English 101 is the primary transfer-level English composition course. It is designed to help a student develop increased competence in writing which is lively, informative and carefully structured; increased competence in research techniques and documentation; increased competence in critical thinking and reading. This 3-unit course is fully transferrable to both UC and CSU.

who took the box?
the theme of this section of English 101

The focus of this section of English 101 is looking closely at the world around us in fresh and different ways. We have a lot of assumptions about the nature of life, the universe, and everything, but many of our ideas are things we have never really challenged or even thought about. We believe a lot of things because we have been told them, and we sometimes just accept what we are told. Consider that one of the most defining beliefs in many people's lives is religion. How many people know and will sometimes fight to the death the idea that Hinduism is the one true religion or that Christianity is the one true religion or that the Native American Church is the one true religion? Now, how many of those people believe this just because their parents told them, "You are a Hindu? You are a Christian? You are a member of the Native American Church?" Stop and consider how many people there are in the world. There are that many perspectives about what is true and real in the world. Based on different backgrounds, different experiences, different strengths/weaknesses, different imaginations, there are billions of "truths" in the world, and our job, in college/university, is to try to understand and be able to articulate more and more of them.

This semester you will be expected to look incredibly closely at everything from video games to Barbie dolls. You'll chart past and current trends and speculate on the future, all the while trying to analyze the significance of this stuff that seems so common and insubstantial but which actually is the material signaling many of our values and ideas. We are going to explore many ways people are trying to break free from conventional thinking; ideally we will not only think outside the box, with luck we may lose sight of that box entirely.

This is not a class in personal beliefs or opinions or abstractions or vague, general thoughts. It is a course in concrete details, examples, incidents. You WILL make a number of claims about the world and the things in it this semester.

What I will always require you to do is to back up those claims with evidence.

General Nature of the Course

This course functions very much like a correspondence course; the chief difference is the electronic environment and your relatively immediate access to your instructor (me). Also instead of students submitting work on paper, assignments are submitted, commented upon and returned via e-mail; lecture material, course deadlines, assignment information are available via the internet.

Lectures: There are a series of online Lectures on topics related to your reading and writing. Be sure to read the lecture material for each week listed because this should help you to understand what some of my expectations and special concerns are about your reading and writing.

Class Schedule: You will need to regularly keep track of assignment (reading and writing) due dates by referring to the Class Schedule. It is up to you to keep up with assignment deadlines. I highly recommend that you bookmark the Schedule page.

Essays: Much of your grade is based on your written assignments. There are detailed instructions on how to produce and submit essays on the class Writing Assignments page. Read over this material very carefully; there are requirements on length, file format, MLA format, etc. that you need to know. Specific paper topic instructions can be reached through the links on the Class Schedule page or the Writing Assignments page.

Class Discussions: The rest of your grade will be based on class discussions of certain questions relating to the readings. Discussions will be conducted with the entire class on an Canvas message board (more information is available on the Discussions page). Be sure that you read this page thoroughly so that you can earn maximum discussion points.

Student Learning Objectives

Student who complete this course successfully should, minimally, be able to

Student Responsibilities

Your responsibilities for this course are really the same as those of any student taking any course with the following addition: you have to keep reminding yourself what is required (assignment dates, rules, etc.) because you don't have an instructor in the front of a room reminding you every class.

If you do not agree to all of the above requirements, do not take this course.

Textbooks, Hardware and Software

                Required Texts

  1. I will have several readings available to you on Canvas in the Files section. These are not optional readings, and, in fact, many of the assignments you do absolutely require you to quote and cite directly from these readings. In addition to those readings, there are also two books you must have:

  2. There are two novels for the course, but you only need to choose/read one (see the sidebar - the pinkish box on the right). Here are the two books:

    3. You actually have a choice!

    There are two novels to choose from for this class. You can go to Amazon and actually look them up; they both have a "Look Inside" feature. They do loosely relate to other parts of the course, but I, personally, would select the book based on which one seemed the most interesting to me once I looked inside.

    It's totally up to you :)

    Special Side Note: the audiobooks for both are terrific!

    A Man Called Ove       Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

  3. Although it's not exactly a textbook, the Purdue OWL website is something you may want to refer to often for information on research and MLA format; if you have an up-to-date (with MLA 2016 changes) writing handbook, that will work fine instead of Purdue OWL, and much of the format information is also avaialble in the Files section on Canvas.

                Important Note About Hardware

Please do not try to take this class completely on your phone. Smart phones are fantastic and useful and flexible, but they are not the right tool for typing essays in a specific format.

I also strongly recommend against a tablet, but if you have a full-featured one with necessary software loaded and a keyboard connected, that will probably work.

You don't need anything fancy. A Chromebook (or similar flash drive computer) will work perfectoly well. Since storage is minimal on a Chromebook, I do recommend you save things to a thumb drive, though.

                Required Software

You do need some sort of browser (such as FireFox or Chrome or Safari), an e-mail program and word processing software.

You will need to be able to open/read .docx (Word) and .pdf files; most readings on Canvas are stored in one of these standard formats. If you do not have a .pdf reader on your computer, you can download Adobe READER (not the expensive Acrobat) for free.

DO NOT send me files via Google DOCS or on OneDrive for Business. Yes, Google is convenient, but the required MLA format is often lost in Google DOCS, and papers not in the corrrect format will not be accepted. Files must be sent as Word (.docx) or .pdf files, so please download Word to your computer OR make sure you can Save As one of those two formats. Again, both are standard.

There is no reason for you not to use Word. Every student in the LACCD has access to Word 365 for FREE. Click here for information on accessing the free Student Version of Word 365. You can also set up (and forward) your student e-mail here; Announcements to the Class go to your school e-mail account, so you must either look at that regularly or have the mail forwarded to your private e-mail account.

More on how to submit your essays, how to set up your papers in MLA format, etc. can be found here on our Writing Assignments page.

Grading

Each assignment will receive a point score; letter grades are based on percentages (90-100% = A; 80-89% = B; etc.); for example, if a discussion is worth 20 points possible, and if you score a 16, then you have scored 80% which equals a B for that assignment.

At the end of the semester, your overall score will be converted into a percentage of the points possible for the entire course to determine your letter grade for the course.

Grades will be available for view on Canvas.

For more information about what constitutes an "A" paper (or not), click here. Note: if you would like to see what an "A" paper for this class looks like, there are links to sample papers from both the grades page and the writing assignments page.

And for specific information on extra credit, revisions, essay requirements, visit the class Writing Assignments page; for more details on how to score high on class discussions, visit the class Discussion page.