Eugenio María de Hostos Community College
English Department
Spring 2022
English 110: Expository Writing
ENG 110-415D and 415E, ENG 110-RE17 and RE50
Professor Aaron Botwick
abotwick@gmail.com
Room B-310
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:30-2:15pm
Course Description
English 110, a foundational writing course, is designed to strengthen your composing skills so that you will produce increasingly complex and better-structured essays. Reading and responding to interdisciplinary texts representing various rhetorical modes, you will practice paraphrasing and summarizing these texts, enrich your vocabulary, and improve your writing, revision, and proofreading skills. Additionally, you will be introduced to the use of print and online secondary sources. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to respond critically, in writing, to a variety of texts, integrating your own ideas with those presented in the readings.
Course Objectives
In this course, you will
read and listen critically and analytically, including identifying an argument’s major assumptions and assertions and evaluating its supporting evidence,
write clearly and coherently in varied, academic formats (such as formal essays, research papers, and reports) using standard English and appropriate technology to critique and improve your own and other’s texts,
demonstrate research skills using appropriate technology, including gathering, evaluating, and synthesizing primary and secondary sources,
support a thesis with well-reasoned arguments, and communicate persuasively across a variety of contexts, purpose, audiences, and media,
formulate original ideas and relate them to the ideas of others by employing the conventions of ethical attribution and citation,
discover the pleasure (and frustration) of reading these texts.
Office Hours
My office hours (B-522) are Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:15-3:15pm and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:45-2:45pm.
Textbooks and Materials
There are no required books for this course. All readings will be posted under Course Content on Blackboard.
Blackboard Support
If you are experiencing problems with Blackboard, please contact the Office of Educational Technology (Room C-559) at (718) 319-7915 or EdTech@hostos.cuny.edu.
Grading
Here is the breakdown of your final grade:
Participation: 10 percent
Narrative Essay: 10 percent
Argument Essay: 20 percent
Counterargument Essay: 20 percent
Research Essay: 25 percent
Final Exam: 15 percent
Guidelines for each assignment will be posted on Blackboard and emailed to the class.
Grading Scale: 93-100 = A; 90-92 = A-; 87-89 = B+; 83-86 = B; 80-82 = B-; 77-79 = C+; 70-76 = C; 60-69 = D; <60 = F
D: Though a D is a passing grade at Hostos, four-year colleges will not give you credit for a course in which you received a D. You can retake the course for a higher grade, but this may not be covered by your financial aid.
F: An F is a failing grade. You can retake the course for a higher grade, but this may not be covered by your financial aid. Furthermore, you can lose your financial aid if you fail too many courses.
INC (Incomplete): This grade indicates that the objectives of a course have not been completed for good and sufficient reasons and that there is a reasonable expectation that the student can, in fact, successfully complete the requirements of the course. For an instructor to grant INC, the student must have met the instructor's attendance requirements in the course, completed most of the coursework, and have a passing semester average. If this is not the case, the student should receive an F. An INC should not be given to a student for excessive absences.
WU (Withdrawal Unofficial): This grade is given due to excessive absences signifying that the course was not completed, but the student attended at least one session (F).
Participation
This is a discussion-based course, not a lecture-based one. Participation is crucial to class success. That being said, I understand that many students feel uncomfortable with participation. In a poll for the National Institutes of Mental Health, seventy-five percent of Americans ranked public speaking as their number one fear—over death. So, if you find yourself unable to regularly contribute to class discussion, you can earn your participation credit by coming to office hours, by emailing me your thoughts after class, and by making sure you arrive on time and engage in active listening (I can tell the difference).
There will also be no toleration of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or ableist language. Granted, we all have gaps in knowledge and experience and the purpose of a college education is in part to assist each other in filling in those gaps. Therefore, I encourage respectful debate when your peers or I have said something hurtful, insensitive, or ignorant.
Attendance
You are expected to attend all class meetings. Nevertheless, you are allowed four absences. If you miss five or more classes—over fifteen percent of the total number scheduled—you will fail the course.
Attendance is necessary because we are all social learners, and we all learn both by explaining our ideas to others and by listening to others explain their ideas. I am sure many of you would be able to pass the assigned work despite numerous absences, but you would be missing this key advantage of an in-person education.
Writing Requirements
You can find the assignment guidelines for your essays under Course Content on Blackboard.
I ask that you email all essays to abotwick@gmail.com by 11:59pm. Late essays will lose half a letter grade per day. Essays that are not handed in will receive failing grades. If you are having trouble completing an essay, please email me or speak to me during office hours; so long as you do so ahead of time, we will be able to arrange an alternate deadline.
All work should be typed in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Please use Times New Roman, double-spaced, size twelve font with one-inch margins. Formatting should conform to MLA guidelines. Include your name, the date, and my name in the top, right-hand corner of the document.
I am a strong believer that writing is rewriting; no one produces polished prose on the first draft. Thus, if you submit an essay on time, you are welcome to continue revising it throughout the semester for a higher grade.
Current Events
Once during the semester, I will ask you to come prepared to summarize and lead a discussion on an event in the news. You are free to choose the subject so long as we can have an argument about it—that is, the discussion must rely on questions that do not have clear and undisputed answers but ones that require an interpretation of the facts. A sign-up sheet will be passed out in class.
Academic Integrity
You are responsible for understanding and following the college policies on academic integrity, including cheating and plagiarism, which can be found in the Hostos College Catalog or on the Hostos website. Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas or words as your own.
I am here to help you become a better writer, which is not possible if I am not reading your writing. If you are unsure that you will be able to turn in satisfactory work—or if you believe you will not be able to make a deadline—please reach out to me as early as possible; we can always make alternate arrangements when a problem is addressed before the deadline.
Americans with Disabilities Act Statement
As required by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, reasonable accommodations are provided to ensure equal opportunity for students with verified disabilities.
If you have a disability that requires accommodations, contact the Accessibility Resource Center (D-101P) at (718) 518-4454.
If you are already registered with the ARC and have a letter from them verifying that you are a qualified student with a disability, please present the letter to me as soon as possible. I will work with you and the ARC to plan and implement appropriate accommodations.
The Writing Center @ Hostos
Take advantage of the Writing Center, where tutors offer help at any stage of the writing process. As a former writing tutor, I can say with confidence that students who bring drafts to the Writing Center tend to receive higher grades on their assignments.
Call (929) 324-0333 or register online at https://commons.hostos.cuny.edu/writingcenter to schedule a remote, one-hour session.
Carlos E. González Counseling Center
The Counseling Center (Room C-330) offers free, private counseling in a supportive environment. You are welcome to focus on academic and career issues, family problems, or other matters of importance.
Call (718) 518-4461 or e-mail infocounseling@hostos.cuny.edu.
Hostos One Stop Center
If you are experiencing trauma such as hunger, homelessness, health problems, or family-related issues, call the One Stop Center (Savoy First Floor) at (718) 319-7981.
Benefits include food stamps, Medicaid, housing, public assistance, social security, disability Supplementary Security Income, school lunch, transportation, mental health care, domestic violence services, foster care placement, food vouchers, debt solution, credit report, financial planning, maintaining small businesses, free tax preparation, legal advice, and much more.
Classmate Contacts
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Reading and Assignment Schedule
Wednesday, February 2: Esmeralda Santiago, from Almost a Woman (1998)
Sunday, February 6: Narrative essay due
Monday, February 7: Angela Y. Davis, “Prison Reform or Prison Abolition?” (2003)
Wednesday, February 9: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story” (2009)
Monday, February 14: Peter Singer, “All Animals Are Equal” (1975)
Wednesday, February 16: Martin Ford, introduction to Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (2015)
Monday, February 21: No classes scheduled
Wednesday, February 23: Frank Guan, “Why Ever Stop Playing Video Games” (2017)
Sunday, February 27: Argument essay due
Monday, February 28: Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” (1729)
Wednesday, March 2: Alleen Pace Nilsen, “Sexism and Language” (1977)
Monday, March 7: Gretchen McCulloch, “Emoji and Other Internet Gestures” (2019)
Wednesday, March 9: Elexus Jionde, “The Anatomy of Stan Culture” (2020)
Sunday, March 13: Counterargument essay due
Monday, March 14: Friedrich Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
Wednesday, March 16: Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue” (1990)
Monday, March 21: Martin Luther King Jr., “All Labor Has Dignity” (1968)
Wednesday, March 23: Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” (1966)
Monday, March 28: Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, American Factory (2019)
Wednesday, March 30: Carl Sagan, “Does Truth Matter? Science, Pseudoscience, and Civilization” (1996)
Sunday, April 3: Topic of research essay due
Monday, April 4: Visit to the library
Wednesday, April 6: Writing workshop
Monday, April 11: Richard P. Feynman, “It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three…” (1988)
Wednesday, April 13: Stephen Marche, “The Chatbot Problem” (2021)
Monday, April 18: No classes scheduled (spring break)
Wednesday, April 20: No classes scheduled (spring break)
Monday, April 25: Jonathan Ned Katz, “The Genealogy of a Sex Concept: From Homosexual History to Heterosexual History” (1995)
Wednesday, April 27: Peer review
Sunday, May 1: First draft of research essay due
Monday, May 2: Virginia Woolf, “The Death of the Moth” (1942)
Wednesday, May 4: Kay Redfield Jamison, from Night Falls Fast (1999)
Monday, May 9: John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, March: Book One (2013), pp.3-62
Wednesday, May 11: Lewis, Aydin, and Powell, March: Book One, pp.63-124
Sunday, May 15: Final draft of research essay due
Monday, May 16: James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham, Crip Camp (2020)