The following is a sample syllabus for a 16-week course, meeting twice weekly, with 3 major writing assignments.

Course Overview

Or, to view the syllabus, go directly to: Schedule of Assignments, Activities, and Readings

Course Description

To the Instructor: This course, as we have designed it, is topic/issue driven. The course, however, at every turn stresses the rhetorical nature of every act of language, including those concerning topics and issues. This means, among other things, that the topic is not merely a subject to investigate through research and construct through writing. The topic is, rhetorically speaking, a social space in some public world, where real people with different beliefs, ideologies, commitments, and stakes engage one another in acts of language. Even that account of the act of writing should point to the rhetorical nature of the task: We aim for students to think of audiences not as static, but as fluid constituencies that every writer, in every act of writing, must construct and construct again, attempting to approximate the beliefs and commitments of an audience as a means of making appeals to that audience. Issues, likewise, do not come from some abstract world of issues -- issueland-- as we sometimes call it. Issues, as the word itself suggests, come forth --issue--from particular topics, or social spaces or sites. These issues are a result of the real conflicts and ideological clashes that exist among the people and institutions that struggle for their own space and voice.

Thus, when students are finding, developing, and exploring topics and issues, we see the role of the instructor as encouraging this rhetorical turn: the heuristic activities of topic development, of rhetorical investigation, and of research, should avail students of new and multiple opportunities to construct, and reconstruct, their sense of audience, of the social site, and of their own place in the site as they write and attempt to write.

To the Student: This course aims to give you opportunities to develop your knowledge and practice of writing, particularly focusing on practical rhetorical knowledge. You will take what you already know about writing strategies--for invention, for composing, for research and critical reading, for revision--in order to be able to meet new challenges, in the form of more complex writing assignments, where you put your academic knowledge about writing and writing practices into play in public, community settings.

Course Goals

After completing this course, student writers should be able to:

• Make choices in language that demonstrate awareness of the historical and cultural contexts of a writing situation, as well as make effective use of that awareness;
• Display proficiency with a variety of writing strategies as they undertake complex writing tasks, and develop more self-awareness and command over their choices as writers;
• Analyze the ways academic texts represent culture;
• Develop deeper rhetorical knowledge of a particular topic, which entails writing within the conventions of a particular social conversation.

Course Methods

Students work within the learning traditions of composition classrooms, using peer groups, small group discussion, with many different kinds of reading and writing opportunities. The course makes a special point of developing your capacity to research thoughtfully and rhetorically, so that by the time you leave this class, you should have a great deal more useful knowledge about how to find, evaluate, and use data, ideas, and other people's writing for your own specific rhetorical purposes.

Feedback and Grading:

During the first week of the class we will discuss the Proposal for a Grading Contract. As a class we will decide if the criteria set out in the proposal are reasonable and appropriate for a college-level writing class. Once that contract is discussed, revised if necessary, and agreed upon, it will be used it as the criteria for grading and evaluation.

Throughout the course you will be doing informal, exploratory writing, as a means of developing your ideas and your rhetorical strategies for the formal written assignments. Informal, exploratory writing will be read and discussed by small peer groups, but will not receive a formal grade.

Three times during the semester, you will turn in a revised writing assignment, along with supporting materials that the class agrees upon. You will also turn in your learning journal with these assignments. You will receive a "signal grade," an assessment of your reading and writing at that point in the semester. You will also receive a general assessment of how you are doing in class given the criteria set out in the grading contract.

At the conclusion of the course, you will select and revise the work that you consider most representative of your best writing. For this final portfolio, you will have the opportunity to consult with me on matters of selection and revision. You will write an analytic "cover" letter explaining your selections and choices, as well as what the entire portfolio shows about your knowledge and practice as a writer. This final portfolio will also represent a significant portion of your grade.

Each writing assignment will be worth 25% of the course grade. The final portfolio is worth 20% of the course grade, with the additional 5% based on your attendance/participation/preparation.

Assignments:

With each assignment, you have the opportunity to frame real-world writing, and a special challenge: to write in a real community context that not only produces but also distributes knowledge in a way that is useful in the world. While you are never required to put your writing into actual circulation, you are always invited to do so.

Continue to the Schedule of Assignments, Activities, and Readings