Course Title and Sections
English 1A: College Composition and Reading
Sections: D9176 and D9177 (online)
Instructor
Insert another pic Greg Kemble
Course Description
Here’s the description of English 1A that you’ll find in the Yuba College catalog:
An introductory course offering instruction in expository and argumentative writing, appropriate and effective use of language, close reading, cogent thinking, research strategies, information literacy, and documentation. Focus on the recursivity of writing processes and integrating reading, writing, and speaking skills. Students will write a minimum of 6000 words.
If you don’t already have a lot of experience with college or with college-level writing, some of that might not make a lot of sense yet. That’s okay — that’s why you’re here! Don’t let the fancy words intimidate you. We’ll address these concepts as they become important in the course.
Textbook
PICTURE OF “COVER”
Anna Mills’s How Arguments Work: A Guide to Writing and Analyzing Texts in College.
This course is a “Zero-Cost Textbook” course, which indicates that the textbook is free. Further, I’ve included the relevant parts of the text within the course, in Canvas, so you don’t even need to download anything.
However, if you’d like a copy of the full text — it’s a good book! — you may either download the full PDF (for free) or buy a paper copy at the book’s LibreTexts page. (Hover over the blue “Downloads” button for options.)
(If you’re interested California’s Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative, you can read about it at the California Community Colleges OER page.)
Time Commitment
English 1A is a demanding course, especially online. That’s not just because English professors are mean (though we may be). We’re required to follow rules and policies that the state of California has set for us.
One of those policies is to make sure we let you know, explicitly, that English 1A is a 4-unit course, which translates to:
- Total hours for the course: 216
- In-class (“lecture”) hours: 72
- Out-of-class (“homework”) hours: 144
Of course, these numbers are for face-to-face courses, so the 72 hours of “lecture” obviously doesn’t apply in quite the same way for our online class. But you should expect something similar — you should expect to spend an average of 12 hours each week.
Note that I’m not pointing this out to scare you. Lots of people succeed in the course! But it’s important that you understand what’s expected of you so that you can plan your semester more effectively.
Are you ready?
Requirements for placing into English 1A have changed, due to changes in California state law; placement is now mostly based on high school Grade Point Average (GPA).
This means that our class will include students with a wide range of reading and writing skills, and a wide range of expectations:
- some of you are just out of high school (or are still in high school!) and have not yet encountered college-level writing;
- some of you have been away from school for so long that you fear you’ve forgotten much of what you used to know;
- some of you have rich life experiences and have no difficulty writing about complex issues and arguments, whether as workers, parents, or citizens;
- some of you are masters of a language other than English, but struggle with English;
- some of you are just sure that, for whatever reason, you’re not good writers.
I will do my best to meet you at whatever level you find yourself. But you will need to do your part, too. You’ll need to:
- schedule the time you need to read and respond to challenging text
- check your Canvas Messages and Announcements regularly
- keep up with (and keep track of) the work
- post and respond to your peers in Discussion Group Assignments
- ask questions when you don’t understand something.
Above all: understand that a crucial aspect of a college education is learning how to learn. Be sure that you don’t rely only on me and my instruction; be sure you also seek answers on your own. There are a lot of good writing resources out there (I’ll point to several of them throughout the course, including later in this syllabus). The more you pursue questions on your own, the more useful my help — and the help of teachers in future courses — will be.
- Previous: XXXX
- Next: XXXX
- Table of Contents