Course Goals

English 420I is designed to prepare international students to be effective professional writers and communicators in the 21st-century workplace and in the age of online information. Like other English 420 sections, English 420I introduces you to the rhetorical principles and writing practices necessary for producing effective business documents, such as letters, memos, and reports.

English 420I has the same prerequisites and fulfills the same requirements as English 420 and will not be designated differently on your transcript. However 420I has been designed to fulfill three purposes for international students...

1. Provide international students the opportunity to practice writing in situations in which they negotiate two or more cultures.
2. Give international students the opportunity to work with other international students.
3. Address linguistic issues specific to nonnative speakers of English.

In general the business writing course will help you learn effective strategies for communicating with other people about and with technology, particularly in networked workplaces. You'll learn to...

• understand the rhetorical nature of writing
• identify writing roles
• identify potential complications in writing contexts
• consider audiences
• understand and create logical structures in text
• design visually effective documents
• user-test documents
• work in teams
• manage files and information

Textbook

Professional Writing Online (PWO) by James E. Porter, Patricia Sullivan, and Johndan Johnson-Eilola
($40.00)

This is an online textbook that is accompanied by an hardcopy handbook. You will need to purchase the handbook at University Bookstore or Follet's. The handbook will provide you a password that you will need to gain access into PWO.

Major Assignments

Employment Documents In this project you will build your professional persona by developing resumes and cover letters. You will want choose two organizations––one international, one in the United States––that you would like to be associated with for employment, professional development, an internship, or a co-op. You will start by writing a general resume which you will post to the web. Then you will write a resume and a cover letter designed specifically for one job. Additionally you will write documents that demonstrate your research and explain the rhetorical decisions that you have made or will make for developing these employment documents.

Digital Copyright Case In this fictitious case you will represent a dot.com company that specializes in raising awareness about world issues and promoting world music through downloadable mp3 files. Although your company mostly promotes artists trying to "break through," one of your successful clients, who has been paying close attention to the digital copyright cases in America (i.e., MP3.com and Napster.com) has written your company a letter explaining his/her preparation to take legal action against your company. Your company's president has asked you to do research and respond to this client; therefore, you will research the issues, write memos to and from your supervisor, and finally write a letter to this client.

Media Solutions Project For this collaborative project you will collaborate and compete with another group in the class by developing a recommendation for a real-world client who currently wants to improve his/her public relations with the Greater Lafayette community. You and your group will need to work together to determine the client's needs, research the best media strategies for connecting to the targeted audiences and develop a solution to your client's needs. This project will include extensive research, a recommendation report, a professional presentation and a prototype of your recommended media solution.

Three Means of Failing the Course related to Assignments

• Not completing a major assignment
• Major assignments will be given no credit if the assignment is not turned prior to the instructor returning the respective assignment to the class. This becomes the equivalent of not completing a major assignment
• An act of plagiarism (or other forms of academic dishonesty)

Other Assignments

There are a lot of smaller assignments that will help you prepare and prewrite for the larger assignments. Some of these assignments carry their own weight while others are part of your participation grade. These assignments include editing exercises, group activities and exercises, short memos, required
email postings, groupwork evaluations, and other short in- and out-of-class assignments.

Use these writing opportunities to your advantage instead of treating them as "busy work." A lot of the work that you do for these smaller assignments can be used directly in the final assignment; therefore, you will want to take these assignments seriously. This also gives you an opportunity to get serious feedback from the instructor on your work-in-progress. So, just fulfilling these assignments will often result in twice as much work.

Also, you will not receive credit for late or missing miscellaneous assignments or exercises that are no longer relevant. Some assignments are specific to a certain assignment, activity or time; therefore doing the work late does not benefit you. In such a case, the work will not be accepted late. Late work will only be accepted if you consult with the instructor prior to the class period in which the work is due.

Each small assignment and group work will be graded with a , +, –, or 0.

= You did the work satisfactorily, and on time. It will need some revisions or rethinking before the final assignment

+ = You demonstrated that you were engaged with the ideas, and turned it in on time. It will need very little revision before the final assignment

– = Your work demonstrates a misunderstanding of the assignment, minimal effort, shows that you did not do the assigned reading, or was not turned in on-time. Significant revision will be needed before the final assignment.

0= No submission.

Grading

The first two projects, Employment Documents and Digital Copyright Case, will be graded using portfolio style grading. However, due to the collaborative and individual responsibilities in the Media Solutions Project, each deliverable will be graded individually.

Portfolio Grading

For the Employment Documents and Digital Copyright Case, you will turn in several smaller deliverables over the period of the project on the assigned due dates. The instructor, upon receiving these deliverables, will only make comments on the deliverable and return it to the students. On the last day of the assignment, you will submit all of your designated assignments as hard copies in a manila folder. If you revise any of your assignments, you have to staple the revised version to a hard copy of the original version with the instructor's comments; if the original is not included, the revision will not be evaluated.

This style of grading allows the instructor to evaluate the process of your work––how the student's work developed throughout the project––instead of only grading each deliverable as a separate entity. The portfolio grades are final and there will be no further revision; therefore take into consideration the significant point total assigned to each portfolio assignment.

Grade Scale

Each deliverable and your final grade will be graded on a point scale*:

A = 90-100%
B = 80-89 %
C = 70-79 %
D = 60-69 %
F = 0-59 %

* = The instructor reserves the right to adjust this scale based on the students' performance throughout the semester. Any adjustments will never deny a student the grade that she/he earns based upon this posted scale.

The instructor will use the principles of Purpose, Product, and Production/Process (as described below) to make comments and determine the point value on the respective deliverable. Remember that each deliverable pertains to a new context; therefore how you address these principles in one
assignment may not be applicable in another.

PURPOSE: How effectively does the document accomplish its intended task for its intended purpose and audience?

• meet its goals and the demands of its context (both academic and organizational)? solve a problem or address a significant organizational need? help people? improve people's lives?
• provide a sound or viable argument in support of its arguments? use evidence to support its arguments?
• meet readers' needs? improve relations between people? provide relevant, useful, and
  accurate information?

PRODUCT: How well constructed is the document?

• orderly and coherent presentation of material?
• effective design and formatting? correctness?
• effective use of visuals?
• professional tone and style?

PRODUCTION/PROCESS: How effectively was the document produced?

• quality of planning, collaboration, research & invention, drafting, editing, proofreading?

Participation Grade

Your participation grade will be 10% of your overall grade (150 points). All students will start with approximately 85% of the possible participation points (130 points); this point total will be adjusted positively and negatively based upon homework, classwork and attendance using the plus, check, minus system described above.

Attendance

This class is programmatically capped at twenty students. I cannot add anybody during the first week and I will not add anybody after the second week.

Purdue University's policy requires that students attend every class. (There is no such thing as an official "excused absence" -- except an absence allowed by the instructor. See Purdue University policy for further information.) If a student does miss a class, for whatever reason, the student is responsible for making up any missed work.

You are required to "show up" for the course every class period, therefore pay attention to the calendar. Regular attendance is required in English 420I. In a writing class, you do much of the work in the classroom. Additionally, group work makes up 50% of the coursework, thus it is difficult to make up missed work. You are allowed four absences, excused or unexcused. More than four absences will result in failing the course. Plant trips are not excused absences. Also being late to class will be marked as a tardy and being excessively late (twenty minutes or more) will be counted as an absence.

Although group meetings outside of class will not be regulated like class attendance, show up for these meetings that you and your peers set up. Not only is this respectful, your grade will be affected based upon your peers' evaluation of your performance. Use the technology to your advantage for group work, such as e-mail.

Prerequisites

Students are required to have completed their first-year composition requirement. Ideally, students should plan to take English 420I in their sophomore or junior year. Seniors often do not have the time necessary to devote to the course.

Technology

Professional writing in the 21st century will be computer-based writing, and it is important that students learn to write using workplace writing technologies. For that reason, all sections of English 420 are taught in instructional computer classrooms. Therefore, before enrolling in English 420, students should have some prior experience with word processing in a GUI (graphic user interface) environment such as Windows or Macintosh. You should know how to surf the web, how to use POP3/IMAP e-mail (like Netscape Mail or Eudora), and how to address file transfer issues. You should have some familiarity with the applications in Microsoft Office, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You will need a Purdue career account (available to all students). Some web authoring experience would be helpful.

In order to participate fully in the course, you should have access to the technology platform, tools, and applications listed below -- or ones comparable. (Note: You might be able to work from home, if you have this or a comparable technology setup. If not, you can use available PUCC instructional labs on the Purdue campus. Most PUCC instructional labs have these or comparable programs available).

• Mac OS System 8 (or higher) OR Windows '97 (or higher)
• at least 200 mhz. computer with 48 MB RAM (recommended, but not absolutely necessary)
• Microsoft Office -- includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint (Office 98 recommended)
• Netscape Communicator 4.0.7, with Netscape Mail and Netscape Composer
• a web authoring tool -- Netscape Composer is available in all PUCC labs, but you can use any
  program that you are comfortable with (e.g., Dreamweaver, BBEdit, FrontPage)
• an e-mail program -- Netscape Mail is recommended, but you can use other POP3/IMAP mail programs like Eudora if you can work out the file transfer issues
• ethernet Internet connection (available on campus) or reasonably reliable home commercial service with a 33K or 56K modem

Most importantly, you need to be patient and willing to work on problems (i.e., file transfer issues) that will inevitably occur. You should be willing to work with others in the class to solve the problems that will arise. The course requires a willingness to be experimental and a curiosity about the virtual and other writing technologies.

Electronica

Word Processing
You should use MS Word (6.0/95,97,98, 2000/2001) to compose or save your documents that you will send as an attachment. When you save your to-be-attached assignments you will want to name the assignment to clearly distinguish the person who sent the file and what work you are sending. To do this, please follow the following template for submitting files

[First Three Letters of Last Name]-[Assignment Acronym].[File Type]

ex. DEP-SUM.doc

• Remember this is the attached file name, not just the subject line.
  
• The Assignment Acronym will be available on the calendar as the assignment is posted.
  
• The ".doc" or ".ppt" is often needed to transfer files successfully, especially across platforms).
  
• Files that do not comply with this template will be returned unevaluated.

You are expected to produce high-quality professional documents. A part of that quality is the appearance of your work. Neatness, visual appeal, and mechanical and grammatical correctness do matter - though they do not by themselves guarantee that a document is well written. If turning in a hard copy text, laser printing (typically, 600 dpi) is now the standard for business writing documents, and it is the requirement for English 420. Your documents should have appropriate margins, spacing, pagination, and formatting. Also electronic documents submitted to your instructor as an e-mail attachment must also adhere to professional standards of neatness, visual clarity, readability, and correctness.

Protecting Your Work
Backup your files frequently; use disks or your Career Account. Also keep your files on your home machine. And perhaps, too, keep your files on a floppy. The excuse "that was my only copy" is not a valid one. Also, save all English 420 work until the course is over. Maintain copies of drafts and work-in-progress for group work. Keep copies of your e-mail messages related to the course as a record of your work. For all messages that you send to the instructor, you should either have the message sent to your "Sent" Folder in your email account or cc: yourself the message so that you have a copy for verification.

E-mail Accounts
Having an e-mail account is required; a lot of information for this class will be exchanged through e-mail––including submissions of assignments and class updates. You will want to establish a consistent e-mail account that you will use throughout the entire semester. Because of the listserv, you will need to have your a Purdue account (@purdue.edu) You may have your email forwarded to other alternative accounts (e.g., ecn.purdue.edu, hotmail, yahoo), but note that these account have been known to cause file transfer problems. You are responsible for making sure that files and messages are successfully received by the instructor and your peers. Also these alternative email accounts do not support the professional persona you are developing in this course.

E-mailing
When e-mailing the instructor or the the class listserv make sure that you include a subject line that includes the nature of the e-mail. A subject line, such as "homework" is vague. Instead be specific and state whether it is a "homework submission," "homework clarification," or "homework problem." Also use the priority setting rhetorically; in other words, make your email message stand out when you really want to draw a person's attention to your message.

Listserv
A listserv has been set up to make announcements, exchange information, and discuss issues raised in the class. Also, post questions about homework and assignments to the listserv because in most cases, all students will have the same question. Your official enrollment in this class will automatically subscribe you to the listserv.

Printing
Do not print while the instructor is lecturing. You should also print of documents before you come to class. When you print out web pages, reduce the print size to 75% or 80% (under File–>Page Setup). This saves paper and also enables you to fit web pages more easily on paper.

Keeping Up

• Check your e-mail daily to keep up with announcements.
• Check the calendar every Sunday evening for new updates for the next two weeks.
• If you are going to miss class, inform the instructor ahead of the missed class to find out what will occur on that day.

Electronic Ethics and Respect
Electronic media allows us some freedoms that print media does not allow. Consequently, it is also subject to abuse. Please be respectful of your peers throughout the semester by not displaying, viewing, or posting web pages, files, or e-mails that may make others uncomfortable. Violations of this respect can be considered harassment according to university policy and will be handled as such.

Ethics, Plagiarism, and the Use of Sample Documents

You must do your own original work in English 420 -- and appropriately identify that portion of your work which is collaborative with others, or which is borrowed from others, or which is your own work from other contexts. Whenever you borrow graphics, quote passages, or use ideas from others, you are legally and/or ethically obliged to acknowledge that use, following appropriate conventions for documenting sources. In English 420, the most serious form of academic dishonesty is to recycle another's major project under your own name.

You may revise work that you have done or are doing in other courses, or at work, as long as it meets the following conditions:

• it is your own work,
• you plan an extensive revision for English 420, and
• you have informed, and have the approval of, your instructor

Among your electronic and print course materials will be numerous samples of the kinds of documents you will be writing in English 420, including samples from previous English 420 students. These are not boilerplates that you should use to fill in your own information. Instead these models will be discussed in terms of their effective and ineffective writing techniques. Use these techniques or principles that we discuss to inform how you draft your documents. Do not forget other documents are written for other contexts; therefore, they are never directly transferable.

Last Updated 11.11.01

available at http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pepepew/420i.s/