“My solitary obsession with modeling complex simulations is now ordinary behavior for most consumers of digital age entertainment. This kind of education is not happening in classrooms or museums; it's happening in living rooms and basements, on PCs and television screens. This is the Sleeper Curve: The most debased forms of mass diversion-video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms-turn out to be nutritional after all. For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the "masses" want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want. But in fact, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more intellectually demanding, not less. --Steven Johnson, Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter

Course Description:

English 109.01 is designed to prepare students for success in English 110: First-Year Composition. In this course, students will practice reading verbal texts, images, and other media forms analytically. Through a variety of formal and informal writing assignments, we will approach issues of grammar and correctness from a rhetorical perspective-that is, instead of focusing on “right” and “wrong” notions of grammar, we will develop an understanding of these conventions within the context of academic discourse. Additionally, students will gain some experience producing new media texts that combine visual, verbal, and aural elements.

English 109.01 requires a substantial amount of reading, writing, and analysis. Readings from the textbook (Convergences) and other sources will lead to the production and revision of three major assignment clusters. This class emphasizes a multi-modal concept of literacy that includes not only alphabetic sign systems, but visual, aural, and haptic ones as well. Rather than a series of lectures on what good writing is and how to produce it, this class takes the form of a “hands-on” studio, where we will work collaboratively with one another in and out of the classroom. We will discuss and write responses to readings, share writing with our peers, create new media texts of various sorts, and learn to critique our own work and the work of others.

Course Objectives:

Students enrolled in English 109 at Marion should meet the following objectives:

Engage in reading, analyzing, and composing a wide range of texts, including both formal academic texts and also informal “nonacademic” texts (audio files, web sites, comics, children’s/young adult literature, oral histories, etc.)

Engage in the full writing process, including textual invention, drafting, revising, and editing

Discuss and share writing and reading with others and develop a rhetorical vocabulary for talking about writing

Produce coherent, unified, and fully supported written texts that demonstrate primary research and original analysis

Gain knowledge of academic conventions of usage and grammar

Interact with digital media, including work with word processing, Internet-based research and communication, and the production of texts such as web pages, image and sound files

Texts:

Robert Atwan, ed. Convergences. 2nd ed. New York: Bedford Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2004. ISBN: 0-31241-2916

Lynne Troyka, ed. Simon and Schuster Quick Access Reference for Writers. 4th ed. 2003. ISBN: 0-13140-0819

Class Requirements:

Assignment Clusters. The main component of our coursework is made up of three separate assignment clusters, or groupings of exercises designed to strengthen your writing and analytical thinking. Each cluster will also include a new media production assignment designed to expand your understanding of literacy practices in our contemporary multimedia context. Cluster One will focus on the description and production of static images, Cluster Two will focus on the creation of audio texts as a means of reinterpreting written texts, and Cluster Three will involve the manipulation of sound, writing, and images (still and moving). Collectively, these assignments will comprise a digital portfolio that will remain open for revision until the final week of the course.

Readings. Several readings are assigned throughout the quarter. We’ll be discussing and writing about these at length, so actually reading them is essential to the functionality of our class. If it seems that we are having trouble completing the readings for class, I will begin assigning impromptu quizzes that will figure into the final participation grade.

Online Discussion Forum. Using OSU’s new course management system software named Carmen (located at: <http://telr.osu.edu/carmen/index.html>), I’ve set up an online discussion forum to be used outside of class proper. During the course of the quarter, I’d like each student to make at least 10 short contributions to this forum: 5 should directly respond to our readings or in-class discussions (at least 250 words), and 5 should reply to your classmates’ responses (at least 100 words).