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Word Rogues |
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On English and Writing: Leon Lanzbom |
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 instructor: Leon Lanzbom email: lanzbom@yahoo.com  ENGLISH 114-14 (37308): Basic Composition 23 June 2008 - 8 August 2008 class: M,T,W: 9:30-11:45 AM, Th 9:30-10:45 AM RM 225 Lab: Th 10:55-11:45 AM, RM 422  I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. --James A. Michener COURSE MATERIALS/TEXTS: Required: Langan, John. College Writing Skills with Readings, 7th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. Spiegelman, Art. Maus. New York: Pantheon, 2003. Handouts, distributed by me during the semester Notebooks, three-ring preferred College level dictionary (recommended)
DESCRIPTION AND GOAL: English 114 is a preparatory course for English 115, designed to give students practice in writing paragraphs and essays, with emphasis on correct and effective expression through the study of appropriate language skills. Emphasis will be placed on writing as a process. Students will learn how to write opening, closing, and body paragraphs, how to identify grammatical and structural weaknesses in their work, evaluate and document sources in MLA style, and critically analyze readings. ENGLISH 114 Student Learning Outcomes 1. Construct well-developed essays with clear claims, sufficient evidence and purposeful organization. 2. Recognize methods and purposes for writing. 
Grading of Assignments:  Four acute-stress out of class essays: 1 essay quiz 02.0% (10 pts. = 10 pts.) 2 750 word essays 20.0% (50 pts each = 100 pts) 1 research 1000 +words 20.0% (100 pts = 100 pts) Two cataclysmic shakedown in-class essays 10.0% (25 pts each = 50 pts.) Two cataclysmic shakedown Exams 30.0% (75 pts each = 150 pts.) Four Startle-Response quizzes 08.0% (10 pts each = 40 pts) Participation and journals (40-50 pages) 10.0% ( 50 pts) (Percentages are approximations) 100.0% = 500 pts. Grade Breakdown: A=500-450 B=449-400 C=399-350 D=349-300 F=299 or less Journals: Your journals will be kept in your notebooks. Your journal entries will be your response to our readings, homework assignments, and various class projects as class moves along. I will offer several optional journal topics based on our readings upon which you will write. The rest is up to you. Use your journal as a diary or learning tool. You will hand in journals twice: once at midterms and once during finals. Your journals will be worth 25 points. *You must submit all essays, exams, and the research paper in order to pass this course.* __________________________________________ I do not accept late work. Missing an assignment will result in zero points for that assignment and may result in your failing the course. No quizzes or other in-class journal assignments may be made up without prior arrangements made with me. (See below for more information on late work policies.) I do not accept emailed assignments. No assignments may be submitted by email. You must arrange to get your assignment to me by giving it to another student or leaving it in my mailbox. Your English 114 Syllabus Click HERE to download Rules section of English 114 Click HERE to download Menu section of English 114 English 114: summer 2008: Daily Menu My goal is to keep you excited and enthusiastic about our work. Considering this class relies on dynamics, our syllabus may be subject to change--the addition or subtraction of material--depending on how many hazy eyes I notice. Any changes will be announced in class.  Once again: You must come into class having read and being ready to discuss the readings assigned for that day. Whatever is listed under 7/17 should be read for our class meeting on 7/17. Your participation score will depend on your readings. Also, we may not review all the reading assignments in class, but you WILL still be responsible for these. ___________________________ Disclaimer: You may find the language, sexual, or violent content of some of the material submitted or assigned in this class offensive. I generally do not censor class material. Please see me if you feel offended. I will offer alternatives for any assignment. ________________________ Journals: Your Journals will be worth at least 50% of your participation grade. Most keep a separate loose-leaf section for their journal in their main loose leaf. Use your journals for freewriting, ideas, your own notes, scribbles, drawings, outlines, a daily diary, and all the chapter exercises you are required to do. Journals will be checked and graded on the day of your final, but you may bring them in earlier to see if you�re doing what has to be done. This is an easy grade if you keep up daily. Note: Class notes are NOT a part of your journal. ______________________________________ Important Dates Deadline to add classes: Thursday of the first week in which the session begins Deadline for refund: 10% of actual class meeting days�in some cases this may be the first day of class Deadline to withdraw from class without receiving a W: 30% of actual class meeting days Deadline to apply for credit/no credit option: 30% of actual class meeting days Deadline to withdraw from class and receive a W: 75% of actual meeting days Week 1:----------------------------------> Monday 6.23 (9:30-11:45 rm225)  Introduction to class, first-day: syllabus reviewtake home writing quiz due Wednesday. _____________________________________ Essay-quiz #1: �Why did you take this class?� Due 6.25 In 1-2 pages, write about your decision to attend this summer session. What is your main reason for taking this class? By taking the class now, talk about three effects that you envision (positive and negative) on your summer and fall plans? The grade on this quiz will be dependent on proper formatting. Please read formatting instructions in the pages 9-11 of your hard-copy syllabus or go to "Hacker" in links. Download your MLA Formating Template HERE Tuesday 6.24 (9:30-11:45 rm225) Come into class having read and the following: Langan: Chapter 1, "An Introduction to Writing." 5-15, "An Introduction to writing," and do exercises 1-7 on pp19-20. ⇒Please pay close attention to the "The Hazards of Moviegoing" on pp. 8-9. Do all exercises on pp 10-12  Wednesday 6.25 (9:30-11:45 rm 225)Come into class having read the following: Do all the exercises: Langan: CH 2: 25-39, including all exercises. Langan: capitals p. 536-43 Langan: writing numbers & abbreviations p. 544-47 Thursday 6.26 (9:30-10:45 rm 225) Catch up Discussion: Begin Essay 1 __________________ Thursday 6.26: Lab. (10:55-11:45 rm 422)
Friday 6. 27 (we only meet this one Friday) Discussion Review Catch up __________________________________________ Week 2---------------------------------> __________________________________________ Monday 6.30 (09:30AM-11:45AM RM 225) Come into class having read and reviewed the following: Langan: chapter 23 Subj. & Verbs: 449-54 Avoiding slang p. 598-603 Langan chapter 3: "The First and Second Steps in Essay Writing": 51-62 Start thinking about your final paper topic. You must hand it in by Monday next week. ______________________________________________ Tuesday 7.1 Come into class having read and reviewed the following: Langan: Chapter 24 fragments 455-468 Langan: CH 3 62-78 _____________________________________________ Wednesday 7.2 Come into class having read and reviewed the following: Catch up Langan chapter 25: avoiding run-ons p. 469-81 Langan: chapter 4: 79-104 ___________________________ Thursday 7.3 Continue and catch up, especially chapter 4 Lab: continue on Essay 1: you must have a complete rough draft by Monday 7.7 to workshop. Week 3-----------------------------> _________________________________________ Monday 7.7 Must bring in completed rough draft for workshops. Review: Catch up Langan: Read and do exercises, chapter 26: 482-91 CH 27-492-97 Continue chapter 5: 105-127 Bring rough draft of essay 2 into class ___________________________________ Tuesday 7.8 Workshop essay 1 Chapter 27: 453-62 Helping verbs, verbals, gerunds 500-02 Chapter 29: 503-08 ________________________________ Wednesday 7.9 Last day for workshops on Essay 1 Ch 6: 139-166 Four Bases for Revising Essays Ch 30 Pronoun types: 510-15 _________________________________ Thursday 7.10 Essay 1 handed in. Introduce Essay 2. Begin Essay 2 in lab Ch 37 apostrophe: 549-56 Ch 38 quotation marks: 557-64
Week 4---------------------------------------> Monday 7.14 Essay 1, Narrative, on my desk Hand in topic for final essay or lose 10 points. Ch 31 Adjectives Ch 32 Misplaced Modifiers and Ch 33 Ch 33 Dangling Modifiers: 522-31 Catch up and review
Tuesday 7.15 Catch up CH 39 564-74 Midterm Review _______________________ Wednesday 7.16  Run for your lives! Scary, fight-or-flight MIDTERM!  ___________________________________________________Thursday 7.17 Description paper workshops Week 5--------------------------------> _______________________ Monday 7.21 Last workshop for description paper ________________________________________________ Tuesday 7.22  Mausfilm ________________________ Wednesday 7.23 Maus film ________________________ Thursday 7.24 Maus Lab: work on final paper. You must have your first rough draft by Monday so we can begin our workshops. __________________________________ On Workshops: We will present an active workshop . Our goal: help each other write better papers. By Sunday, students will E-mail rough drafts to all other students who will review rough drafts at home and bring to class. In class, the originator will read his or her draft, and then one or two other students will read the same draft, so we can get a sense of the writing in different voices. We will then offer our critiques out loud. At the end of class, each student will give the writer his or her draft/ critique, and give me one as well, for a grade. Week 6 Monday 7.28: Maus/ workshops Tuesday 7.29: workshops Wednesday 7.30: workshops Thursday 7.31: workshops  Week 7 ______________________________ Monday 8.4 Workshops Lab continue on paper ______________________________ Tuesday 8.5 Final paper due! ________________________ Wednesday 8.6 Review for final ________________________ Thursday 8.7 The Catacysmic Shakedown AKA The FINAL! please bring blue books. You must bring in your journals today    How to Write With Style by Kurt Vonnegut Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers. We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style. These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful-- ? And on and on. Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you're writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead --- or, worse, they will stop reading you. The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don't you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head. 1. Find a subject you care about Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way --- although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do. 2. Do not ramble, though I won't ramble on about that. 3. Keep it simple As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. "To be or not to be?" asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story "Eveline" is this one: "She was tired." At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do. Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 4. Have guts to cut It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out. 5. Sound like yourself The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad's third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench. In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand. All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue. I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago. 6. Say what you mean I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable --- and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood. Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us. 7. Pity the readers They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don't really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school --- twelve long years. So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify --- whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales. That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited. 8. For really detailed advice For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced. You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say. In Sum: 1. Find a subject you care about 2. Do not ramble, though 3. Keep it simple 4. Have guts to cut 5. Sound like yourself 6. Say what you mean 7. Pity the readers Palm Sunday (New York: Dial Press, 1999), 65-72.  |
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