Irwin Weiser

1. You'll need two texts for this class:

Academic Writing and Research, by Weiser, is a coursepack and the main text. It is available at Copymat in Chauncey Hill Mall.

The Savvy Student's Guide to Library Research, by Pask, is a publication of the Undergraduate Library staff designed to help you use the Purdue library system. It is available at Follett's and University bookstores.

2. My office is in 302 Heavilon Hall. I'll have office hours on Tuesdays from 10:45-11:45 and on Tuesdays and Thursdays after class until about 3:30. I can also meet with you at other times by appointment. My office phone number is 494-3730; my e-mail address is iweiser@purdue.edu. Please feel free to drop by the office or call or e-mail if you have any questions about the course.

3. Since this much of the work in this class is based on class discussions and group work, your regular attendance and participation are vital to its success. For that reason, if you are frequently absent or late, I will reduce your course grade.

4. I do not accept late papers. The only exception to this policy is if you are ill and provide me with an excuse from your physician. If you are too ill to attend class when a paper is due but not ill enough to see a doctor, have someone bring your paper to class for you. I do, by the way, accept early papers, so if you know you must miss a class when an assignment is due, turn in the work before the class meets.

On workshop days, it's important that you come to class with the assigned work to discuss and with copies of the work for other students in your group. If you are not prepared on workshop days, you may be counted absent.

5. You'll be writing six papers for this course. Five of them you will write out-of-class, and one, an essay examination, will be in-class. Several of the papers will be fairly short, only two to six pages. One will be fairly long, ten to twelve pages. You will have plenty of time for each paper, and you will have the opportunity to get feedback on drafts of all of them except the essay exam. I'll be giving you specific information about each assignment as you begin it, but here's a brief description of each:

Summary: This is a short summary of an article from a journal or other periodical. It should be between two to four pages long. It will count 10% of your course grade.

Review: You'll write a three to five page review of a different article or perhaps of a book. The review counts 10% of your grade.

Report: This is a four to six page explanation of a concept, process, theory, term, etc. It will count 20% of your grade.

Research Proposal: In this three to five page paper, you will present a problem, question, or issue you want to investigate further for your term project, based on preliminary research. I must approve this proposal before you can continue with the term project. The proposal counts 15% of your grade.

Term Project: This is a ten to twelve page research project on a topic of your choice. It will count 25% of your grade. Your term project must be based on a topic you have proposed and I have approved. If you submit a term project on a topic I haven't approved, I will not grade it and you will not get credit for it.

Essay Exam: This assignment is designed to help you develop strategies for future essay exam writing. We'll read and discuss some articles first, then you'll write an exam about them. The exam will count 10% of your grade.

In addition to these papers, you will also be keeping a reading journal. In a reading journal, you note interesting ideas, copy thought-provoking passages, and reflect on the reading you are doing. Such a journal is particularly helpful in a course such as this in which you will be exploring some unfamiliar topics and deciding how to proceed in your research. Keep the journal in a separate notebook from your class notes. I'll grade the journal based on how much you choose to write in it. The minimum requirement is two dated one-page entries per week. Anything below that will receive an F. More entries and more pages will earn higher grades, but quality counts as well: Don't copy a full-page passage and then write, "This passage from my sociology book is pretty interesting." You need to begin the journal during the first week and keep it through the twelfth week of the semester. I'll read your journals once or twice before the final due date on April 9th. Your journal grade will count 10% of your course grade.

6. You may choose your own topics for the five out-of-class papers, as long as what you write about is related to your major, another course you are taking, or what you plan to do for a career. One way to think about these papers is as a series which allows you to become more familiar with a particular issue or topic. For example, if you are majoring in education and are planning to teach learning disabled students, you might find an article about mainstreaming in an education journal to summarize, then find another article on a particular aspect of mainstreaming to review. Your report might explain a term used to identify specific kinds of disabilities. You might propose and do your term project on the differences of opinion experts in teaching learning disabled students have about mainstreaming, arguing for one position or another.

7. Papers for this course must be word-processed or typed. Follow the MLA guidelines for formatting and documentation, an introduction to which you may find on the attached pages from the Purdue OWL (On-Line Writing Lab) (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/Files/33.html). The student papers in AWR use MLA, so you can refer to them as examples. Include your name, the date, and the course information (English 102-14-05) at the top of the first page, aligned with the left margin. Center the title of your paper below that information.

Here's an example:

Your Name

January 29, 1998

English 102-14-05 Title of Your Paper

The first line of your paper begins here and then continues. Remember to indent the first line of each paragraph.

Some format basics are:

· Double-space the entire paper, including all block quotations (quotations of over five lines, which are indented ten spaces from the left margin) and the Works Cited list.

· Use one-inch margins on all four sides of the page.

· Use a standard font, such as a Courier or Roman, in size 10 or 12.

· Use a paper clip, not a staple, to hold pages together.

8. The following statement about honesty and the use of sources is from the Introduction to First-Year Composition Courses:
 

Since we will be discussing how to acknowledge and cite sources, you should be able to learn to avoid accidentally plagiarizing anyone else's work. If you are in doubt, please ask me, since the consequences for plagiarism are severe. The university policies about plagiarism include penalties ranging from failure of an assignment to expulsion from the university. In this class, anyone who plagiarizes fails the course, and I will probably inform the Office of the Dean of Students of the reason for the failing grade.