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Syllabus for Xianfeng Mou’s ENGL 10600-243: Constructing Knowledge

2010SpringSyllabus (View file in PDF format)

2010 Spring ENGL 10600 243: Constructing Knowledge

Instructor: Xianfeng Mou

Instructor information:

Name: Xianfeng Mou	Phone number: 49-44797 (shared with three offices)
Office: Heavilon  210	Email: imfeng@purdue.edu (often moody and unreliable) swallowaswan@gmail.com (fairly reliable)
Office hours: Wednesday 1:30-2:30 p.m. or by appointment

Course information:

Number and section	ENGL 10600 243
Time	MTWRF 3:30PM
Venue	Mon—Conference: Heavilon 225 Tues— Computer: Enad 130 Wed— Lecture: Heav 109 Thurs— Conference: Heav 223 Fri—Lecture: Heav 109

Textbook:

Colombo, Gary, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle, ed. Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Boston/St. Martins, 2007. 7th Edition.

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. Paperback. 181 pages.

The second book has a later edition. Do not get the wrong edition. Other class related materials and handouts will be accessible through Blackboard vista or the Internet. You will be frequently required to provide copies of your paper for peer editing.

Course objectives:

Just as the title Rereading America indicates, the primary goal of this course is to help you become a careful reader, thinker, and writer. To think and write critically, one has to pay special attention to the cultural contexts that the texts are produced as well as the cultural contexts that the texts are interpreted. Writing, or any form of composition, constitutes an act of meaning making, of carrying out an intelligent dialogue with obvious or implicit articulators out there, and advocating what you strongly believe in. All knowledge is socially constructed. As a result, this course takes your writing as fulfilling both your personal and social functions through sequenced assignments to integrate you with the Purdue community, with the American culture, and in some instances even the entire globe. Of course, you will also obtain college-level research skills. You will go through five major genres of writing. By the end of the course, you will be able to,

1. Narrow down the scopes and work within realistic limitations
2. Connect yourself to larger cultural contexts by carrying out informed intellectual dialogues with other researchers through reading and writing
3. Acquire college-level research skills through archival research and field research, and carry over such skills to other areas of college life
4. Explore how contexts influence both the production and consumption of textual information
5. Employ appropriate forms for frequently used genres by following academic conventions
6. Approach a complex issue from multiple perspectives, appreciate the pluralism, and make well-rounded argument yourself
7. Integrate your own originality with contributions from your predecessors and credit them with proper academic acknowledgement
8. See yourself and your culture globally and equip yourself with tools to make a positive change

Course policies

Attendance:

1. You are required to attend all class sessions. Those who have complete attendance will earn 4 (4) extra credits to adjust your final course grade.
2. However, emergencies happen, so you are allowed four (4) absences without penalty. These absences include medical emergencies. There is no distinction between excused or unexcused absences.
3. If medical emergencies pop up, you must provide written documentation from a person of authority, such as your physician, the Dean of Students, other counselors with competent authority, or one of your parent.
4. After four absences, the fifth absence means your final grade for the course will be dropped one full letter; six (6) absences, two full letters. Seven (7) absences will result in an automatic failure of the course. Therefore, if situations occur (e.g. prolonged medical situations) where you have to have more than seven (7) absences, such as a case of swine flu, you need to ask or remind the Office of the Dean of Students to provide you with a yellow documentation, which you will present to me after you have recovered.
5. You will be considered absent 15 minutes after class starts.
6. Attendance regarding conferences is mandatory as regular sessions. When they are specified as choice-based, you have the freedom to elect out or elect in.
7. Should you find you have to miss a class, it is your responsibility to find out what we have covered during that session and what particular changes or assignments we have made or practiced. So, get the contact information from one or two classmates, just in case.
8. It is strong suggested that you do not choose to be absent when a project is due.

Deadlines and submissions:

1. Papers are due on their designated deadlines at the beginning of the class with two Printed Copiesaccompanied by Electronic Submission. For instance, our class runs from 3:30 to 4:20, so if you cannot come and you submit it electronically at 4:22pm, it is regarded as late.  You must hand in printed copies that follow the proper paper format.
2. When you submit your final draft, hand in the previous draft that bears peer editing, my suggestions, and perhaps your own notes. Put them all in a paper folder bearing your name.
3. The Department forbids students dropping papers into the Main Office, any time. Nor can you place it in an envelope and glue it onto my office door in case it gets stolen. Some student finds the temptation of academic theft and plagiarism irresistible. Therefore, if you have to miss a class, make sure you put your paper on my office desk beforehand or ask a responsible classmate to turn it in for you.
4. Since each step of one project is closely linked with another, late papers disrupt your progress as well as the progress of the entire class. Therefore, no late paper is accepted.
5. If you fail to turn in one draft on time, 10 (ten points) will be deducted from your entire project grade; two failures, 20 points. You also lose the privilege of coming to the following conference section. If you turn in a half-finished draft (e.g. a paper of 1.5 pages for a project of 3.5 pages), it will be refused. In that case, it is recommended that you find comments and suggestions elsewhere, such as the Purdue Writing Lab. Logically you cannot participate in scheduled peer editing for that session, either.
6. However, if extreme situations occur and you let me know beforehand with support from a written document, you can be allowed to have an extension in rare situations. But you need to convince me first.
7. If you must be absent on medical reasons (though nobody wishes to be favored by the swine flu), you are still responsible for completing the assignments on time if you want to claim the credits.
8. Regarding paper format, all papers handed in should be stapled together, typed, and formatted in double space with 12-size font. Printing is preferably in black ink on 8 ½”X11″ white paper (please use one side of the paper though the University Default is double-sided printing). It is generally recommended that your paper has one inch margins on all sides, for revising purpose; and displays your name, my name (for identification purpose), and draft number. You can choose to save trees and go green in another way.

Conference requirement:

Conferences are mandatory, most of the times. You will be required to meet with me regularly during the semester. You need to prepare questions that you want to ask me, for that is a chance for you to get personalized care instead of blanket instruction. Be prepared and utilize it well when you come. In other words, when you come to the conference, you need to provide evidence showing that you are moving forward with your project, such as your questions and concerns, an outline, a working draft, sources you are using, and so on.

Classroom participation and etiquette:

You are expected to come to class on time, having completed designated assignments and thought about the ideas and issues carefully. Your cooperative and constructive participation to the best of your ability is extremely important to your final grade for the course.

Every student is equal in the classroom and enjoys equal rights to articulating their ideas and opinions. When controversial issues are debated, conduct your argument intelligently and professionally and avoid personal attacks. If someone disagrees with you, that does not necessarily mean they are attacking you as a person. They are simply asking you to consider the issue from a slightly or conspicuously different perspective. Well-rounded arguments or papers usually give differing opinions careful consideration to show the writer is well-informed, not strongly biased. This is extremely important because some experts say any writing is argumentative in nature, because the writer always wants to make a point.

Grading principles:

During the course of the semester, you will be required to complete four major projects: a simple and functional website documenting and showcasing your progress through the course, a literature review on your favorite research topic, an interview report in which you report back what a cutting-edge scholar is finding on your topic to gain information not available elsewhere, and finally an argumentative essay in which you advocate and defend your position in a controversial issue in your topic. There is also a research proposal. You need to complete all major assignments in order to receive a passing grade. Specific guidelines regarding each major project will be available as the course moves forward.

There is no final exam for this course. Your grade comes from your everyday effort. 

Your Class Website	20%
Presentation of Your Research Proposal	10%
Literature Review Essay	20%
Interview Report	20%
Argumentative Essay	15%
Five reading reflections (one point each)	5%
Attendance	5%
Constructive participation and quizzes	5%

Percentage scales run as follows: 100-90 A; 89-80 B; 79-70 C; 69-60 D, 59-below F. Plus and minus (89-87 B+, 86-83 B, 82-80 B- and on down the line) will be adopted.

Computer use:

Generally speaking, no food or drink is allowed in the computer lab because of possibilities of damage. But university regulations and practical considerations shall prevail. Activities not related to the class in progress are not permitted, either.

Academic dishonesty and penalty:

You must give appropriate acknowledgment to other people’s work and contributions through proper academic documentation. By definition, other people’s works include their ideas, unpublished papers, published papers, emails, their online web pages, their photos and pictures, their music, their video, even their oral expressions and presentations. In short anything or any material that does not come directly out of your own head belongs to the original inventor.

Cases of plagiarism are intentional. Unintentional offenses are still regarded as plagiarism. For instance, though a classmate may tell you voluntarily his or her exciting discovery, you still cannot use his or her discovery and pretend it is yours because you are also studying the subject, reading the novel, or designing a similar project, and hope you will not be caught in the red. A news article in Purdue’s student newspaper The Exponentdeclares that Purdue will revoke diplomas already earned when cases of plagiarism (and other related crimes) were committed before the offender’s graduation but that the procedure of investigation is not completed after the offender has graduated. Such laws have retroactive power. One of my professors has told me that once a student or in rare cases a faculty member is found guilty of plagiarizing another’s article or project, the said student and faculty member will be “kicked out of academia.”

Let me stress again it does not matter what format their ideas are in, print, digital, oral, published or not. If you think their ideas extremely useful to your argument, you need to tell upfront, in a clear and concise academic manner, that that particular idea or understanding does not originate from you, and that you are citing it to strengthen your argument. Plagiarism, presenting another person’s work as your own, results in serious consequences from the University. Please refer to University guidelines at <http://www.purdue.edu/ODOS/administration/integrity.htm>.  New rules and regulations shall prevail.

If you are not sure whether a course of action constitutes plagiarism, feel free to ask me, a librarian, or other people-in-the-know. Once I detect intentional plagiarism (e.g. academic theft) or in some cases deliberately hindering a classmate’s progress, I will immediately document and report the case to appropriate University authorities. Under no circumstances shall such unlawful and disgusting conduct be tolerated. Please consult University policy on plagiarism very carefully.

Campus Emergency:

In the event of a major campus emergency, course requirements, deadlines and grading percentages are subject to changes that may be necessitated by a revised semester calendar or other circumstances. Here are ways to get information about changes in this course. Blackboard Vista web page, my email address: imfeng@purdue.eduand my office phone: 494-4797.

Writing lab:

The Writing Lab, located in Room 226 Heavilon Hall ((765) 494-3723), is a great resource for you to take advantage of. You are strongly recommended to go there regularly for extra help. Please remember to bring your Student ID for identification and project guidelines with you so that the staff can tailor the tutoring especially for you.

Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (Owl), famous far and wide, is also a great resource bank for you to beef up your writing skills as well as your business writing needs. You are encouraged to go and browse through it.

Here is the link and address: Purdue Online Writing Lab < http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ >

Reminder:

Always remember to save a new draft with a new file name in your ENGL106 Folder that you set up in your Career Account Directory or your own computer.

Always remember to backup your files, preferably with two copies stored separately. Your computer may suffer a breakdown. And your account might be hacked. You do not want to panic when somebody deletes your files and you discover you do not have a backup.

If you are using a public computer, always remember to save your file and log off your account whenever you leave your computer. You do not want anybody to access your account while you are away even for five minutes.

Oh, one last reminder. Your University account and email service are public services and public properties. Therefore, do not store personal sensitive data, such as your credit card information, your bank account information, your passwords, and such similar information in your Career Account. Carry such data in other protected media of your choice.