The Purpose of English 102—English Composition II

            English 102 is designed to help you continue to learn to write effective expository essays.  Before enrolling in English 102, you should already have demonstrated your competence at writing the kinds of documents most often required of college students and professional men and women: writing to make a point or to convey information in support of an idea. Along with most of your classmates, you have probably demonstrated this competence as a student in English 101 at Northwest-Shoals Community College. In English 101, you also began to apply basic expository writing skills to specialized writing situations. It is this kind of writing, especially in the form of the critical essay, which you will develop to high levels of competence as a student in English 102.

Because English 102 includes extensive reading assignments in poetry, fiction, and drama, some students inaccurately consider it a literature course. English 102, like English 101, is a course in writing.  It does, however, represent a new stage in the development of your communications skills–a stage where the subject of each essay is provided, a stage where the writer can depend far less than in English 101 on familiar, often personal, experiences of a lifetime.  Instead, in English 102 you will write about new information recently acquired through reading and thinking.

There are good reasons for this change toward a type of writing concentrating on recent objects and experiences. Whatever program of study you are pursuing at Northwest-Shoals Community College, you may have begun your communications courses with English 093, Reading 083, or other courses numbered beginning with 0; then you moved on to English 101.  In those courses were a mixture of students with all types of career goals--the aspiring surgeon, the would-be mathematics teacher, the accountants and engineers and musicians and judges of the twenty-first century--along with students planning to become auto body repair specialists, cosmetologists or electronics technicians.  Between English 101 and English 102, the programs of our college take parting directions.  In one direction, the technical programs begin to concentrate on specialized courses "in the field" for students who hope to be working in their chosen career fields within a year or two.  Other programs, leading more in the direction of the kinds of work often called "professions," continue with a broader range of general education courses and with activities to improve the ability to think, to arrive at valid conclusions and to communicate on the basis of newly acquired, varying, and expanding information. 

            Your enrollment in English 102 indicates that you probably aspire to a career as a professional, or in a career position that will require you to interact with college-educated people, and daily to acquire, assimilate and apply knowledge from reading, analysis, and discussion. English 102 will prepare you not only for success in literature courses at the sophomore level and beyond, but for success in other courses that require you to gain familiarity with a new body of knowledge, to become conversant about it (using terminology generally accepted for discussion of that body of knowledge), and to express your conclusions clearly and effectively.  English 102, Speech 107,  and one or more courses in literature are intended together to develop your English language knowledge and skills to levels normally achieved by sophomores in a four-year college or university. 

             English 102 students at Northwest-Shoals Community College all write their research paper in the writing lab. Your experience in completing the research paper and other English 102 assignments with computer assistance will prepare you for success in the numerous writing and research assignments awaiting you as a college and university student and later in your profession. 

Skills You Will Achieve in English 102

            Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to write impromptu expository essays that satisfactorily analyze, interpret, and evaluate plays, poems, and stories.  To be acceptable  in  English  102, an  essay  must

1. demonstrate that the writer has read and understood assigned plays, poems and stories

2. demonstrate the writer's mastery of the most common terms used in literary criticism

3. demonstrate the writer's ability to frame, develop, and express significant ideas in interesting ways

To be acceptable in English 102, each essay should also contain all the features demonstrated in your best essays in English 101:  

1. an introductory paragraph with a precise, clear thesis or main point

2. two or more (usually at least three) fully developed body paragraphs in support of that thesis 

3. a satisfactory conclusion.  

In English 102, you will show that you can use the computer with increasing effectiveness to help you become more competent, more versatile, and more sophisticated in thinking, researching, and writing.  Finally, you will show that you can apply your basic understanding and skills to the development of a standard, documented college-level research paper exploring a literary topic or other topic that the instructor judges to be appropriate.

            Each of your essays in English 102 should continue to demonstrate, and should serve as an exercise to develop your increasing command and control of, the following writing skills, familiar to you from the requirements of English 101:

1.                  Skills in following prewriting procedures to conceive ideas about poems, plays, and stories for the purpose of writing about each of these types of literature

2.                  Skills in selecting and stating ideas so that one main idea emerges as a well-formulated thesis or controlling idea for each essay

3.                  Skills in selecting and producing adequate specific evidence—supporting ideas, examples (usually drawn directly from stories, plays, or poems which are the subjects of your essays), and explanations—in support of a thesis

4.                  Skills in selecting and arranging ideas and supporting evidence in logical, coherent patterns.  These skills will be evident in the essay as a whole, as well as in each paragraph

5.                  Skills in writing clear, standard English sentences with conventional sentence structures, verb forms, punctuation, capitalization, possessives, plural forms, and other mechanics

6.                  Skills in choosing exact, appropriate words to express your meanings, and in spelling those words correctly

7.                  Skills in beginning and ending your essays with effective introductory and concluding paragraphs

8.      Skills in selecting an appropriate method of essay development, whether  by comparison and contrast, definition, causal analysis, division and classification,         process analysis, or other modes explored in English 101.

 9.  All the above skills will be demonstrated in at least the following number of essays:

·        one essay about poetry

·        one essay about fiction

·        one essay about drama

·        at least one additional essay about poetry, fiction, or drama, or a narrative essay

·        a documented research paper about literature or another subject assigned by the instructor

·        a final examination essay about poetry, fiction, or drama

10.              Skills in improving your own essays by proofreading, referring to appropriate handbook sections, restructuring, correcting errors, and rewriting using the Microsoft Word program

11.              Skills in reading assigned poems, plays, and stories effectively and critically

12.              Skills in researching an assigned literary topic, making good use of tools and materials in the library

            These skills are stated separately, and many of them can be recognized as skills you demonstrated, perhaps at less sophisticated levels, and perhaps only by struggling self-consciously, in English 101.  Remember, however, that competence as a writer involves more than accumulating a "list" of necessary skills, or of developing new levels of performance barely higher than those of a previous course or a previous year.  When all the elements of writing competence increase together, they often can and do combine in startling, explosive, and exciting ways. 

Books Required in English 102

  • Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, by Arp & Johnson, 8^th

      edition

  • Harcourt Guide to MLA Documentation by L. S. Schwartz

  Also Recommended for English 102

  • Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary or an equivalent college level

    dictionary

Your Responsibilities as a Student in English 102

            In English 102 you will be responsible for attending classes and writing labs, for paying attention and participating in class and writing labs, and for completing all assignments on time.  You are expected to do your own work and to maintain strict honesty.

            You should attend all classes as scheduled.  Inform your instructor if you cannot meet any class as scheduled, and determine whether it will be possible to schedule a make-up class.  Every minute of every class and every writing laboratory is important.  Be in the classroom ready to begin when each class starts.  More than six absences (four during the Summer term)  will cause a student to fail the course, regardless of the grades the student has earned. Tardiness, as well, will certainly lower your grade.

Classroom Environment

            Take pride in keeping the classroom and writing lab clean and orderly places.  Food, drinks and tobacco are prohibited in classrooms and computer labs at Northwest-Shoals Community College. Cell phones, beepers, and alarms are disruptive; they should be turned off before coming to class.

Completing Assignments 

            Your instructor will provide you a schedule of assignments or course syllabus.  If you lose your copy, request a replacement copy from your instructor. If the course syllabus is also accessible through the English Department Website, your instructor will inform you.  This schedule will tell you which assignments you are to complete and when you should complete them.  Much of your laboratory time will be spent in actual writing, in completing computer-assisted instruction, and in revising and rewriting.  You will usually also have assignments to complete between classes and laboratories.  Expect to devote about six hours per week to reading and to completing assigned exercises outside the classroom and laboratory. Remember that discussions and activities in the classroom and the laboratory will assume that you have already completed all assignments outside class.  Unless you complete assignments on time, you cannot possibly get full benefit from this course.

            In registering for this course, you made a commitment to yourself, your classmates, and your instructor.  Unless you complete all coursework conscientiously, you are not really "taking" the course; you are only following along behind classmates who are taking the course.  

            This point cannot be made too strongly:  as a student in English 102, you are responsible for completing 100% of the course assignments, and for completing them on time.  This includes mastering the literary terms used to write critical essays. You should make it a point to arrive at a reasonably good understanding of each term based on your study of the textbook, then to clarify and extend your understanding by listening to your instructor's explanations and by participating in classroom discussions.  Many instructors use the literary terms in your textbook’s glossary for a portion of the final exam.

Academic Honesty

            Students in English 102 are expected to be completely honest.  There are both fair and unfair ways to receive assistance from others.  While you should want to learn from others, there is a difference between receiving assistance from someone else and submitting the work of another person as your own work. You should become familiar with what constitutes academic dishonesty and understand the consequences of plagiarism (using the work of another without giving proper credit) and of cheating.  English 102 allows you to develop a documented paper under the guidance of an instructor.  A documented paper, often called a "research paper" is one where you incorporate the words and ideas of others as a major part of the support for your thesis.  Documentation is the word used to describe procedures for giving others credit for their words and ideas.  The documentation procedures you master in English 102 will be needed many times during the remainder of your college career and in your profession.

Rewriting

            You may be permitted, and may be required, to rewrite essays, especially if your first version is a poor one.  The higher grade will be counted in determining your average grade in English 102; therefore, it is to your immediate advantage to rewrite seriously.  Your  instructor will tell you whether essay revisions will affect your grade.

Evaluation and Grading in English 102

You will demonstrate your writing skills through a series of at least six major writing assignments. Most of these essays, including one documented essay, will be written on the computer using MS Word software in a supervised writing laboratory, ordinarily with your instructor present.  Each essay assignment will require you to select a subject from a list supplied by your instructor at the beginning of a laboratory period.

Although research for the documented essay, or research paper, will be completed outside class, this longer and more formal essay must be written in the computer lab, using notes brought into the lab that can be incorporated into your essay in a supervised setting.  Your instructor will explain the exact procedures for completing this longer writing assignment.

Some instructors use an essay on a literary topic as the final exam in English 102, while others, as noted above, use the literary terms from the textbook glossary and point from the literature studied to compose a final exam.

            You should study the grading scale carefully.  A grade of 90 or higher is considered an "A"; a grade of 80 to 89 is considered a "B"; and so on.  A grade of 60 is the minimum passing grade, and a grade of 70--the lowest possible "C"--is the minimum satisfactory grade to advance to English 271 or 272 (or any sophomore-level literature).

Note Concerning Course Grades

            NOTE:  To achieve a grade of "B" or "A" in English 102, a student MUST have grades of "B" or higher on at least four of the essays assigned in this course.  To achieve a grade of "C" in English 102, a student MUST have grades of "C" or higher on at least three of the essays assigned in this course.  To be awarded any passing grade, a student must complete both the research paper and the final examination.

Characteristics of an "A" Essay

An "A" essay

·        has a clear, effective thesis statement supported by logical, unified, well-developed paragraphs

·        uses specific, vivid, detailed language to create interesting examples and express generalizations strongly

·        binds thoughts together coherently with effective transitions

·        chooses excellent examples and details from the stories, plays, or poems which constitute the subject of the essay and are the focus of the thesis

·        shows excellent judgment and control in choosing and creating patterns of organization appropriate to the assignment and the thesis

·        demonstrates effective word choice, sophisticated and varied sentence structures, and mature and thoughtful ideas

·        is practically error free; uses Standard American English grammar and mechanics

·        is properly documented (when applicable)

·        when taken as a whole, is a far above average essay that demonstrates an understanding of the requirements of the assignment and an excellent response to those requirements

Characteristics of a "B" Essay

A "B" essay

·        has a generally clear, effective thesis statement supported by unified, well-developed paragraphs

·        uses fairly specific, vivid, detailed language to create examples and express generalizations

·        binds thoughts together coherently with effective transitions

·        chooses very good examples and details from the stories, plays or poems which constitute the subject of the essay and are the focus of the thesis

·        shows good judgment and control in choosing and creating patterns of organization appropriate to the assignment and the thesis

·        demonstrates generally effective word choice, with some variation in sentence structures, and good ideas that are clearly expressed

·        has few mechanical or grammatical errors; uses Standard American English grammar and mechanics in almost all sentences

·        is properly documented (when applicable)

·        when taken as a whole, is an above average essay that demonstrates an understanding of the requirements of the assignment and conforms to those requirements

Characteristics of a "C" Essay

A "C" essay

·        has a thesis statement supported by fairly well-unified paragraphs

·        includes some examples to support generalizations in each body paragraph

·        maintains some coherence by the use of transitions

·        includes acceptable examples and details from the stories, plays, or poems which constitute the subject of the essay and are the focus of the thesis

·        shows at least limited control in choosing and creating patterns of organization appropriate to the assignment and the thesis

·        demonstrates some conscious word choice, limited variation in sentence structures, and average ideas

·        may have some, but not many, mechanical or grammatical errors; uses Standard American English grammar and mechanics for a clear majority of sentences

·        may have some weaknesses in documentation (when applicable)

·        conforms at least to the main requirements of the assignment but taken as a whole, is only average

Comments about Essay Grading

            Even though your essay may be excellent in some or even most areas (ideas, or organization and coherence, or English grammar and mechanics, for example), do not expect a grade of "A" or "B" if the essay has one or more areas of great weakness. The "A" or "B" essay will demonstrate the writer's control of virtually every aspect of the assignment.

            The following are considered MAJOR OR SERIOUS ERRORS, and even one or two instances of such errors will lower an essay grade considerably: 

·        Sentence Fragments

·        Fused or Run-On Sentences

·        Comma Splices

·        Badly Garbled Syntax or Sentence Sense

·        Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement

·        Wrong Tense or Tense Shift

·        Pronoun Agreement or Reference Error

·        Faulty Parallelism

  Relatively minor errors, such as misspellings, errors in capitalization, an omitted or an unnecessary comma, or a misplaced quotation mark, will lower your grade; an essay with many errors will not receive a high grade, no matter how strong it may be otherwise.

            Plagiarism, the unacknowledged use of someone else’s work, is a type of academic dishonesty. In most cases of plagiarism, the student receives a grade of “zero” for the assignment in question and an “F” for the course. In some cases the student is expelled from the college.

UNIT 1

UNDERSTANDING AND WRITING ABOUT

FICTION

Objectives:

After completing the planned activities for English 102, the student should be able to:

1. Become a more informed and aware reader of fiction—one who recognizes the artistic qualities of serious fiction, distinguishes significant writing from that with less serious purposes, and understands and appreciates numerous techniques employed by serious writers of fiction.

      Related activities:

           conventional and distinctive elements in each story.

           and think about these additional stories until you have reached an

           understanding of each that satisfies you.

             read and compare your insights with theirs.

2. Describe short stores you have just read for the first time.  You should be able to describe clearly and accurately stories with a variety of themes, points of view, and styles. Each description will briefly but accurately present the characters, the situation, the action and other distinctive elements of the story.

            Related activities:

            you have read.

            successful critical essays related to fiction.

3. Demonstrate your familiarity with the specific literary terms included in the Glossary of Fiction Terms in this handbook.

            Related activities

            characters, plots, and themes of assigned short stories, and of related

            topics.  In these discussions, you should be able to demonstrate that you

            understand terms from the glossary and can employ them in serious

            conversations about fiction.

           skillfully and successfully.

           instructor.

4. Write one or more critical essays presenting and developing a thesis about fiction.  

   This essay should demonstrate your ability to (1) select a topic, (2) limit the

    topic, (3) gather evidence, (4) form a thesis, (5) develop an outline, and (6)

    write a well-developed, finished essay as described in your textbook.

    

            Related activities:

          can serve as models for your own critical writing.

           through prewriting and writing processes using a personal computer and

           Microsoft Word.

5. Demonstrate your ability to improve a critical essay by carrying it through increasingly effective drafts from first draft to finished essay.

            Related activities:

            proposed structure or outline for developing that idea, write a first draft of

            your critical essay.

            you refine your ideas by thinking and by talking about these ideas with others

            including your classmates and your instructor.

GLOSSARY OF FICTION TERMS FOR ENGLISH 102

You should become so familiar with the following terms that you understand them and can use them as readily as you use everyday words like “desk,” “pencil,” or “textbook.”  Carefully read the introductions to the different sections as well as the Glossary (pages 1703-1715) in Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound and Sense; then try to find illustrations in your reading.  Be active in classroom discussions where you, your classmates, and your instructor use these terms by talking about stories you have read.

Antagonist                                                 

Artistic unity                                                 

Central intelligence                             

Chance                                                           

Character

Characterization

Climax

Commercial fiction

Complication

Conflict

Denouement

Dialogue

Dilemma

Dynamic character

Editorializing

Epiphany

Exposition

Falling action

Fantasy

Flashback

Flat character

Foil

Foreshadowing

Imagery                      

Irony                          

Melodrama                 

Motif

Motivation 

Narrator

Obstacle

Plausibility

Plot

Plot manipulation

Point of attack

Point of view (first person, omniscient, dramatic, third person)

Prize

Protagonist

Realism

Realistic 

Rising action

Round character

Scene

Sentimentality

Setting               

Static character

Stereotyped character

Stock character

Stream of consciousness

Structure

Style        

Surprise ending

Suspense

Symbol

Theme

UNIT 2

UNDERSTANDING AND WRITING ABOUT

POETRY

Objectives:

After completing the planned activities, students should be able to:

1. Become a more informed and aware reader of poetry—one who recognizes the qualities of poetry as a serious art form, distinguishes several different types of poems by their types and purposes, and understands and appreciates numerous techniques employed by poets.

            Related activities: