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 for English C:
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl:
Essay One
In a 1,200-word essay (a little more than 4 pages), argue whether or not we can overcome the "existential vacuum" by finding meaning as prescribed by Frankl or if "meaning" is merely an illusion that "keeps us going." For your introduction, write a one-page profile of a person you know who suffers from the existential vacuum; then transition to your thesis paragraph with mapping components. Include no fewer than 4 research sources for your Works Cited page.
It’s Beginning to Hurt by James Lasdun
Two Options for Essay 2
Option 1
In an 1,200-word essay, show the moral struggle the characters undergo as they confront ennui or the existential vacuum. Refer to no fewer than 3 stories.
Option 2
In an 1,200 word essay, develop a thesis about the moral insights or moral epiphanies experienced by the characters. For your introduction, write a one-page profile of someone who had a moral epiphany. Refer to no fewer than 3 stories.
The Essential Tales of Chekhov edited by Richard Ford
Essay 3
In an 1,200-word essay, write an extended definition of The Irrational Mind as it is evidenced in no fewer than 3 stories. Begin with a profile of someone you know who possesses The Irrational Mind.
Essay 4
The Night in Question by Tobias Wolff
Write an 1,125-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 3 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
Grading
Four 1,200-word Research Papers: 205 each for 820
Six 200-word In-Class Quizzes (no notes, no make-ups, each quiz about 300 words): 30 for 180
Writing Word Total: 6,000
Grand PointTotal: 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.
Common Student Writing Problems
You need to write your essays in the literary present tense
Verb tense shifts, verb endings, and subject-verb agreement
Comma splices and run-ons
Sentence Fragments
Pronoun agreement with other pronouns and with nouns
Parallelism or parallel structure
Possessive case
You need paragraph transitions
You need paragraph topic sentences
Writing and Reading Schedule
August 28 Introduction, Grading, Cell Phone Policy, etc.
August 30: Frankl 1-50
September 4 Frankl 51-100
September 6 Frankl 101-150
September 11 Frankl 151-end
September 13 Quiz 1, closed-book, no notes, no make-up; this applies to all quizzes
September 18 Essay 1 A-M in my office, PE4
September 20 Essay 1 N-Z in my office, PE4
September 25 Lasdun “Anxious Man,” “The Half Sister,” “The Old Man”
September 27 Lasdun “Natural Order,” “Totty,” “The Incalculable Life Gesture”
October 2 Lasdun “Oh, Death,” “Peter Kahn’s Third Wife,” “Lime Pickle”
October 4 Quiz 2
October 9 Lasdun “Cleanness,” “Caterpillars”
October 11 Quiz 3
October 16 Essay 2 N-Z in my office, PE4
October 18 Essay 2 A-M in my office, PE4
October 23 Chekhov “A Misfortune”
October 25 Chekhov “Enemies”
October 30 Chekhov “The Grasshopper”
November 1 Quiz 4
November 6 Chekhov “Gooseberries,” “The Lady with the Pet Dog”
November 8 Quiz 5
November 13 Essay 3 A-M in my office, PE4
November 15 Essay 3 N-Z in my office, PE4
November 20 Wolff “The Chain”
November 22 Thanksgiving Holiday
November 27 Wolff “The Life of the Body,” “The Other Miller”
November 29 Wolff “Mortals,” “Bullet in the Brain”
December 4 Quiz 6
December 6 Consultation: Bring your Essay 4 thesis to my office, PE4
December 11 Essay 4 N-Z due in my office, PE4
December 13 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.) |
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