Rebecca Moore Howard
Office: 237 HB Crouse
Office hours: Mondays 1-3; Thursdays 2:30-4; and by appointment
Telephone: 443-1620
E-mail: rehoward@syr.edu
Home page http://wrt-howard.syr.edu

Schedule of Assignments, Part Three
WRT 109, Practices of Academic Writing

Thursday, October 21

Preparation for class:

1. From the questions we generated in class, work on the ones that you chose. Some basic search strategies: (a) Google, of course. (b) The search functions on newspaper websites. (If they take you to stories that they want you to pay for, you can go into the SU library site, into E-Journals, enter the name of the newspaper you want to read, and get the story for free.) (c) Links from the entries in blogs that you're reading. (d) Blogrolls (a blogger's list of other blogs s/he is reading), which are often in the left or right margin of a blog.
2. Compose one or more analyses of the data you are finding.
3. Post your analyses to the class blog.
4. If you come across information that might help some of your classmates answer their assigned questions, be sure to post that, too.

Tuesday, October 26

Preparation for class:

1. Continue posting to the class blog.
2. Using the "comments" function, respond to at least one post on the class blog.
3. Compose a first draft of your third writing assignment.

Bring to class:

1. 3 copies of your draft;
2. Harbrace Handbook

In class:

1. Small-group review of drafts
2. Developing, organizing, and grounding arguments
3. Database searching tutorial: I'll show you how to do subject searching in the SU library databases. So far in this class you've been using the databases to find specific publications (such as the New York Times; now we'll use them to search for specific topics.

Thursday, October 28: Class meets in 009 HB Crouse

Preparation for class:

1. Study sections 6e-6h (pp. 121-134) of the Harbrace Handbook;
2. Revise your draft-in-progress as you see fit;
3. Email a copy of your current draft to me by 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, 10/27.

Bring to class:

1. One copy of your draft;
2. Harbrace Handbook.

In class:

1. Word processing tutorial
2. Collaborative analysis of the development, organization, and grounding of drafts-in-progress

Tuesday, November 2

Preparation for class:

1. Read Scholle, David. "What Is Information? The Flow of Bits and the Control of Chaos." Democracy and New Media. Ed. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2003. 343-365. [Sent in PDF on 10/29.]
2. Write a 300- to 500-word summary of the Scholle source.

Bring to class:

1. Your Scholle summary

In class:

1. Critical reading techniques
2. Critical writing techniques
3. Preview of paper #4

Thursday, November 4: no class meeting

By 10 a.m. on 11/4, finish drafting your third writing assignment, and hand it in according to directions on the assignment sheet.

Tuesday, November 9

Preparation for class:

1. Write a reader's summary of the Scholle source.
2. Send me an electronic copy of your reader's summary by 6:00 p.m. on November 8.

Bring to class:

1. 3 copies of your reader's summary
2. A printout of Scholle.

In class: Critical reading workshop

Thursday, November 11

Preparation for class:

1. Write a summary essay of Scholle. Follow these directions for presenting your work.
2. Anytime before class, send me electronic copy of the final draft of your summary essay.
3. Prepare hardcopy presentation of your work on the summary essay.

Bring to class:

1. Hardcopy presentation of your summary essay
2. Notes and sources for your fifth essay.

In class:

Back to Rebecca Moore Howard's homepage

Back to the syllabus for WRT 109