Week 1

RHET 1311.991 & 992 Comp I

Fall 2017

Assignment instructions & information.

Week 1 begins August 21 and closes August 27, 2017.

Weekly
Checklist

Reading & Resources & Projects & Reflective Critical

response Practice Portfolio Journals Discussions

Weekly
Checklist

Week 1 Checklist
All assignments are due no later than 11:30 p.m., August 27, 2017.
! Textbook reading from Writing Spaces Volume 1: Navigating Genres (WS1,
p. 249).
! Composition response: Compose an extended annotation over this weeks
reading assignment in Writing Spaces Volume 1.
! Resources:
o Review the information provided in the assignment document about
bibliographic citations and be sure to include the provided information
in your extended annotation assignment according to guidelines.
o Watch the video How to mark up a PDF in this weeks content area.
! Portfolio: Adding pages
! Reflection: None this week
! Critical discussions: Reader values

NOTICE regarding automatic drops. I realize rosters are shifting as people get
settled in the correct classrooms. Some of you have just been added to this
course or some may be added even Monday or Tuesday of this week (week
1). With that in mind, for any late registrants, you must submit all of your work
for orientation week (Aug. 16-20) no later than 11:30 p.m. Thursday, August 24, or
you will be automatically dropped from this course on Aug. 25.

For those of you who have been enrolled from the get-go but have yet to begin
your work, you must submit your work on time.

Just to be clear, anyone who has not participated by Aug. 25 will be

automatically dropped, and you absolutely cannot be re-enrolled if that drop
occurs. I'll do my best to notify anyone who is on the drop list by Wednesday,
August 23, but please know that if you don't submit the assigned work, you won't
be able to stay in the course.

Textbook reading. If you havent already done so, download

your textbook at http://writingspaces.org. It consists of two
PDF documents: Writing Spaces Volume I (WS1) and Writing
Reading & Spaces Volume II (WS2). If you prefer, youre welcome to
response read the text online (in a chapter-by-chapter format or as
an entire document on the web page), but be sure to have
a PDF copy downloaded to your computer as well in case of
Internet failure.

This week read Navigating Genres on p. 249 of Writing Spaces Volume 1.

Composition response. Because we must learn to read closely and critically, our
composition response this week will be to write an extended annotation in
response to Navigating Genres. In our weekly content area, youll see a link for
this assignment entitled Submission area for Extended Annotation, and the
instructions are posted right there with the drop-box-style link. (If youd like a PDF
document of these instructions, let me know, and I can provide that as well. I just
dont want to upload so many options for access that people get confused
about what is a duplicate and what is not.) I strongly suggest that you read
through the extended annotation instructions BEFORE you read the assigned
textbook article.

I also suggest that if you dont already know, learn how to mark up (annotate) a
PDF before you read because you can highlight right there on your computer as
you read. So

Marking up a PDF. If you dont know how to annotate directly

within a PDF on your computer, take a moment to watch the
3-minute video resource that explains that process. Its
posted in this weeks content area and is online at
Resources &
http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cb103klhqr.
Practice
Concocting citations. Over the next few weeks, well dive
into citations in more depth. However, already this week, you
need to know that there are two elements to a citation: (1)
there is an in-text citation that lets the reader know where you
obtained your quoted or paraphrased source information, and (2) there is a
bibliographic citation that lists the details about each source.

I know many of you will use citation generators, and well be talking about that
in the weeks to come, but to help you get started this week, Im just going to
provide you with the citation information for your composition response (the
extended annotation assignment). If you place quotations and paraphrases
within your annotation (as the instructions tell you to do), always take a moment
to record the page number where you got that quote or paraphrased
information in parentheses. It goes right after the closing quote mark and before
the sentence period. For example if I quote the author within my extended
annotation text, I would do so as follows:
Dirks ultimate definition of genre is a rhetorical action meant to bring a specific
response (254).
My bibliographic citation would be on a Works Cited page at the end of the
document as follows (notice the hanging indent on the 2nd and 3rd lines):
Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1,
edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 249-
262.
This particular example is in MLA academic style. Well primarily use MLA in this
course, but as youll learn, your academic field will have an identified academic
style that youll need to use in those particular courses. It may be APA, Chicago,
AMA, or any of a number of specialized academic styles. At this point, I just want
you to know that academic styles are very detailed and vary across disciplines.

A quick note about this Resources and practice section: This area may simply
offer resources (like it does this week), but sometimes in this section, youll have
an assigned practice exercise. So dont skip this area of the weekly assignment
document even if you already know the concepts it addresses. You dont want
to miss practice and participation points!

Online portfolios. Last week you set up your online portfolio site
and posted the URL in the Bb discussion area entitled
Portfolio URLs.1 This week, were going to add some pages
Projects & to our site. To help you grasp the overview of where were
Portfolio headed with the portfolio, Ill provide a basic layout for
you, but youre welcome to change it up later in the
semester if you like. In other words, this is just one logical
option; your portfolio is ultimately yours, so feel free to revise
according to your preferences as the semester goes on.

Essentially, your portfolio site is required to host three major projects, an about
me page, and a final essay. (You can have other documents, but these
particular items are required in order to pass the course.) Within each major
project, various support documents will also be included in your portfolio.

With all of this in mind, I want you to set up five pages within your portfolio site
this week. You wont add any content; youll simply add blank pages. (Well be
adding content together throughout the semester, but not this week.) The
pages you should create this week are as follows:

An About me or autobiographical page (this can be a sub-page of

your Home page or appear at the end of your site after all the other
pages)
A page for each major project:
o Project 1: Literacy Narrative
o Project 2: Presentation & Letter to the Editor
o Project 3: Researched Essay
A page for your final essay (which will be written in lieu of a final exam)

I created a video (located at http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cb1ZI1lhan

with the link also included in this weeks content area, as well as in Resources)
showing how to add pages in the new Google sites. If youre using the classic
version of Google sites or some other platform, just be sure to follow the platform
instructions for adding pages. Ill be checking your portfolio sites during week 2,
and if your pages are added correctly, youll receive five participation points.

Reflective
None this week.
Journals

you added this class late and havent yet done this, do so immediately. The How to set up
1 If

Google sites video is posted both in the Orientation Week content folder and also in the
Resources folder.

Reader values. For this weeks discussion, Id like you to list a

minimum of three characteristics that you value as a
reader. In other words, consider what you think makes a
Critical good book. Think logically and deeply about this, even
Discussions though youre just going to make a bullet list of three items.
What keeps you reading if a piece is merely instructional?
What things is a writer doing with words, sentences,
paragraphs, or document design that you like as a reader?
What composition characteristics cause you to give a book 5 stars on an
Amazon review?

An example. Ill provide a thought process with examples to help you

understand what were shooting for. When reading fiction, I personally enjoy
reading that immerses me in the setting but does so quickly and conciselyI
dont want to read pages and pages of description, yet I want to feel present in
the locality of the text. My first thought for a bullet list might include something
like, active description.

When reading non-fiction, I like the old adage never tell a story without a point
and never make a point with a story, so my list might include something such as
research or educational pieces include both scientific support and anecdotal
evidence. But even as I think of research and educational compositions, I
realize this also applies to fiction, otherwise the story line is less than credible. This
is enlightening as I think it through.

Finally, when reading a lot of statistical information, I really appreciate when the
author explains the information and also includes an infographic. So a third item
in my list of what keeps me reading might be attractive infographics. When I
apply that concept to fiction, I also think about the fact that I like clean design
and even those curlicues or other recurring visual motifs that sometimes signal
the end of chapter. Visuals are helpful even there.

My final list might be:

Active description
Logic supported by both scientific and anecdotal evidence
Attractive design with fitting visuals

Again, notice that all of these qualities fit in academic compositions as well as
compositions simply written for entertainment. Also I havent listed these in any
order of importance. They just happen to be the first things that came to mind.

Post your response in the discussion area entitled Week 1: Reader values no
later than 11:30 p.m. August 27, 2017.

Thats all, folks! Remember to message any and all questions as quickly as they
come to mind.

Remember all assignments are due no later than 11:30 p.m. August 27, 2017.

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