English 109.02, the second of a two-quarter sequence of courses preceding English 110, builds on the writing and thinking work that you did in 109.01, strengthening your basic writing skills and developing new and different writing and reading muscles that will be the foundation of your college writing career.   One of the objectives of .02 is to have you writing less about the personal and more about what you see and think about in the world around you.   One way to approach this kind of work is to "read," discuss, and write about culture.   In doing this, we will develop critical thinking and analysis skills, and learn how to articulate our opinions more clearly.   (I say "we" here because, though I'm always learning from you, the older I get, the more out of touch I feel with pop culture, so I know I'll be learning a lot as we go, too.)   The writing in particular will also ask you to put into practice more specific strategies of good writers such as awareness of audience and purpose. Also, as you know (or are learning), the language (vocabulary, grammar, syntax) you use as a writer is important in how your ideas come across, so we will spend energy on these aspects of your writing once you have put your ideas on paper.

The bulk of the writing you do will be for a "zine" (an "underground" magazine) that you will create with a number of your fellow classmates.   Each group's zine will include a variety of different critical articles, ads, and features, and each of you will be responsible for writing several pieces.   This will allow you the opportunity to write in a number of different ways (informative, argumentative, entertaining, etc.).

The single, all-class text we'll share will be Convergences , a book that provides many different strategies for reading, thinking and writing--and analysis --that will help you examine a variety of popular media texts.   Convergences focuses not only on the content but also on presentation of content, and this will provide us opportunities to discuss the influence of how one communicates (method) a message and in what form (medium).   Analyzing these elements of communication will strengthen your awareness of the work writers do.   Other texts you will use will be determined by the issue/idea on which you and members of your group decide to base your zine.   Each group is required to address one major outside text and watch and/or listen to popular texts such as TV shows, movies, CDs, etc.   Written responses to and analyses of these texts will provide some of the articles in your zine.

Meeting in the computer classroom will allow us the opportunity to draft and design your zines a little at a time.   Because your primary writing project for the quarter will be creating a zine with a small group of your classmates, these days will be especially helpful to you and your group in several ways: researching material you will be writing about in your zine, exploring ways to make your zine look great (graphics and layout), and working on your "sales presentation."   In addition, each zine will include an audio component, a review created through the use of Audacity.  

At two points during the quarter, Weeks 5 and 9, you will submit a draft to a Writing Center tutor assigned to work with our class through the Success Challenge program.   As with the drafts you submitted last quarter, you will decide what you would like your tutor to give you feedback about.    The fact that you will have choices, based on what stage of the drafting process you have reached by Weeks 5 and 9, and what your group has determined is important to the success of the articles in your zine, this part of the process will be especially important for you to plan.

Textbooks And Materials:

Atwan, Robert.   Convergences: message, method, medium .   2nd ed., Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2005.

a writing handbook of your choice (one from last quarter, leftover from high school, etc.)

a folder/notebook for your informal writings (can also be used to turn in all drafts of your written work at the end of the quarter )

I recommend a flashdrive to back up your documents, or at least ask that you use your eportfolio to save drafts of your writing assignments.

access to a printer outside DE 308 : please find a printer on campus that you can use to print out your work for days on which we will be working with your drafts and for assignments which you are handing in to me.