What Is Writing? An Introduction to College Writing in the 21st Century FALL 2014

Dear Students!

I’m thrilled to see that so many of you have been able to a/ navigate the CUNY IT system infrastructure and b/ sign-up for the Open Lab!  Welcome!!!!  I hope everyone has taken the time to admire Barry’s very impressive avatar image.  One wonders if this image is one he found or one he self-produced.  Either way, it should inspire us all to find a suitably descriptive avatar for ourselves on the OL.  Thanks to all of you for all of the replies to the Week 1 GAs.

All best,

Prof. Rodgers

p.s.  I admire and I am intrigued by all of the avatars, not JUST Barry’s, so I hope you will check out all of the ones that have been posted and puzzle over their various and possible meanings and significations.

Dear Students,

I’m very sorry that we ran out of time today before we had a chance to discuss the Week 1 Assignments.  Obviously, the main thing I can say about this week’s work is, “do your best.”  We are all still getting to know each other and we will discuss more specifics about formats and expectations for these assignments next Tuesday.  In the meantime, regarding the LJ, you can write these in a notebook or type them up and keep them on your computer.  These assignments are structured free writing assignments, and the idea is that YOU are the primary audience for these assignments.  RWAs, on the other hand, need to follow MLA formatting guidelines.  You can submit these either electronically via our Bb site, or by printing them out on paper.

Please DO NOT HESITATE to e-mail me with any questions that you have about the Week 1 assignments:  jrodgers@citytech.cuny.edu

It was great meeting all of you and I’ll look forward to working with you this semester.

All best,

Prof. Rodgers

Please take a look around the OpenLab and our Course Web site.

Please introduce yourself by replying to the this blog post.  Make sure to include your NAME, your MAJOR, and a few things about yourself that you’d like to share with the class.  PLEASE also include  three questions that you’d like your classmates to answer and reply to the questions of  at least TWO of your classmates.

Please read over the course syllabus and comment on this BLOG POST by listing three SPECIFIC questions that you have about our syllabus. For instance, “Why are we reading x instead of y?”; “What does the term ‘rhetoric’ mean?”; etc. ALSO: Please reply to at least one person’s BLOG post, either by answering his/her question, or by expanding on one of his/her questions.

After deciding which English Handbook (Good Writing Made Simple or the Open Access Handbook, or possibly another English handbook that you already own) you will be using for this course, please reply to this BLOG POST by explaining which English Handbook you will  be using for this course and why  you chose the one you did.

Dear Students,

Each week, I will ask one of you to post your notes from our Tuesday class session, and to make a list of ten to fifteen keywords discussed.  Since I did not ask any of you to post your notes from this week’s class meeting, I am making the post.  Unfortunately, I was not taking notes, so I cannot post those.  However, I can post my list of keywords.  If anyone would like to post some notes, please feel free to do so by replying to this post.  Also, please let me know if you feel any of the keywords listed should be removed or others added.

All best,

Prof. Rodgers

Keywords from Week 1 (which is actually the second week of the semester, but which we are calling Week 1 just to simplify matters).  Please make sure that you have a working definition of each of these terms.  If not, please make sure to make a note of what questions you have about these terms so we can talk about your questions on the Open Lab.

Rhetoric
Rhetorical question
Rhetorical context
Aristotelian rhetorical triangle and it’s associated terms (writer/speaker, audience, purpose)
Denotative definition
Connotative definition
Metaphorical
Titles and their functions in various pieces and genres of writing
Genre
Nonfiction and the genres associated with it (essays, articles, proposals, memos, grocery lists, billing statements, wills, birth certificates, letters, emails)
MLA/APA/NBA