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| hope college > academic departments > english |
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English 113 Expository Writing I Variants
Testing-out of English 113—
IF YOU . . . For those who had excellent writing courses in high school and did well in them, it is possible to receive credit for English 113 by examination. An information sheet describing the exam is available from the English department office (Lubbers 338) or on line (english/courses/113testout info). The exam is taken by appointment—to schedule a time, call the English Department Office Manager (x7620), or email her (english@hope.edu), or talk to her in the English department office (Lubbers 338). The exam will include exercises on grammar and style, an in-class essay, a component on library usage, and submission of two papers from high school, including a research paper (if you might take this exam, bring two papers with you to campus). The fee is $75.00 (cash or check). If you want a literature course your first semester, one option is to list English 248--Introduction to Literature (4 credits) on the worksheet. It does not meet a core requirement, but is the first step in the sequence toward an English major or minor. AP scores won't be available till late summer. If you took an AP exam, the English Department will send you a letter in August letting you if you have received college credit and for what course the credit will be given. As far as registration is concerned, don’t list 113; pay attention to the three paragraphs above; alterations can be made during the first few days of school. If you have any concerns, please write or phone (616-394-7620 or use Hope's 800 number and ask for the English Department). Our goal is to place all students in the right courses. Course Descriptions This course will help you develop the building blocks of expository writing:
formulating a thesis, organizing paragraphs, refining style, and perfecting
research techniques. You will learn the power of writing by constructing
essays that respond to college-level reading assignments, that offer solid
arguments in support of your ideas, and that are smart about grammar, mechanics,
and format.
Watch for description, coming soon. .03 — Crime and Punishment Did your mom or dad or grandparents take this same course from me? I have
offered it for 36 years; only the books and faces have changed. This is
your chance to play Erin Brockovich or James Bond or Ralph Nader or Agatha
Christie, hot on the trail of clues leading to the exposure of past or
current problems of law and order, cops and robbers, race and gender, crime
and pun¬ishment. Read¬ings, written exercises and experiments,
composi¬tions, research projects, inter¬views, discussions, and
classroom capers will focus on such signifi¬cant issues as prison conditions,
crimes against women and minorities, biological terrorism, drinking laws,
the Holocaust, environmen¬tal crimes. With luck and skill, you may
write the perfect crime or, at least, the perfect expository essay.
Writing biographical and autobiographical essays may appear to be simple: you just tell what happened. But there are bigger questions to consider. What, for example, makes a life story worth telling? Who is important enough to become the subject of a biography? Who is egotistical enough to think that others will want to read about her life? And how about this one: when you tell the story of a life, do you skip over the ordinary and boring parts? Do you embellish the exciting moments? Do you tell the truth, or do you shape the truth? Writers who choose this course will read three biographies or autobiographies, and will write parts of their own lives (true or shaped). The major writing project will be the biography of a person born in1967 or earlier. Like all 113 sections, this one will emphasize writing skills–you’ll write more in this course than in any other this semester, and that’s not an exaggeration. In addition, you will hone your research skills–and your familiarity with VanWylen Library–by finding and using factual information in your shorter papers and in the long biographical essay.
Watch for description, coming soon. .06 — Good and Evil in the Fiction of Stephen King Is Stephen King a “good” writer—or is his tremendous popularity just a sign of the depraved tastes of contemporary America? Should his fiction be considered “literature”—and does it belong in the college classroom? Does he engage—intellectually, morally, spiritually—any serious issues, or should he be discredited as trash? These questions will underlie our discussions, and we will concentrate on two of King’s novels, The Shining and The Green Mile, to try to sort out his concepts of human nature, American culture, the tradition of gothic horror, and the good and evil. We’ll also take in a few film versions of King’s work. But we will also consider King as a fellow writer, involved as we are in thinking, studying, doing research, and learning to convey meaning through words. Lots of reading, writing, conversations. Not for the timid.
Are you confident that the barrage of information you are receiving about nutrition and exercise is accurate? How do you know which claims to believe? How can you make scientifically-informed decisions to prevent or lose the “freshman fifteen” and to prevent digging your grave with your fork? What nutritional and lifestyle choices are backed with gold standard research? Atkins? South Beach? Low-fat? Grapefruit? Vegan? What about vitamin supplements? Do we need them? Can they be dangerous? What about exercise? How do we make time in our busy lives to fit in daily exercise? How much? How little? What kind? Help!!!! Are there any simple answers? This course will investigate a topic that is featured in the news and drives many of the cultural and scientific debates of our day—from national concerns about the rise in obesity and food-related diseases like diabetes, to local issues like school lunch programs and farmers’ markets, to family matters like “What’s for dinner?” To enhance our investigation we will read Dr. T. Colin Cambell’s “The China Study”—the largest and most scholarly nutritional study ever conducted. We will also view several films and welcome guest speakers—vegetarians, vegans and fitness trainers—to find out why they have made the nutritional and activity choices they have made. We will explore controversies around wellness to make educated and intelligent decisions about how to eat and maintain fitness levels so that we live healthy lives. Class activities will involve keeping an on-going focused journal, writing essays, and conducting collaborative or individual research. Writing workshops and peer review will help us revise our essays in order to create a portfolio to showcase our own original writing.
.10 — American Presidency The American Presidency reflects and influences the way Americans think about themselves. We like to portray our presidents as idealized character types such as the father, the military hero, the farmer, the frontiersman, the self-made man, and, more recently, the movie star and the athlete. We ask our presidents to represent a fairly consistent set of character traits such as courage, industry, honesty, integrity, humility, warmth, reverence, strength, patriotism, charisma, and optimism. Whether they succeed or fail, our presidents become symbols by which we judge the spirit of the age and the health of the body politic. Which character traits are important for an American president? How do they relate to the realities of the office? Does presidential mythmaking threaten or sustain our democratic culture? Which character will be elected this year and why? Focusing on Washington, Lincoln, TR, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and the contenders in "Campaign 2008," the course will examine both texts and images: presidential speeches, campaign materials, historical studies, cartoons, portraits, and literary tributes, as well as feature films and documentaries. Topics will include the office, presidential personality and character, historical mythology, images and the media, political oratory, the "First Couple," abuse of power and impeachment, and predictions about the future of American political culture. .09 — Hip Hop Globe What is your perception of rap music and Hip Hop culture? Do you recognize the various forms that exist within the genre? Some of the subgenres include narrative, threnody, ballad, party anthem, autobiography, politics, ensemble, spiritual, and self-aggrandizement. Lyricism has come a long way from the boogie-down Bronx in the 1970s! Now artists spit in a multitude of languages—Spanish, Italian, Swahili, German, Japanese, and French, to name a few. In this course students will read, listen, investigate, research, and write about rap music from artists inside and outside of the United States. Don't worry. We will listen to as much English-speaking global rap as we can. The course has two components: 1) the external contribution of international rap artists to the global Hip-Hop community and, 2) the integration of their value systems and cultural aesthetics to make their music distinct. Students will be required to complete weekly reading and writing assignments along with a writing portfolio and presentation. .11 — Wit, Wisdom and Wizardry: The Fine Arts of Making Difficult
Decisions When you have to make a difficult decision, how do you proceed? Do you carefully analyze the circumstances and rationally weigh your options? Do you cry, “It’s not my fault!” and lash out at the world that forced the decision upon you? Do you close your eyes, grit your teeth, and just accept whatever wild ride you’re on, vaguely hoping for the best? In this class, we’ll read several novels together, looking at how
different characters approach the process of decision-making. We’ll
discuss different factors that affect their decisions, from family expectations
and gender issues, to friendships and special talents. We’ll write
about ourselves and how we make our own decisions, as well as about these
characters and what we can learn from them. Writing for this course will
include daily reading responses, several short essays and a research paper.
If you want to become a confident writer, this is the class for you. Become adept at developing the building blocks of expository writing: formulating a thesis, organizing paragraphs, refining style, and perfecting research techniques. Learn the persuasive power of writing by constructing essays using rhetorical patterns such as cause/effect, comparison/contrast, explication, and argument. This is a combination lecture/workshop class focused on writing fundamentals. In addition to classroom discussion, you will be in the computer lab perfecting your drafts by applying stylistic strategies introduced during the course. You will polish your “works in progress” throughout the semester and submit them in a portfolio at the end of the term. .13 — The American War in Vietnam .14 — The Will to Survive After all, isn’t that what life is all about anyway—surviving? To what extent do human beings fight to survive? To what lengths and extremes will we go to cling to life? What is the limit of our hanging on? In this English 113 section, participants will read, discuss, and be asked to write in response to literature that exemplifies humankind’s desire to survive. To inspire our discussing and writing, we will explore three nonfiction pieces of “survival” literature. Titles include In Harm’s Way by Doug Stanton, Alive by Piers Paul Read, and Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody. And, speaking of survival, a major goal of this class will be to help you “survive” the writing that will be demanded of you in the real life of college and beyond; therefore, in response to our reading, we’ll explore and practice writing that narrates, persuades, reviews, informs, profiles, and/or entertains. Class time will be spent discussing the assigned literature and (to a greater extent) responding to and helping each other with the writing we create—in pairs, in small groups, and as a whole class. We will also spend time learning together through informal lectures, student presentations, in-class writing, reading our writing aloud, and individual student-teacher conferences. We’ll choose from different types of writing in order to create some final products, and eventually, we’ll create a more in-depth research project. .15 — Jurassic Park and Other Stories by Michael Crichton Like the movie? Want to read the book? In this course we'll read Jurassic Park and at least one other novel by Michael Crichton, and we'll see the film adaptations of them. We'll use the stories themselves as a way to generate topics for a series of essays; and we'll use novel/film comparison as the basis for a discussion of the sorts of things that control the process of revision. Students will have the opportunity to revise their papers throughout the semester (but not, I think, into cinematographic form).
In this class, we consider the nature of identity through your writing
and through the writing of professionals like neuroscientist Oliver Sacks,
science writer Jonah Lehrer, and poet and prose writer Dianne Ackerman.
We use one key text and a number of ancillary texts to develop questions
for further research. You keep a journal, workshop rough drafts of your
essays, and participate in discussions about the readings. In addition,
you gain expertise in library and computer research methods. Evaluation
reflects your development as a writer as well as you in-class contributions. This course explores American lives by focusing on key themes of American life: the American Dream, work and play, frontiers, and the meanings of citizenship. What is the American Dream, who is included in it, how did it develop over time? How do our notions of work and play impact our own lives? What was the effect of the western frontier on the development of the country and its values? Where is the West and what is a Western? Finally, who is a citizen and what does citizenship require of us? Are there those who are excluded from full citizenship and why? To consider these questions and more, we will be using a variety of interdisciplinary evidence, including literature, biography, film, and historical sources. Finally, this class is an occasion to learn to write clearly, persuasively, and with authority. To that end, class time will be devoted primarily to discussion and writing workshops.
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