English 1B Online, Spring 2009

Course Code: 53600

Instructor: S. Bowie

Email: sydney.bowie@reedleycollege.edu

Welcome to English 1B at Reedley College!

English 1B is a literature survey and composition course that is designed to follow English 1A. Students will be introduced to four major literary genres: short story, novel, poetry, and drama. It is a three unit course, which is fully transferable to University of California and California State University and most other public and private four-year colleges and universities.

Students are required to read approximately 100 pages per week and to write papers related to the reading assignments. They will also be discussing the literature on the Blackboard web site, which is our electronic forum and virtual classroom, so it is important to keep up with the reading. Students should plan to spend 10-12 hours a week on this course, reading, writing and discussing the literature for the class. Students need to access the computer each day to read lectures, check the assignment schedule, post on the Discussion forum, look through and respond to email, or write a paper. Students may do these activities on their own schedule-on-line courses take place at all hours-but students must be organized enough not to fall behind.

BlackBoard Discussion: Students should post three messages a week to the Bb discussion forum.

Attendance: Attendance is taken by messages posted to the discussion forum. Students who are absent for two weeks will be dropped.

Midterm and final: Information about the midterm and final will be made available well in advance of those tests.

Last Day to drop without a grade: March 7

Texts:

• Backpack Literature, an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama-2d Edition, -X.J.(or Joe) Kennedy (ISBN-13: 978-0-205-55103-30
• Bartleby and Benito Cereno, Melville
• Favorite Poems, Wordsworth-Dover Edition
• Daisy Miller,. Henry James (available in most bookstores, libraries)

Essays on literature topics: Students will write three papers relating to the reading assignments. The papers will vary in length but the general standard is 500-700 words. Specific topics will be assigned. The paper will never be a summary of the work assigned, but will reflect the student's thoughts and analysis of the reading assignment.

Novel Papers: At the end of each unit, students will write a longer (750 word) paper on the novels studied. The last paper will incorporate literary criticism and research.

Online Reading Quizzes: Four short quizzes based on the reading assignments. The dates and times for these will be posted in advance.

Assignment	Points Each	Total Points
Three Essays	50	150
Two novel papers	50	100
Weekly participation in Discussion Forum	5 each week for weeks 2-17	75
Midterm and Final	50	100
Online Quizzes	25	100
Online Reading Quizzes	25	50
Total Points Possible*		575

*Assignments and points may be changed a little--each class is different, but this table shows my intentions.

Grades: 90%=A; 80%=B; 65%=C; 50%=D

Note on grades: missing papers receive no points. Late papers are not accepted without penalty; contact me if you have an extraordinary situation. Computer problems are the students' responsibility. Make sure you have a good connection and back-up. Discussion (Blackboard) grades are awarded at the midterm and the final; the scores are based on quality and quantity (students need to post three messages a week) of students' messages. It's a subjective grade based on my careful reading of the discussion--it is very clear which students are contributing thoughtful entries.

Revised: 11 Dec 08 by S.Bowie