ENG 121: Aiken: Syllabus

Link to your full syllabus here!

Academic Writing is designed to teach students to communicate effectively in an academic environment. The goal of the course is to provide instruction, practice, and discussion to improve students' communication skills. Students will write for a variety of purposes and audiences and in a variety of rhetorical modes. The focus of the course is on practical, relevant, academic writing skills. Although good prose models are used throughout the course, the students' writing is the primary focus. All students will present one formal speech.

Important updates: MCL and SI

Now that we've been at this for a few weeks, I want to tweak the syllabus to best reflect our goals and resources. There are two shifts to be aware of:

After consideration of your use of MCL and how it will function in our course, I've decided that your MCL grade will be based upon completion of exercises, not an average of your score on completed exercises. 

Attending SI sessions will earn you extra credit in one of two ways: if there is no essay due the week that you attend SI, you will receive a half a point on your final MCL grade. (This is huge: you could earn up to five points added on to that portion of your final grade!) If there is an essay due the week that you attend SI, you will receive three points added onto that essay grade. Nicole will determine where credit will fall, and you are responsible for either keeping MCL extra credit sheets until the end of the semester or turning in essay extra credit sheets when essay is due. 

Attendance is not only expected but required. Class starts on time, EVERY time. Failure to get to class on time will result in a reduced final grade. After five absences, you will fail the course. If you intend to miss a class, it would be prudent and polite to notify your instructor in advance. Also, it will be your responsibility to obtain that day’s work and the next assignment from a classmate. Athletes missing classes must submit the appropriate form and have their assignments submitted on-time.

You are allowed THREE unexcused absences for a semester. Fourth and fifth absences will result in the loss of an entire letter grade (per absence). More than five absences is considered excessive and will result in failure of the course. Two tardies** (arriving after class has begun) equal one absence. If you feel you have a reasonable excuse for missing class, you must provide documentation: doctor’s note, court papers, etc. Providing a note verifying that you simply visited the nurse's office on campus will not excuse you from class. You cannot make up in-class or group work, so absences or being unprepared for class will have a strong impact on your final grade. All student athletes need to notify me at least a week in advance of any classes they will miss and should make arrangements to meet the deadlines of each assignment.

*Attendance: Excusal of student absence(s) for medical, legal, family emergency, etc., reasons is based on presentation of official documentation (physician release, court papers, obituaries, etc.) only.  Official documentation must be presented to the Director of Academic Advising in 320/325  Saint Edward Hall for verification.  Once verified, the instructor is notified and excusal is granted—upon the instructor’s discretion.  Extended student absences for any reason may additionally require official clearance to return, as determined by the offices of Student Services and Academic Affairs.*

We will use www.turnitin.com, an electronic database/ plagiarism service, for all your writing assignments. I’ve created a folder for each writing assignment in our class page there; you will be able to submit your final assignment there for me to grade up until class time on the due date. You will not have access to these folders past each assignment’s due date; this means that if you don’t turn your work in before it’s due, you’ll get a ‘0’ for that assignment. A few things to know: first, turnitin.com won’t allow you to submit multiple revisions of an assignment. If you submit something the night before it’s due, then realize you forgot to save your changes, you can’t resubmit a second version without contacting me first. I can (and will) delete assignments for you so you can resubmit up until class time when it’s due.

Course Code: 5266367

Password: write