Jeremy T.
Mumford

Division:
  Humanities

Department:
  English/
  Developmental

Contact Info:

   Phone: (209) 384-6178
   mumford.j@mccd.edu

Useful Student Links (includes online sites, class PowerPoint presentations, etc.)

Useful Teacher Links (includes online sites, links to journals, teaching websites)

Clubs:

   Phi Theta Kappa
   Students for Social
   Justice

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English A: Foundations in Academic Literacy
Spring 2010
4 units

Professor: Jeremy Mumford
Office: IAC 238
Hours: T, Th, F 11-12
Phone: 384-6178

Course Introduction

English A is a workshop class in college essay writing and reading. This class will help sharpen your conceptual, analytical, and interpretive skills.  You will learn processes and strategies that will help improve your ability to critically read and write English. As you become more proficient readers and writers, you will also learn rhetorical skills such as the ability to develop and support a main idea, claim, or set of assertions for an audience using both your own experiences and the words and ideas of other writers. We will also practice developing your ideas with evidence, and revising and editing to strengthen your writing and clarify your style.

We will read many types of writing and learn how to discuss and use the issues and ideas we find in these writings for different ends.  As you do so, you will develop an understanding that writing is for reading and reading leads to writing as we explore and begin to discover different applications for academic thinking. 

Course Description

This course is designed for students who desire a review of the conventions of written communication.  It offers a review of grammar and usage in conjunction with the writing assignments.  Reading assignments cover a variety of subjects for class discussion and provide a means for increasing reading comprehension.  Writing assignments include an introduction to library research skills.

 
Student Learning Outcomes

t         Apply reading strategies and critical reading and thinking skills at the English 1A entrance level.

Ø  Engage in reading as a process

Ø  Analyze text  for main idea and supporting ideas

Ø  Analyze text for elements of language

Ø  Analyze text for organizational patterns

Ø  Analyze a variety of text

Ø  Tour the library, locate, read, and evaluate research readings

t         Compose essays at the English 1A entrance level

Ø  Use a variety of strategies for vocabulary development

Ø  Compose varied sentences having grammatical, syntactical, and mechanical correctness

Ø  Utilize the writing process

Ø  Compose essays at the pre-college to college level using MLA format and documentation

Required Texts and Materials

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress by Howard Zinn
Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Email account and internet access
A college dictionary
A pocket folder for submitting essays.
A binder to keep all class writing and handouts.
Copies of your essays and reading responses as needed for small group and whole class workshops.
Printouts and copies of book excerpts and articles, online and newspaper, as required.

Course Policies

Preparedness and Participation
By preparedness, I mean being in class with all required materials and work.  Every absence will lower your preparedness grade by half a grade level.  Thus, you may miss two classes and get an A in attendance, albeit a lower A grade than a student who has attended every class.  After six absences, you will be dropped from the class.  Thus, excessive absences will result in failure of the course.  Two instances of tardiness equal an absence. If you are more than twenty-five minutes late, you will be counted as absent. Answering a cell phone and texting in class will be equivalent to a tardy, then an absence.  TURN THEM OFF! 
                A portion of the preparedness grade will be based upon your participation in whole class discussions and groups.  This grade is given holistically and is based upon my observations of you over the course of the semester.  Collaboration and small group work along with discussions will be a primary activity in our class. It is imperative that each person participates. 
               
Class work
Class work will include a variety of exploratory writings done in class in response to texts we have read, each other’s writing, and various prompts, which I will assign. Often times the writing we do in class will be the foundation for longer writing assignments you will complete outside of class.  Save all of the writing we do in and out of class for the whole semester.
               
Group work
Group work will consist of small group discussions that lead to whole class discussions in which your participation or lack thereof will be noted.  You are expected to participate to the best of your abilities. A successful participant in this class will generate questions, identify problems, infer, elaborate on texts using personal experience, and will make predictions about the overall class meaning. 
 
Journals and Quizzes
There will be a weekly reading and learning journal.  Journals should be two, full, handwritten pages written in a large blue book.  I will collect your journals in the ninth week and at the end of the course.  Topics for the journals will be given in the week prior to their being due.

Essays and Final Portfolio

The writing assignments will ask you to provide effective analysis and argumentation based on material covered in class.  Assignments will also require you to strategically present evidence and recognize both sound logic/reasoning and identify fallacious reasoning.  When you turn an essay in, it will need to have all the appropriate supporting documents including all rough drafts (drafts in this sense means versions of the essay with significant changes in each version), self/partner’s /group’s revision and editing responses, paragraph outlining, rhetorical strategies, and all supporting, in-class writing. There will be six (6) formal essays 750 words or three to four (3-4) pages in length.  Two of these will be in class essays.  All drafts will need to be typed, double spaced, and formatted with 1 inch margins and a 12-point font (Times New Roman).  Essays not turned in with this format will not be read; I will hand them back to you without responding.  Although you may not revise your final essays, you will turn in a final portfolio consisting of your three lowest scoring essays revised and polished.   

Course Grading

Your final grade will be based on the following:

Preparedness and participation                            (15%)       15 points

Journal and quizzes                                              (15%)       15 points
Final essays 1-6                                                   (60%)       60 points

Final Portfolio                                                      (10%)       10 points

____________________________________________________

Total points possible                                           (100%)      100 points

The grading scale is as follows:

A: 100-90 of total points possible

B: 89-80

C: 79-70

D: 69-60

F: 59 and below

Plagiarism Policy

Cheating is the actual or attempted practice of fraudulent or deceptive acts for the purpose of improving one's grade or obtaining course credit; such acts also include assisting another student to do so. Typically, such acts occur in relation to examinations. However, it is the intent of this definition that the term 'cheating' not be limited to examination situations only, but that it include any and all actions by a student that are intended to gain an unearned academic advantage by fraudulent or deceptive means. Plagiarism is a specific form of cheating which consists of the misuse of the published and/or unpublished works of others by misrepresenting the material (i.e., their intellectual property) so used as one's own work.  If I suspect you of plagiarism, I will give you an oral and written examination on the material to be evaluated by the English Department chair and myself.  Penalties for cheating and plagiarism range from a D or F on a particular assignment, through an F for the course, to expulsion from the college.

Classroom Behavior

The classroom is a special environment in which students and faculty come together to promote learning and growth. It is essential to this learning environment that respect for the rights of others seeking to learn, respect for the professionalism of the instructor, and the general goals of academic freedom are maintained. Differences of viewpoint or concerns should be expressed in terms which are supportive of the learning process, creating an environment in which students and faculty may learn to reason with clarity and compassion, to share of themselves without losing their identities, and to develop and understanding of the community in which they live. Student conduct which disrupts the learning process shall not be tolerated and may lead to disciplinary action and/or removal from class.

 Current Course Plan and Reading Schedule

I reserve the right to change the schedule and syllabus as necessary.  You the student are responsible for any such changes.

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Updated 1/16/10 by Jeremy Mumford