English 328
Writing, Technology, and Style
Instructor: Dr. Steven T. Benninghoff
Office: 613-L Pray-Harold
E-Mail: steve.benninghoff@emich.edu (by far, the best way to get a hold of me)
Office Phone: 734-487-0135 (it's a shared line, so see above)
Office Hours: 2:00-4:00 MW, 2:00-3:00 F, and by appointment
Class WWW Page: http://benninghoff.emich.edu/328W05/
Course Description and Objectives
This course combines the learning and practice of common style recommendations with
the examination of writing as a technology. The implications of these comparisions
are wide for students of written communication in all areas and so also for
teachers of writing.
The objectives of the course include:
- investigation and consideration of writing as a technology
- study, practice, and discussion of common style recommendations
- analysis of the common conceptions of style vs. rhetorically situated
- experience with a range of digital media for writing, from an email discussion
list, to constructing simple web pages, to online discussion via a "blog"
- (web + log)
These activities are tricky, because they will be asking you to practice concepts
and tactics that we will be openly discussing and considering. But you will
have opportunities for feedback and so long as you are open to and able to consider
and recognize characteristics and features and connect those concepts to the
assignments and your own experiences you should do fine.
Texts
Strunk, William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. Third or Fourth
Edition. (The Fourth Edition is likely to be available in the usual campus bookstores,
though you can probably pick up a copy of the third edition at many second hand
stores, if you’d like).
Tribble, Evelyn B. and Anne Trubek (Editors). Writing Material: Readings
from Plato to the Digital Age. New York: Longman, 2003.
Williams, Joseph. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1990. (This is NOT the same book as a popular textbook that
Williams wrote called Style: Ten Lessons Toward Clarity and Grace! Make sure
you get the right book.)
Class Requirements/Stuff You Need to Do
Regular and Diligent Participation, 30%. This part of the grade consists of
the following components:
Attendance. Since you can’t regularly and diligently
participate in most of our class activities if you’re not here, attendance
is a key component of the participation grade. You can miss three classes, a
week's worth of class, with no penalty. For the fourth abscence and each abscence
after that, you will lose 20% of your participation grade for each class missed.
I do not accept any sort of excuses, medical or otherwise, so do not bring me
a note of some sort. Under extreme circumstances (catastrophic medical emergencies,
for example), I am willing to make arrangements. But by and large, there are
no other exceptions to this policy.
I also think it’s important to "attend" in an appropriate, mature
fashion. That means you shouldn’t show up late (if you’re more than
about 15 minutes late, I’ll count you as absent), and it means you should
participate in a mature fashion. I feel a bit foolish in spelling this out,
but just to be clear: you should treat others (your teacher and your colleagues)
as you would hope to be treated. Among other things, you shouldn’t read
newspapers or magazines, talk loudly with others in a fashion that disrupts
your colleagues, do homework from other classes, sleep, or generally goof off.
When working with the computers, you shouldn’t consider it an opportunity
to check your email, log in to a chat group, or do other things that generally
don’t have anything to do with the class activities of the moment. Doing
any of these things will mean that in my definition of things you are "absent."
If you know at the beginning of the semester that you will miss three or more
classes, you should drop the class.
Participation on the Class Emailing List. Each of you will
need to sign up for and participate in the class electronic mailing list. We
will discuss how to sign up for this mailing list in class, and a link to the
information is available on the class web site. For the most part, this emailing
list will be used to discuss class readings and activities, though we will also
use it for announcements and other purposes as well.
As the schedule indicates, post your messages to the mailing list BEFORE the
class where we will be discussing the reading that is the subject of your posting.
Posting them BEFORE class will mean that we will be able to incorporate them
into our class discussions and it will be one of the indicators to me of the
extent to which you have completed the assigned reading.
It is important for you to "manage" your email on a very regular basis.
Simply put, before each reading assignment, you can expect around 20 messages
in your "in" box. You certainly don't have to study each of these
messages in great detail and you don't have to save them, but you will need
to "deal" with these messages. We may attempt to do this online component
in a blog or other manner besides the list if I have time, but for now we will
do it via email.
Group Work and Peer Writing Review Work. We will be doing a
lot of collaborative work in small groups throughout the term. Some of this
group work will be tied directly to the journal writing activities, and some
of this work will consist of peer writing work on one of your three essay assignments
for the course. Everyone in class is expected to participate in all aspects
of group work at different times, including taking on the role of "leader"
and/or "presenter" to the rest of the class, taking notes, offering
suggestions, listening to others, etc.
Learning and Teaching Your Colleagues About Using the Computers.
We will be doing a fair amount of stuff on computers this term. For some of
you, this may represent an additional "challenge" because you don’t
feel comfortable with the technology, while others will find this part of the
class "easy." In either case, that’s okay. If you are less than
comfortable using computers, look at this as an opportunity to learn something
new and valuable. If you are more experienced with computers, look at this as
an opportunity to share with me and your colleagues something you already know.
In either case, being willing to learn or willing to teach about using the computers
for our various class activities will be appreciated.
All the other usual class participation stuff. You know what
I mean: participating in discussions, not interrupting people when they are
talking, being generally nice to me and your colleagues, etc.
I plan on assigning a midterm and a final grade for this part of the class based
on both my and your qualitative and quantitative assessment of the work you
do. In other words, I’m not planning on keeping a detailed grade book
that records value for each and every exercise and project (though I will keep
track as to whether or not you actually do the work). Rather, the way this will
probably work is that around mid-term, you will send me an email where you explain
what sort of grade you think you deserve for this part of the class and why.
I will review your message and your work and determine a midterm grade. We'll
repeat this process for the final part of this grade.
Web-Based Portfolio of Writing Projects, 70% -- The bulk of the
grade is made up of the major writing projects of the term, all of which will
(ultimately) be presented as part of your personal/professional web site. This
will all become clear as the term progresses; in brief, the assignments are:
- An "invention" experiment that will include an unusual writing
sample and a three to five page essay discussing the experiment.
- An essay explaining and comparing an element of "traditional"
writing style with "electronic" writing style.
An essay about the discursive practices and "style" of a newsgroup
discussion
- A brief essay about your revised personal/professional web site.
- A collaboratively published web site evaluation project (probably the equivalent
of a five to seven page essay)
- All of these writing projects will ultimately be published as part of your
personal/professional web site, which will itself be an ongoing project that
you will begin early in the term and which you will complete by the time of
our scheduled final.
Generally speaking, all of the writing projects must adhere to the style guidelines
of the Modern Language Association in terms of formats for citing sources within
the text, a works cited page, etc. We’ll talk about this briefly in class,
but given that this is a 300-level writing class, I am working from the assumption
that you are already familiar with MLA style. If you’re not, you might
want to purchase The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (available
at just about any book store).
For late writing projects, I generally deduct a letter grade for each class
period the project is late. There is one exception to this: if you tell me BEFORE
the class in which a project is due that you are having problems finishing a
project in a timely fashion, I will generally offer an extension.
In order to pass the course, you must complete all of these portfolio writing
projects, regardless of your grade for any of the other components of the course.
Grading
Given all this, grading is pretty simple:
Participation: 30%
Portfolio of Writing Projects: 70%
The overall grading scale for the class is equally straight-forward:
A=100-93; A-=92-90; B+=89-87; B=86-84; B-=83-80; C+=79-77; C=76-74; C-=73-70;
D+=69-67; D=66-64; D-=63-60; E=59-0
I will base my rounding of points on attendance.