Syllabus

Your Role in Class

This course requires your attendance and on-time production. For example, if you do not have your essay ready for small group workshop or if you are late or absence for a workshop, all the students in your group suffer. You and your writing are part of the course. You are expected:

• to be prepared for each class (having read and thought about the assigned reading, having written assignments completed).
• to participate meaningfully and often in class discussions and workshops.
• to give your speeches on the days assigned.

Attendance

I do not distinguish between excused and unexcused cuts. If you're not in class, you are not contributing:

• There are 3 penalty-free cuts that you should save for illness, religious reasons, job interviews, and the like.
• Each additional cut from the 4th to the 6th will reduce your final course grade by 2/3 (e.g., a B- becomes a C with the 4th cut, a D+ with the 5th).
• A total of 7 cuts mean that you've missed more than 25% of the course and will result in automatic failure regardless of your average or the reason for the absences because you will not have fulfilled the course requirements-- no exceptions.
• You must be on time for class. Late arrivals and early departures cause distractions and gaps. If other classes or labs will necessitate your arriving late or leaving early, do not take this class this semester. Being more than 10 minutes late or having to leave class early will count as one of your 3 free cuts.
• If you select the Service Learning option, not completing 2 hours of your service will count as 1 cut (so if you only do only 14 hours of service, you have exhausted your 3 free cuts and penalties will start accruing for each additional cut at either your non-profit or in the classroom).

Phase I

If Phase I is an issue for you, you will pass Phase I of the Writing Requirement with a semester grade of B- (a grade of C will require a case-by-case determination).

Types of Essays

Rhetorical Analysis-- In such an essay, you discuss such things as

• the rhetorical situation (who was the intended audience, what was the author's main purpose, what was the context?)
• the credentials of the author (is this author an expert about the topic of his/her essay? What makes him/her an expert? Why should we believe this person?)
• the rhetorical strategies used by the author.
• the stylistic devices used by the author.
• the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the text in terms of accomplishing its purposes.

Position Paper-- In such an essay, you take a position on a controversial topic and prove it as completely as you can. Use all the types of evidence that you have available to convince your readers. You do not have the responsibility, however, of answering or responding to positions that disagree with yours.

Full-fledged Argument-- In such an essay, you take a position on a controversial topic and prove it as completely as possible. Unlike the position paper, however, you must explain the major positions that disagree with yours, and you must answer opponents' major objections to your position and its supporting points. In other words, part of the way you convince your readers is by showing the weaknesses in the opponents' own arguments.

Persuasive Personal Essay-- In such an essay, you draw upon your personal experiences and observations as well as upon research to discover and defend your position on a controversial topic. The tone here is more conversational, and there is a sense of your exploring the topic rather than "having all the answers"- but you still need to take a position and defend it and you still need to present evidence to support your points.

Your Readers for this class

For all your essays for this class, your readers include not only your classmates and me, but also an equal number of readers and professors from other comparable universities (e.g., students majoring in who-knows-what at Harvard, Brown, Stanford, CalTech)-- the point of having these readers is to help you remember that you can't simply allude to something discussed in our classroom because those additional readers weren't here (so you have to explain your points, even ones that we might have covered in class discussions).

Each essay has at least 2 drafts

Your essays must have at least 2 drafts:

• Workshop Draft: (must be complete for workshop): I do not comment on the Workshop Draft except to give credit if it is a complete draft.
• Mandatory Revision: I grade the Mandatory Revision of each of those 4 essays (after you've had the chance to improve the essay after receiving feedback from the workshop and, if you wish, from the Center).
  • Mandatory Revisions will not be accepted for grades after the due date or the due-date-with-the-Writing-Center-extension.
• Optional Revision(s): If you wish, you may revise any or all of your 4 essays once and yet again for the Portfolio. Revised grades replace the earlier grades.
• Each Optional Revision
  • must have a minimum of 250 additional words that are boldfaced (so, every time you revise beyond the Mandatory Revision, you add an extra 250 new boldfaced words).
  • The point is to deepen your essays by adding ideas, to use whatever new rhetorical devices and strategies we have covered since the due date of the Mandatory Revision, and to refine the style, not simply add a word here and there.
  • You should develop your existing ideas more fully, but you might also add a new idea and/or do additional research.
  • Do NOT limit your revision to the information that you had available at the time you wrote the original essay-- you now have more information available.
• You must always submit the original corrected-by-me copy of the essay with any Revision-- otherwise I will not grade the Revision.

Postwrites

Each revision (Mandatory and Optional) must be accompanied by a new typed Postwrite.
A Postwrite is a place where you to talk to me, rhetor to rhetor.
Use the concepts, terminology, theories, and insights that we've read about and discussed throughout the semester to explain your strategies, etc. Explain in detail the following (use these headings):

• Readers: Explain how you see your readers in terms of your particular topic. What did you think our attitude(s) toward your topic and thesis would be before we read your essay? What makes you think we have such attitudes toward your topic?
• Purpose: What is your primary purpose in this essay? Are there secondary purposes as well?
• Rhetoric: What rhetorical strategies, rhetorical techniques, and stylistic approaches did you use (e.g., did you use first or third person, present or past tense, what did you do to catch readers' interest and to establish kairos, did you use any images or figurative language, any attention-catching stylistic devices)? Be specific.
• Advice: Explain in detail the advice you received from the workshop and (if applicable) from the Writing Center. Explain your reasons for following or not following particular pieces of advice.
• Optional Questions: This is the only optional section of the Postwrite- if there are specific aspects of rhetoric or style that you wish me to comment upon, please indicate them here.

Extensions for Written Work

Extensions with Visits to Writing and Communication Center:
Mandatory Revisions are due the first class after the workshop (the date is noted on syllabus).
However, if you visit the Writing Center to discuss your Mandatory Revision with one of the Center's professional Writing Consultants, you automatically receive up to a 1-week penalty-free extension beyond that due date (this extension-date is also noted on the syllabus).
Call the Center at least 5 days ahead of time to book an appointment. Waiting until the last minute and discovering that the Center is all booked up is not an acceptable excuse and the late penalty will be enforced.

Late Work

Late work is a serious problem in this class.
Oral Presentations will receive a 0 if not given on time.
Each Workshop Draft that is not complete for workshop reduces your final course grade by 1/3.
Each Mandatory Revision that is late will cause your final course grade to be penalized by 1/3 (e.g., a B- for the course becomes a C+) for each day it is late.

Incidental plagiarism results in a zero for the essay, and blatant plagiarism can result in disaster.
So it's crucial to understand the concept.
Academic and professional honesty requires that you give credit where credit is due.
Just as scientists demand complete and accurate information about experiments so that they can duplicate and check those experiments, so scholars and readers demand complete information so they can explore in more depth what your sources said (and, frankly, so they can check your accuracy in reporting what those sources said). In all academic writing, then, you must give citations each time you use someone else's ideas, words, phrasing, or unusual information. In other words, never take credit for someone else's words, ideas, or style (this includes material found on the Web). Your essays should be your own work (although you are encouraged to seek writing advice from the Writing Center and from your small groups). There are 4 guidelines for using sources in your academic writing:

• There is never a good reason to paraphrase a source-- either summarize it in your own words or quote it exactly.
• When you quote, quote exactly, use quotation marks, and cite the source.
• When you use information that might not be considered common knowledge, cite the source.
• When in doubt about whether or not to give a citation, always give a citation.
• Remember, citing sources enhances your ethos with your readers.

MIT's academic honesty policy can be found at the following link: http://web.mit.edu/policies/10.0.html.

Your grade will be determined as follows (note, if you don't revise an essay, its original grade simply counts twice):
Essay #1 counts 3 times
Essay #2 counts 3 times
Essay #3 counts 3 times
Essay #4 counts 3 times
Portfolio Introduction counts 2 times
Average of Impromptus, etc. count 1 time
Average of Postwrites count 2 times
Final Extemporaneous Speech counts 2 times
Class Dedication and Participation count 1 time
Total = 20

Service Learning is an approach that combines some service to the community with academic learning-- i.e., the service is what you provide while the learning is what you discover by applying class material (e.g., rhetorical and ethical concepts) to "real-life" situations and by reflecting, both in writing and in class discussions, on the experience of using rhetoric in the "real world." It is optional but strongly recommended for this course.

How Does Service Learning Fit into 21W.747? Rhetoric helps people explore and solve community problems. Since the beginning, rhetors have spoken out on social and political issues, and they have made speeches and written essays to persuade society to take action. Service Learning is thus a natural fit for 21W.747.
As Confucius says, "I read and I forget; I see and I remember: I do and I understand." Service Learning is a way of "doing" and hence "understanding" rhetoric on a more profound and practical level. It is also a way of fulfilling the original goals of rhetorical education, namely, creating more involved and knowledgeable members of a community. Many non-profit organizations exist to help deal with social problems.
This semester you may select a non-profit organization to work with/for (e.g., working at a shelter for the homeless, tutoring a high school student, doing research that the nonprofit requires, writing a document for that non-profit, creating a web page for a non-profit). You should dedicate 2-3 hours/week for 10 weeks to the project. During this time you will do some or all of the following:

• observe.
• gather data.
• analyze site activity and interactions.
• analyze the uses of rhetoric on site and/or in the nonprofit's publicity etc. as you learn about and become part of a new community.

If you wish, you may work in teams at a site (but your final documents presented to me must be individual efforts).
To find non-profits who want volunteers and/or help, you may

• Consult the volunteer Web site for ideas: http://www.volunteersolutions.org/mit/volunteer/index.tcl and click on "volunteer" link on the right side, then contact the non-profit directly.
• Or consult MIT's Public Service Center (PSC) (http://web.mit.edu/mitpsc); the PSC has contacts with several non-profit organizations- this is a great resource.
• Or you may continue a service project with which you are already involved.

Does Service Learning Add to the Amount of Work I Do for 21W.747? Obviously SL has a time commitment of 20-30 hours during the semester of working at a site or for the non-profit (e.g., if you are designing a Web page, you might be doing that here at MIT rather than on site). To make up for that commitment,

• Your 4th essay will use your SL experience as the topic and major source of information and hence will save you research time.
• Your final speech may be about your SL experience (thus saving you some more research time).
• So the answer to the question is "No, it will not add significantly to the amount on work that you do for 21W.747, but the workload will include some out-of-class experience that you would not otherwise have."

How Do I Select the SL Option? Consult the staff at Public Service Center to find an appropriate non-profit. Then contact that non-profit to set up your project. Then submit a Proposal for Service Learning Option.