ENGL 281

Intermediate Expository Writing

Course Introduction

Overview

The purpose of this course is to help you to write prose essays with enhanced clarity and power. It is assumed that many of you are competent writers already, with some background in grammar, punctuation, and style, hoping to become more proficient. You write correctly, but now you want to write with added vitality and strength. Or perhaps you feel that you require guidance in basic ground rules as well as in more advanced stylistic techniques. In either case, this course will provide you with the opportunity to write a series of prose essays, will supplement your writing with helpful background reading in Writing Well, and will involve continuous instructor feedback. Please remember that this course focuses on the prose essay only. It is not intended for students seeking practice and instruction in composing poetry, plays, short stories, journals, or novels.

Objectives

The specific course objectives for English 281 include the following:

• mastery of the principles of good grammar and punctuation;
• effective word choice;
• expressive, varied, and rhythmical sentence structure;
• well-designed and unified paragraphing;
• use of various patterns of exposition to help to clarify concepts and to organize information;
• working knowledge of the various techniques of written argument; and
  sensitivity to the overall design, unity, and architecture of a good essay.

Course Organization

Step by step, you will be introduced to the principles of good essay writing through a series of reading assignments and written exercises. This course begins with the basics. Then by degrees you will be introduced to more sophisticated essay techniques.

If it has been years since you wrote a prose essay and submitted it for critical review, your handling of what we sometimes term the "mechanics" of writing—the commas, parentheses, colons, and semicolons, not to mention the principles of good grammar and the proper incorporation of quoted material into the text—may be unsteady. Accordingly, Lesson One has been designed to ensure a review of grammar, punctuation, and the other fundamentals of mechanically correct prose. Most writers, even those who have taken a writing course relatively recently, can benefit from a run-through of basic principles to bolster existing skills.

In Lessons Two through Five, reading assignments in Writing Well will address progressively more sophisticated aspects of essay writing. These assignments will generally be followed by

1. Self-study exercises that you will not hand in but that are designed to heighten your sensitivity to principles and techniques addressed in your textbook. Similar exercises will be included in your final examination.
2. An essay on a topic of your choice in which you put the principles presented in your textbook to work. Only the essay will be submitted for evaluation and a grade.

Lesson Six—the final examination—consists of exercises drawn from or similar to those that you will do at the end of each chapter, and a short essay (on an assigned topic) to be composed under the supervision of a proctor. Although you will not be allowed to bring either notes or Writing Well to the exam, the essay topic assigned will be broad and will not require specialized knowledge. In most cases, I will weigh the final exam equally with the other five assignments when I determine your grade. You will have plenty of time to plan and compose your final essay, and the added pressure of writing in an exam situation will be considered in the evaluation of this final exercise. It is assumed, however, that the quality of your final essay will not depart too markedly from that of your earlier essays. In cases of huge and obvious discrepancy, I reserve the right to alter your course grade accordingly. You are expected to hand in your own writing throughout this course.

Progress in a writing course is generally slow and difficult to measure. If you put forth sufficient effort, however, and if you follow this syllabus at a reasonably steady pace, your writing should improve in a number of tangible, satisfying ways. Use the planning calendar included in the syllabus materials to schedule your assignments and plan for the final exam.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor. We encourage you to use the forum to exchange ideas, resources, and comments about your course work with other students in this course. This unstructured forum is monitored by your instructor.
• You can use e-mail to ask me a question or preferably post your question on the discussion forum. I will reply there.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

Crafting Your Essays

Generally, I leave your essay topics up to you (but please see Assignment 2 for a list of specific suggestions). Write about what interests you in such a manner that you, in turn, have made an effort to interest your reader. Countless topics should come to mind. If, however, an inviting topic does not emerge, give yourself one or two days to go about your daily routine without forcing yourself into a choice. One of the advantages of taking a distance learning course is that you may hand in assignments at your own pace. Take advantage of this flexibility.

Once you have found your topic, I encourage you to learn to write slowly, the way a professional author would write, lavishing lots of time on the choice of a single metaphor or the rhythm and structure of a particular sentence. The art of writing is in large measure the art of patience. The human mind is simply too fallible an instrument to be trusted to produce good writing at assembly-line speed. Writing is a time-consuming craft. Preliminary combinations of words are tested and found wanting. Still other combinations are tried, until slowly the composition takes form after many frustrating hours of revision and minute change. This, however, is a guarantee: if you permit yourself to write slowly, taking an entire morning or even an entire day to work a single page into shape, you will be giving yourself the chance to craft language into sentences and paragraphs that you may never have thought yourself capable of achieving. If, on the other hand, you race your prose against the clock, your chances of producing an effective essay are greatly diminished.

Accordingly, you are not encouraged to hand in reams of mediocre prose. Rather, you are encouraged to lavish lots of time on relatively short, three-page essays (typed and double-spaced) exhibiting close attention to the minute details of style. If you are reading the assignments in your textbook and are truly absorbing them, you will discover that a good, three-page essay may well take many hours to compose. You will find yourself spotting scores of subtle mistakes that you might otherwise have overlooked but that are marring the impact of your prose, however subliminally. You will furthermore become aware of new strategies and techniques, and you will want to take the time to try them out. You will discover, for example, how you can use the grammatical scaffolding of the sentence to create mood, to induce suspense, and to heighten the impact of your meaning. You will experiment with metaphors, grow sensitive to rhythm, and learn the various ways to shape a paragraph. Effective style, you will discover, is not achieved in a hit-or-miss fashion and is by no means wholly mysterious and intuitive

Procedures

One of the most important instructional components of this course is the individualized commentary that I will provide you on each of your essays. Accordingly, you are requested to await the return of one written assignment before submitting another. I will try to get each essay back to you as rapidly as possible, but since this tends to be a heavily enrolled course, you should expect that it may take about two weeks to receive my comments. Plan to use this turn-around time productively. This is an ideal time to commence your next reading assignment in your textbook, to absorb and to digest it, and to prepare a checklist of points that you want to keep in mind as you draft your next essay

Grading

The grade you receive for written assignments will always be based upon the overall impact of your essay. I will consider correctness in grammar and punctuation, stylistic polish, overall organization, and choice of subject, but I will pay particular attention each time to the principles specifically covered in your textbook reading assignment.

Assignment Submission Guidelines

Please see the "About Your Instructor" page on the course syllabus for information about submitting assignments, and your instructor's contact information.

Selective Bibliography

If you would like additional resources, here are some suggestions. Most of these should be available through used book shops in earlier editions at reasonable prices. For our purposes, having a specific edition isn't significant.

Resources to Enhance Diction

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Probably too expensive to purchase but available at most large libraries. This dictionary is huge, awesome, fascinating and complex. Traces the history of every word in the English language, indicating surprising shifts in a word's meaning over the centuries.

Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. New York: Random House, 1990. Extensive listing of synonyms. Helpful in developing a finely nuanced vocabulary with words and phrases available for almost all shadings and tones. A must on your purchase list if you plan to write professionally.

Webster's College Dictionary. New York: Random House, 1992. Probably the best college dictionary available. Reasonably priced.

Guides to Mechanics

The following handbooks focus primarily on footnoting, bibliography, the preparation of charts and tables, and other matter essential to research paper writing:

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. New York: Modern Language Association, 1995.

The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003. Large, thorough, but expensive.

The following handbooks focus primarily on grammar, punctuation, and spelling, with some attention to usage and style:

Gefvert, Constance J. The Confident Writer: A Norton Handbook. New York: Norton, 1988.

Hodges, John C. Harbrace College Handbook. 12th ed. New York: HarBrace, 1993.

Short, Informal, and Eminently Readable Books on Improving One's Style—Classics in Their Field

Lanham, Richard A. Style: An Anti-Textbook. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974.

Strunk, William and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

Guidance in Writing with the Word Processor

Heim, Michael. Electric Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989. Sophisticated discussion of a subject often handled naively and superficially.

Guidance in Technical Writing

Samuels, Marilyn Schauer. The Technical Writing Process. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989. Widely praised in book reviews. Many consider this the best book available on this subject.

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