits as I did when I was a college freshman.
- Students don't keep up with the work and in effect "ride" the class.
- Students get distracted by personal drama.
- Students are in the habit of procrastination, which compromises their work quality.
- Students are in the trap of learned helplessness, which convinces them they can't perform to their true abilities.
- Students work too many hours and get burned out.
- Students get sick and fall behind.
- Students panic, and their anxiety sabotages their ability to think clearly.
- Students don't learn the research writing process, piece by piece, or brick by brick. Rather, they try to build a house in one day, go into a panic, and their house never gets built.
- Students are in the habit of making excuses for not getting their work done. They also have a complicated narrative to excuse their failure to make due dates and do the kind of work they need to do.
- The students are asleep and don't realize, in their slumber, how competitive and brutal the workforce is, and their school work reflects that lack of awareness.
Motivations for Going to College
You go to college for one or all of the following 3 reasons:
1. micro level: You go to college because you want to make money with your major.
From this micro-level point of view, college is a "necessary evil" to be undertaken because of fear of poverty, family pressure, or self-inflicted shame that compels one to go to college in order to acquire what one perceives as a desired job and social status.
2. mid-level macro: Your attitude toward college is not as hostile as the purely micro-level student. You realize that required classes out of your major, such as English 1A, help you improve your writing and research skills, which help you succeed in many of your college classes. In other words, writing, and math for that matter, are part of the foundation of your education.
As someone who believes in building a foundation for your education to help you with your major, you are a mid-level macro student.
You may be a business or economics major, for example, and realize that writing and communication skills make you more competitive in the fields of business and finance.
3. max-level macro: You don't merely want an education to increase your wealth, status and career prospects.
You go to college to help yourself undergo a radical transformation from a child, an obedient, mindless consumer, to a critically thinking adult.
You see English 1A as part of your quest to acquire literacy, which results in the transformation into a critical thinker.
In other words, English 1A develops critical thinking skills and becoming a critical thinker is an essential part of leaving the mindless child stage, that of the obedient consumer, to becoming an adult.
I would argue that it's in your interest to be a critical thinker, but many people, including very intelligent people, refuse to be critical thinkers because they prefer to live mindlessly, having judged, incorrectly in my view, that a mindless life is easier than a critically-minded one.
What Is a Critical Thinker and How Does English 1A Contribute to Becoming One?
9 Components of Critical Thinking
(First 7 components are modified from B.K. Scheffer and M.G. Rubenfeld, authors of Critical Thinking Tactics for Nurses)
One. Analyzing:
You break something into its parts.
Often the parts are the reasons behind something.
The reasons for ongoing inflating real estate prices in Southern California are the following:
shortage of real estate meets ever growing population
historically cheap interest rates
infusion of Chinese wealth as many Chinese look to prime American real estate as the best place they can invest their money
Not only do we use analysis for examining causes, we use analysis to break down something into its distinguishing characteristics.
In college writing classes, you use analysis--breaking things into their parts--for cause and effect and extended definition essays.
Critical Thinking Means Knowing Your Terms Through Extended Definition
Example of Extended Definition:
Mindless consumerism can be broken down into the following distinguishing characteristics:
The mindless consumer embraces “cool” fads and trends because lacking an identity of his own he wishes to glom onto a prefabricated identity provided by consumer culture.
His Apple computer makes him the hipster far superior to his neighbor who owns a PC and is therefore a lowly "peasant."
The mindless consumer believes acquiring material goods will result in popularity and belonging with the desirable clique or “tribe.”
The mindless consumer confuses brand-identity with self-identity.
The mindless consumer uses consumerism as a substitute for real emotional needs such as love, creativity, self-validation, belonging, and wisdom, to name a few.
Because consumer acquisitions are always a failed attempt to meet real emotional needs, the mindless consumer constantly suffers from being in a state of wanting more and more.
In the above example, we broke down the distinguishing characteristics of a mindless consumer.
Two. Applying Standards
You judge according to rules or criteria. You use this type of critical thinking in an argumentative and classification essay.
Examples of Applying Standards
You are a jiu-jitsu master and you must know when a student has elevated to a black belt. If you award a black belt to a student who has failed to meet the criteria and send that student to a black belt tournament, the student will be crushed in the competition. You could be responsible for that student's death.
In a similar example, you are a community college English instructor and you award an A to a freshman student who has failed to meet the criteria for passing the class. That student goes to USC and gets crushed in all his writing classes. The above examples show that we must apply a criteria to our judgments.
In a consumer example, you may be able to afford a Hummer, a vehicle that appeals to you, but it fails to meet the criteria for your needs: Good gas mileage, small enough to park in urban spaces, low service and maintenance costs, etc. A mindless consumer "just buys it" because "it's fun" whereas a critical consumer applies a criteria to his or her purchases.
Three. Discriminating
You recognize differences and similarities resulting in a ranking system.
Examples
You are writing a research paper about the American health care system and through your research you discover that the United States spends twice its GDP on health care as other developed nations; however, the United States is ranked LAST in health care quality. You further discover that in other developed countries no one dies from treatable disease; however, in the United States every year over 25,000 Americans die from treatable disease.
By examining the United States’ health care system in the context of other developed countries, you are in a better position to judge America’s health care system as an abysmal failure.
In your history class, you study Christopher Columbus “discovering” America and you learn that there are different levels of historical narratives.
There is the mythical, propagandistic narrative that paints Columbus as a hero who “discovered” America.
There is the real narrative that paints Columbus for what he really was, a barbaric sociopath who slaughtered, enslaved and tortured indigenous people as he pillaged their country.
In other words, in college you learn there are different ways of interpreting history according to one’s political and philosophical worldview and objective.
Four. Information Seeking
You learn to ask the right questions when presented with a problem.
Example
Why is the United States prison system growing in a time of decreasing crime?
Why has the incarceration rate quadrupled in the last 3 decades during a crime lull?
Then in response to these questions we see that the prison industry makes billions of dollars in annual revenue, has stock options, and employs over 2 million people. There is a business interest, that is to say money interest, in making prisons flourish.
Why do poor people of color get sentenced to prison 10 times greater than whites for the same crimes?
Because it is argued that the prison business system preys on the poor and people historically denied privilege and justice.
We don't start making these inferences until we begin with learning to ask important questions.
Five. Logical Reasoning
You draw inferences or conclusions from evidence.
You call someone that you are romantically attracted to and after 3 calls they still haven’t called you back. You infer that you are OUT and should stop calling unless you want to be perceived as a stalker. Why? Because no reciprocity means no relationship. You are making an intelligent inference.
Every time you go to a family event, you overeat and hate yourself afterward, not because the food was great but because you were bored. You make the following logical inference: You’re an emotional eater.
Every time you have a girlfriend, your college GPA goes down. After five girlfriends and observing a correlation with a sinking GPA and being in a relationship, you conclude that you might be better served waiting until after graduating college to pursue romance. That would be a wise inference.
In a similar example as above, every time you hang out with your non-college-attending buddies, you score low on a college test; every time you don’t hang out with them, you get As on your tests: You infer that it’s time to break those ties. That would be a wise inference.
If you're the same guy who can't be in a relationship AND you can't hang out with your high school buddies, you may infer that your college years may require a certain level of solitude. That, too, my friend, would be a wise inference.
In a college argumentative essay, you have to write about the United States health care system. Through your research you discover that the United States spends twice its GDP on health care as other developed nations; however, the United States is ranked LAST in health care quality.
You infer or conclude that the American health care insurance companies are getting all the money while denying Americans necessary service. Your conclusion would be correct.
Six. Predicting
You take current information and project how this information will shape the future.
Example
It’s been claimed by some sociologists that America is ten years behind Japan in social trends. Today in Japan a large percentage of young people, addicted to virtual realities on the Internet, have lost interest in romance and relationships and are called “herbivores.” Ten years from now we may see a similar phenomenon in America. We already see evidence of this with fewer and fewer young Americans getting married and having children, largely for economic reasons.
Seven. Transferring Knowledge
You apply knowledge from one field to another.
Example
Cesar Milan, known as “The Dog Whisperer,” shows dog owners how to be “calm and assertive” in order to bring calm and discipline to their dogs. You can apply Milan’s methods to childrearing and become a “Child Whisperer.”
Eight. Metacognition (The Third Eye)
You develop the habit of distancing yourself from your heated emotional states and learn to observe and manage your irrational, compulsive, and self-destructive behavior.
Example
A husband and wife are in an escalating argument, and the husband’s Third Eye, his metacognition, rises to the ceiling and looks down at him and his wife, and the husband anticipates that angry words are about to be exchanged, words that can never be erased, words that will leave permanent damage to the relationship, words that actually might kill the relationship. In that moment, the husband clutches his stomach and screams, “Oh my God! My stomach!” He rushes to the bathroom, locks the door, and cools off for 2 hours. He just saved the relationship.
Nine. Putting Things into Historical Context
You have a deeper understanding of current events because you can see those events in the context of history.
Examples
Are Civil War reenactments (which tend to glorify Confederacy soldiers) innocent fun giving honor to American history or are they a disgraceful mythologizing of white supremacy?
If you study history, you will learn that the Confederacy was an ideology based on an evil religion called White Supremacy, which aggrandized one race in order to justify cruelty and exploitation of another race.
Seen in this historical context, Confederacy Army glorification achieved through war re-enactments is an abomination.
Critical Thinking Vs. Mindless Consumerism
I had a student who took a scholarship to UNLV and left her boyfriend because by staying local and marrying him she saw a life of mindless consumerism.
Mindless consumers have no critical thinking skills. They don't use analysis, logic, or metacognition. They are portrayed in the following John Verdant essay "The Ables Vs. The Binges."
Becoming a Critical Thinker Is Painful Because It Often Entails a Break from the People in Your Past (those who don't go on the critical thinking journey)
To become a critical thinker often alienates us from people that we grew up with during our "pre-critical thinking days."
When you go to college, there are people in your life who may accuse you of "becoming uppity."
Some students talk about "dying to their old life" the way a guy with kids quits playing poker with his buddies.
The pain of this growing apart from friends and family is expressed in bell hooks' essay "Learning in the Shadow of Class and Race."