A. University Goals

The general goal of a university education is to help each student to become the following <these are defined in a separate handout>.

a) self-evaluating

b) self-developing

c) self-expressing.

B. ENGLISH 1C GOALS

¥ The purpose of English 1C is to help you to achieve (a) through (c) by helping you to learn how to integrate a consideration of multiple points of view into your problem-solving and communications "tool box."

¥In English 1A, you were taught how to write an argumentative essay. You were taught how to "prove" a thesis statement using examples and sources that would support your thesis.

¥In English 1C or another critical thinking course, you were taught the basic elements of constructing and critiquing an argument.

¥In English 1C, we want to further develop these skill by integrating the points of view of others into your arguments, paying particular attention to those beliefs and assumptions that may differ from your own.

You may conceptualize this goal as a "software upgrade." We are not here to give you new facts and information but rather to upgrade your data processing skills.

¥The ability to yourself as others see you and put your ideas in the context of the ideas of others will help you to become a much more sophisticated problem-solver. It will also improve your communications skills by helping you to further develop your sense of audience.

¥In the mundane world, to see the world <including your own values, beliefs and behavior> through the eyes of others is generally referred to as "empathy." It goes without saying that empathy has become a critical quality in most contemporary professions.

C. EVALUATION

Given these goals, the methods used to evaluate and grade your work will be somewhat different than those used in the standard model. For most of us, learning to understand the ideas of others is a skill that must be developed over time. In other words, it is a process.

¥It is also interactive. Because you cannot independently determine whether or not you have successfully understood other minds, you cannot move through this process in a vacuum. It often is a matter of hit or miss, trial and error, but it always involves <dialogue>. You have to have feedback to make an assessment.

¥Hence, in English 1C, I will be primarily concerned with the process of your interaction with the texts and other class materials as opposed to your producing a product, a material object, a paper.

¥In other words, this course will not only be concerned with what you write but how you came to write what you did.

¥However, grading a process is very different from simply grading an essay. So what I want to do is lay out the process model for you here and then I will explain how I'll be evaluating you within the context of this model.

A. SUMMARY

To repeat, we assume that developing good thinking and communications skills is essentially an interactive process that takes place over time. These skills are not things you can just "get" by reading a book and whipping out a paper at the last moment.

¥At the same time, this process has to be very individualized, for how you develop during the semester depends on where you begin and everyone begins at a different place.

¥However, to be fair in the grading process, there are certain sets of rules, requirements and format procedures that all of you must follow, regardless of your individual backgrounds and skill levels. It is this set of common rules and guidelines that I am spelling out here.

¥One of the most important points to be made at the start is that everyone is expected to make mistakes and need improvement. There is no one perfect English 1C paper. If each of you is different, a record of your progress through the course must be unique and individual.

¥As far as grades are concerned, you are not competing with each other but with yourselves. In other words, you will be evaluated on the degree to which you improve your problem-solving and thinking skills as opposed to whether your paper is "better than" someone else's paper.

¥One last point. You will be evaluated on how well you come to identify the problems you may have with a particular paper and then go on improve that paper <within the course guidelines> without direct assistance. This follows from our general goal of teaching you to become self-critical and self-evaluating. Your ability to work independently is as important as your participating in group activitites in class.

B. THE CHART

START&endash;> READ TEXT

 

&endash;> READ TOPICS/QUESTIONS

 

&endash;> USE CLASS DISCUSSION/HANDOUTS TO INTERPRET TEXT/TOPICS

 

&endash;> REREAD TEXT <CHECK FOR EVIDENCE>

 

&endash;> SELECT FINAL TOPIC BASED ON WHAT YOU CAN BEST SUPPORT

 

&endash;> WRITE OUTLINE AND PAPER DRAFT 1

 

&endash;> PROOF PAPER DRAFT 1 USING LECTURE NOTES/CLASS GUIDELINES/TEXT

 

&endash;> REVISE OUTLINE <CHECK ORGANIZATION&DEVELOPMENT>

 

&endash;> WRITE PAPER DRAFT 2

 

&endash;> CHECK LANGUAGE/RECHECK GUIDELINES & SUBMIT PAPER <= DRAFT 3>

 

&endash;> EVALUATE RETURNED PAPER <PAPER VERSION 1> USING GENERAL FEEDBACK <CLASS DISCUSSION,HANDOUTS, COMMENTS>

 

&endash;> REREAD TEXT/REREAD GUIDELINES/HANDOUTS/ASK QUESTIONS IN CLASS

 

&endash;> REVISE TEXT OF PV1

 

&endash;> RECHECK AND SUBMIT PAPER VERSION 2

 

&endash;> EVALUATE RETURNED PAPER VERSION 2 USING GENERAL FEEDBACK (CLASS DISCUSSION, HANDOUTS, COMMENTS)

 

&endash;> STOP <RECYCLE AS REQUIRED>

 

C. GRADING PROCESS

Note that the nexus of this model does not lie in the relationship between you <as student> and me <as teacher> but between you and the text/topic. Of course, the course materials and my feedback may be helpful, but you must see the primary focus of problem-solving as your relationship to the question you are trying to answer.

¥Generally speaking, my evaluation of your papers follows several discrete steps.

STEP 1: ALL PAPERS <PAPER VERSION 1> ARE READ AND EVALUATED AT ONCE. NOTES ON INDIVIDUAL ESSAYS ARE RECORDED IN MY FILES. GENERAL SUMMARIES OF PROBLEM AREAS WILL BE PRESENTED IN CLASS.

 

STEP 2: YOU WILL THEN BE ASKED TO TAKE THE GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS PRESENTED IN CLASS AND USE THOSE THAT APPLY TO YOUR PAPER.

 

STEP 3: FINALLY, I WILL COMPARE THE FIRST PAPERS WITH YOUR SECOPND TO DETERMINE TO WHAT EXTENT YOU WERE ABLE TO IMPROVE YOUR PAPERS ON YOUR OWN. YOUR GRADE IN THE COURSE WILL DEPEND ON HOW YOU ARE ABLE TO ABSTRACT FROM GENERAL STATEMENTS AND APPLY THEM TO PARTICULAR INSTANCES.

IN SUMMARY: The self-correcting process just described is at the core of the grading paradigm for this course. It is an attempt to prepare you for real-world professional situations where you will be expected to identify problems, analyze them in terms of a given set of general models and rules, and then come up with relevant solutions without the assistance of others.

On the other hand, I'm not assuming you already know how to work in this fashion. So everything we do here will be nothing more than practice. All assignments will be exercises. It goes without saying that each one of you has room for improvement. So your grade will depend upon how much you develop your skills over the course of the semester.