Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to
Literature. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, New
Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003.
NOTE: This book may not be available in the college bookstore, but is available in the reference section of the college library. It may be ordered from amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or other bookstores. The ninth edition is the most recent, but earlier editions will be equally useful for the
course assignments.
INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES
- Weekly assigned readings from the textbook
- Eight by-weekly essays
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS
- Complete the assigned readings from the textbook
- Submit eight essays of at least four hundred words by the dates specified below.
Reading Assignments
The reading assignments for each week will be posted on my Website. You will be asked to read from forty to fifty pages a week in most cases. Sometimes the assignments are shorter. However, there are a few times when the reading
assignments may exceed fifty pages. Therefore, you should take
advantage of the weeks when the reading assignments are light by
reading ahead.
Essay Assignments
Essay assignments based on your reading are posted on my Website. These assignments may focus on an author's ideas, language, or a literary form or device. For example, if a poem contains examples of metaphors, I may ask you to define the term, identify the metaphors in the poem, and comment on how the metaphors contribute to the overall meaning of the poem. In doing research to define a literary or rhetorical term, use the sources listed on my Links page as well as A Handbook to Literature or similar books from the library.
This is a literature course and you are expected to read the assignments. That means all of them. If three stories are assigned, then read all three. When you write your essay, include a discussion of all three in the essay, unless the question explicitly asks you to do otherwise. It is also appropriate to make use of stories or poems read in earlier assignments, but you must still use the works specifically listed for the current assignment. You demonstrate that you have done the reading by integrating appropriate quotations and references to the reading into your essay. Simple summaries and general references are not adequate. Document all direct quotations as well as material that is paraphrased or summerized.
I understand that some of the reading is difficult, and so I encourage you to read whatever sources you can find to help you understand the assignments. It is all right to use these interpretations in your answers, but you must document. If you don't, it is plagiarism.
Length Requirements for Essays
Each completed essay must be at least 500 words. There is no limit on length, but all essays should be concise, informative, and correct. Longer essays that multiply errors simply provide more justification for a poor grade. Microsoft Word will tell you how many words there are in a
document.
EVALUATION SYSTEM
Your grade in this course will be based on the average grade of the eight essays you submit.
When you
send me an essay as an email attachment, I will read it, insert
comments in it, assign it a grade, and return it to you. In order
to understand the basis for the grade you receive, you should
open the file and read the
comments. This is important since I do not accept revisions.
Click on the button below to see a list of the criteria I use in grading essays. Read the documents that are linked to this list of criteria.
GRADING SCALE
I will grade each essay by giving it a number from 1 to 100. An "A" grade is from 100 to 90; a "B" grade is from 89 to 80, etc. At the end of the semester, I will average the eight essay grades to determine your semester grade.
In calculating final grade, if your grade falls one point short of the next higher grade, I will give you the extra point and the higher grade, but only if you have completed all the assignments.
ATTENDANCE POLICY
Because this is an Internet course, class attendance is not required. However, you must submit work on time to avoid a grade penalty.
TOPICS COVERED
- The writings of the explorers
- The writings of the Pilgrims and Puritans
- Literature of the American Revolution
- Poets of the Revolutionary Period and afterwards
- Emerson, Thoreau and the Trancendentalists
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
|
- Edgar Allen Poe
- Literature of slavery and the Civil War
- Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper
- Walt Whitman
- Emily Dickerson
|
LATE WORK
Work assignments are due on Mondays of the weeks designated. If I do not receive the work on the designated Monday, five points will be deducted from your grade. Five additional points will be deducted for each subsequent Monday that an assignment is not received. No assignment will be accepted after the last day of class.
Submit Work on Time
This course has a definite schedule for work assignments. The reading and writing assignments have been apportioned so that you can easily keep up if you do the work according to the schedule. There are four reasons why you should meet the requirements on time:
- You will automatically lose points when an assignment is late (see Administrative Matters below).
- When you get behind, you hurry to catch up, and work done under pressure is never as complete or correct as work done in the allotted time.
- When an assignment is late, you do not get the benefit of feedback so that you can make corrections on the next assignment; therefore you are likely to repeat errors that will cost you points.
- Late papers create an avalanche effect giving me less time over the course of the semester to grade more papers; therefore, I cannot do as careful a job.
HONOR CODE
Proscribed Conduct is specified on page 164 of the 2006-2007 Catalog/Student Handbook. Proscribed conduct includes "all forms of dishonesty including cheating, [and] plagiarism . . . . " Students who commit plagiarism or who are otherwise dishonest in their conduct in this course will be dealt with according to college policy.
UNRETURNED WORK
If you want confirmation that I have received an essay that you have sent, look for an option in your email program that says something like "Return Receipt Requested." Barring illness, injury, or computer failure, I should be able to return your essays within a week.
Sometimes things get lost in the mail and I do not receive your work, so if you do not get an assignment back within seven days, you should resend it. In your email message, tell me that you are resubmitting your work because you have not gotten the assignment back. If you wait longer than seven days to resend work which I have not received, it will be considered late and a grade penalty will be imposed.
NAMING YOUR FILES
Please name each file using this convention:
- The initials for your complete name. There have been cases when two people in the same class have had the same initials for their first and last names.
- The number of the assignment
As an example, acp1 would be read like this: Alison Charles Phillips, assignment one.
Leave no spaces in the file names.
Each file must have a unique and correct identification. If your file name is not correct, ten points will be deducted from your grade.
If you want confirmation that I have received an essay that you have emailed to me, look for an option in your email program that says something like "Return Receipt Requested." Barring illness, injury, or computer failure, I should be able to return your essays within seven days. After seven days, you should write and ask me about work that has not been returned. When you write, you must tell me the course you are in, the title of the assignment, and the file name of the assignment.
CHANGES IN ASSIGNMENTS
During the semester it may be necessary to change course
assignments or procedures. If this becomes necessary, I will post
a notice on the announcements page. Click on the button below to see the announcements page. Changes may involve modification or substitution of assignments or changes in due dates. No change will increase the work load or reduce the amount of time allowed for an assignment.
BACK-UP
COPIES
You should maintain back-up
copies of your work. Copies should be saved to the hard drive of
your computer, a floppy disk, a RW-CD, a zip disk, or a jump drive. If an assignment is lost and cannot be recovered by means of a back-up copy, the
assignment must be rewritten.
Because I usually have a large number of students in my Internet classes, I ask for essay assignments to be turned in every two weeks. For example, while some classes will turn in essays on the first, third, and fifth weeks of the semester, others will turn in essays on the second, fourth, and sixth weeks of the semester. To establish this rotating schedule, this class must follow the schedule given below.
FIRST
ASSIGNMENT
Your first assignment is to complete the Course Orientation questions and to send your work to me as a Microsoft Word document attached to an email message. Click on the button below to see the Course Orientation questions.
- Assignment 1 -- Course Orientation. Everyone is required to complete this assignment.
Due date -- January 15.
Assignment 2
- Introduction for Literature to 1700 and Explorers
- Everyone is required to complete this assignment. Due date -- January 22.
Assignment 3
- Introduction for Literature 1620 - 1820, Bradford and Winthrop
- Mather and Edwards.
- Do one assignment or the other and send it to me by February 5.
Assignment 4
- Bradstreet, Taylor, Wigglesworth
- Benjamin Franklin
- Do one assignment or the other and send it to me by February 19.
Assignment 5
- Paine, Jefferson
- Freneau, Wheatley, Bryant
- Do one assignment or the other and send it to me by March 5.
Assignment 6
- Emerson
- Hawthorne
- Do one assignment or the other and send it to me by March 19.
Assignment 7
- Poe
- Stowe and slave narratives
- Do one assignment or the other and send it to me by April 2.
Assignment 8
- Thoreau
- Irving, Cooper
- Whitman
- Dickinson
- Do one of the four assignments and send it to me by April 16.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ESSAYS
You should use
Microsoft Word to write your essays. If you have Microsoft Works or WordPerfect, save your files in Rich Text Format. You will submit your essays as Email
attachments. Click on the button below for important
directions.
PROOFREADING
I will not try to correct all of the grammatical and punctuation errors in your your work but will only mark some instances of the errors I see to indicate the nature of the problems. If the number and severity of grammar and punctuation errors are extensive, the assignment may receive a grade of "D" or "F" regardless of the quality of the content. I do not accept revisions; therefore, it is important that you read my comments on each essay so that you can do better on the next assignment.
REPORT ERRORS
In revising course documents, I frequently make mistakes. If you discover contradictory instructions, misspelled words, bad links, or any other problems, please report them to me so that I can make corrections. Be sure to give the web address of the page that contains the error. Copy the page address from the location box of your web browser and paste into your email message. Thanks.
