Engl 3130 Advanced Composition, Spring 2025
[ Policies ] [ Calendar ] [ Model Student Essays ]
Policies
last update: January 13, 2025
Dr. Kevin O'Donnell, Professor of English, Department of Literature and Language
faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell; odonnell@etsu.edu
Class meets MWF at 10:30-11:25am in Warf-Pickel 517.
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Sid Holt, editor. The Best American Magazine Writing 2023. Columbia University
Press, 2023. ISBN: 978-0231208932 $18.95.
- Steven Pinker. The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to
Writing in the 21st Century. Penguin, 2015. ISBN: 978-0143127796.
List price: $18.00.
ChatGPT can now generate a solid essay on almost any topic, in about eight seconds. So what is it that you bring to the table, with your writing? What can you do, that AI cannot? Yes, you want to learn to be thorough and clear and well-organized, just like the AI. Yet you can also be human and unpredictable. You can be creative and surprising. You can be passionate and righteous or funny and weird. These are qualities that I'd like to see you develop, even in your most humble and prosaic nonfiction writing.
This semester, you will write in a variety of nonfiction genres. At the end of the semester, you will post your best essay online. The goal is to write material that you can send out into the world, that someone out there would actually want to read. That's not always an easy goal to achieve, but it should be the goal, rather than just writing to please a teacher. This course requires a lot of writing, but you get to choose your own topics, and the grading policy is very forgiving, so most students will have a good time in this class. If this class works for you the way that I hope it will, then writing will become a more enjoyable, less intimidating process than it might have been for you in the past.
The course is built around revision and peer review. During the semester, you will write five major essays of 5 to 8 pages each. For each of those essays, you will first write a rough draft, which you will read aloud to two group members in class; and you will in turn review rough drafts written by those two classmates; then you will revise your draft and, a week later, submit it for a grade.
In addition to writing your own nonfiction, you will read some award-winning nonfiction, in the magazine writing anthology listed above, and you will read most of a book about writing by Steven Pinker, which is a fine piece of nonfiction in its own right. And you will read some fine writing produced by students in this class during previous semesters.
The grading policy is built around revision. You drop your lowest of the five essay grades. And, in the last weeks of the semester, you further revise your best essay, to post it on the web. The final revision is worth 35% of the final grade. The grading policy allows you the freedom to fail, and gives you the chance to develop your writing skills over the semester, so that your final grade can reflect your best work.
1. Narrative Essay Based on Experience and Observation
2. How to/ Tech writing
3. Review/ Critique (of a movie, book, record, restaurant, computer game or software or hardware, automobile, etc.)
4. Viewpoint / Op-ed
5. Nonfiction Genre of Your Choice (for example travel writing, sports writing, food writing, profile, memoir; or, students, if you have another genre in mind, propose it)
1. Best 4 of 5 major essays -- The lowest of 5 grades is dropped, excluding Fs: 40%
2. Your best essay revised for the web: 35%
3. Drafts -- A draft is, by its nature, incomplete; but a good-faith effort earns up to 2 points for each draft. Total draft points: 10%
4. Miscellaneous, ungraded short memos and other writings – These include in-class writing practice; topic proposals; revision plans; etc: 10%
5. Participation: 5%
Week 1 Introductions; writing process; invention
Weeks 2-3 Essay 1: Narrative Based on Experience
Weeks 4-5 Essay 2: How-to/ Tech Writing
Weeks 6-7 Essay 3: Review/ Criticism
Week 8 Quoting and paraphrasing
Spring break: March 17-21
Weeks 9-10 Essay 4: Viewpoint / Writing from Sources
Weeks 11-12 Essay 5: Genre of Your Choice
Weeks 13-14 Revising your best essay for the web
Notes:
- First drafts and revised essays are due on Mondays of the week noted.
- First draft due days are also writing group days. Bring a total of 3 copies of your draft, and be prepared to read your draft out loud for your group.
- For a detailed calendar with reading assignments and other instructions, click on the Calendar link at the top of this page.
Week 1 Jan 22 and 24
Introductions: Writing process; peer review process; revision.
Week 2 Jan 27-31
First draft Essay 1: Narrative due -- Peer review.
Class cancelled Fri Jan 31
Week 3 Feb 3-7
Revised Essay 1: Narrative due.
Week 4 Feb 10-14
First draft Essay 2: How To/ Tech Writing due -- Peer review
Week 5 Feb 17-21
Revised Essay 2: How To/ Tech Writing due
Class cancelled Weds-Fri Feb 19&21
Week 6 Feb 24-28
First draft Essay 3: Review/ Critique due -- Peer review
Class cancelled Fri Feb 28
Week 7 March 3-7
Revised Essay 3: Review/ Critique due.
Week 8 March 10-14
Practice quoting and paraphrasing.
Class cancelled Fri March 14
Spring break: March 17-21
Week 9 March 24-28
First draft Essay 4: Viewpoint due -- Peer review
Week 10 March 31-April 4
Revised Essay 4: Viewpoint due.
Week 11 Apr 7-11
First draft Essay 5: Genre of your choice due -- Peer review
Class cancelled Fri Apr 11
Week 12 Apr 14-16
Revised Essay 5: Genre of your choice due.
Good Friday break: Apr 18
Week 13 Apr 21-25
Revision activities.
Class cancelled Fri Apr 25
Week 14 apr 28-30
Best essay(s) revised for the web, due on Mon Apr 28.
ETSU Study Day Fri May 2
- Missing more than 4 scheduled class meetings can lower your final grade by a full letter grade.
- The official Department of Lit and Language attendance policy is that if you miss more than 9 classes in a MWF class, you fail the course. (I have never had to fail a student due to attendance. Usually, if someone misses that many classes, they fail the course for other reasons.)