Email: [email protected]
Office: PE4; extension 5673
Website: Critical Thinker
http://herculodge.typepad.com/critical_thinker/
Students with Disabilities:
If you have a documented disability and wish to discuss academic accommodations, please contact me as soon as possible.
Assigned Texts and Essay Assignments
Essay 1 for 190 points
It’s Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun: Logical Fallacies of Love and the Irrational Mind:
In an 1,000-word essay, write an extended definition of The Irrational Mind or Irrational Love. Refer to no fewer than 2 stories.
Essay 2 for 190 points
The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff: The Fallacies of the Narcissistic Mind
Write 1,000-word essay in which you develop an extended definition of the term narcissism using at least 3 stories. You must have a Works Cited page with no fewer than 2 sources, the stories, my blog, and a source of your choice. about how Wolff’s stories give us a penetrating look at narcissism. Use no fewer than 3 stories from the book.
Research and Grammar Book: A Writer’s Resource El Camino College Handbook 3rd Edition
Essay 3 for 230 points
The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner: Exploring Mythologies of Happiness
Essay 3
In a 4-page research paper, 1,000 words, critique the idea of happiness, its mythologies and fallacies, and how true happiness complements the points in Man’s Search for Meaning in the context of the book. Use personal examples to illustrate your points. Use no fewer than 3 sources
Essay 4 for 230 points
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl: Argumentation, Refutation
In a 1,000-word essay (4 pages), address the following in an argumentative essay:
Many argue that Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a masterpiece, a manifesto that champions meaning as the antidote to the universal affliction, the existential vacuum. On the other hand, some critics dismiss Frankl’s message, arguing that meaning, as Frankl presents it, is the product of strict moral and religious dogma disguising itself as universal meaning; that Frankl’s critieria for meaning, Herculean in scope, is nearly impossible to adhere to; that unrealistic expectations for “Absolute Meaning” will lead to disappointment; that the search for meaning can be a neurosis that impedes us from living fully; and that, contrary to VK’s Gospel of Meaning, there are virtues, pleasures, and satisfactions from living a life in the existential vacuum and moral relativism that escape a rigid dogmatist such VK.
In an argumentative essay, evaluate the defenders and critics of VK and develop a thesis that takes one of the two positions.
Include no fewer than 3 research sources for your Works Cited page.
Grading
Four 1,000-word Research Papers (about 4 typed pages):
First 2 are 190 each
Second 2 are 230 each
Four 500-word quizzes are 40 each.
Writing Word Total: 6,000
Grand Point Total: 1,000 points. 900 is A. 800 is B. 700 is C. 600 is D.
You Can Revise Your Worst Essay for Higher Grade of a Maximum 20 Points
Late Essays Are Deducted a Full Letter Grade
Things That Disqualify a Student from Receiving an A Grade
Misspelling author name, book title, my name.
Plagiarism: trying to deceive professor by representing other people’s work as your own. (automatic F on the essay, zero points)
No headers
No Works Cited page
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. Same with subsequent violations.
The above also applies to talking and doing homework from other classes.
Writing and Reading Schedule
June 17 Introduction, Grading, Cell Phone Policy, etc.
June 18 Lasdun “Anxious Man,” “The Half Sister,” “The Old Man”
June 19 Lasdun “The Natural Order,” “The Incalculable Gesture”
June 20 Lasdun “Peter Kahn’s Third Wife,” “Cleanness,” Caterpillars” Quiz 1 is due.
June 24 Essay 1 A-M in my office, PE4
June 25 Essay 1 N-Z in my office, PE4
June 26 Wolff “The Chain,” “The Life of the Body”
June 27 Wolff “The Other Miller,” “Mortals”
July 1 Quiz 2 due in my office PE4
July 2 Essay 2 N-Z due in my office PE4
July 3 Essay 2 A-M due in my office PE4
July 4 Holiday
July 8 Weiner 1-60 (we’re reading chapters 1-7, not whole book)
July 9 Weiner 61-180
July 10 Weiner 181-245
July 11 Quiz 3 due in my office PE4
July 15 Essay 3 A-M in my office PE4
July 16 Essay 3 N-Z in my office PE4
July 17 Frankl 1-50
July 18 Frankl 51-100
July 22 Frankl 100-end; Quiz 4 due in class
July 23 Essay 4 N-Z due in my office, PE4
July 24 Essay 4 A-M due in my office, PE4
Student Learning Objective (SLO)
1. Students will compose an argumentative essay that shows an ability to support a claim using analysis, elements of argumentation, and integration of primary and secondary sources. This essay will be well organized, follow proper MLA format, and be technically correct in paragraph composition, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, and usage.
Course Objectives
The student will be able to: 1. Read expository prose critically to distinguish between perception and inference, surface and implied meanings, fact and opinion. 2. Analyze the way arguments are presented in readings and the media. 3. Demonstrate the ability to organize and develop written arguments and compositions. 4. Refine writing skills developed in English 1A: focusing a topic, formulating a thesis, providing support, and developing unity and coherence. 5. Evaluate the accuracy and cogency of arguments by identifying logical fallacies and drawing inferences from readings and media presentations. 6. Formulate and develop arguments and critical theories about issues, argumentative prose, and literary interpretations.
Major Topics
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Structures of argument: Thinking, reading, discussing. Evaluate data, credibility, and relevance. |
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Understanding and evaluating claims: Reasons, purposes, support, ambiguity, vagueness, complexity. Assessing credibility: Causal arguments, moral reasoning. |
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Evaluating arguments and explanations: Relevance, clarity, testability, and consistency. Identifying assumptions, developing counter arguments and justifications. |
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Writing argumentative, evaluative, and analytic essays: Prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Topic selection: Narrowing, evaluating validity and relevance. Developing parts of the argumentative essay: Strategies for organizing an argument or evaluation, including evidence, inductive and deductive reasoning. Avoiding logical fallacies. |
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Literary analysis: Evaluating point of view, inferences, and assumptions. Understanding diction, identification, aesthetic distance, and focus. Exploring rhetorical devices: Satire, irony, paradox, over-statement and understatement, evaluating authority. |
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Comparative analysis: Analyzing symbols, analogy, ambiguity, and imagery. |
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Deductive reasoning in expressive or expository literature: Recognizing assumptions in literary criticism and theory. |
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Political and advertising rhetoric: Slanders, euphemisms, innuendo, loaded questions, downplaying, avoidance, stereotyping, hyperbole, persuasive definitions. Information tailoring and the news media: Loaded language in reporting and advertising. |
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(Major writing assignments will consist of approximately 6 essays totaling 6000 words.) |
