English 251: American Lit. I, Guidelines

PRACTICAL CONCERNS + REQUIRED WORK + GRADES + SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS

PRACTICAL CONCERNS & WORDS OF ADVICE

Studying by correspondence has advantages as well as disadvantages, and we should briefly consider them. On the one hand, it's clear that literary studies have the advantage of being rather straightforward in terms of work requirements: all that's needed is the textbook, and the practices of careful, critical reading. In this sense, even classes conducted on campus depend upon students to do much of the work during periods of independent study, and so the advantages of on-campus and correspondence work are about equal. On the other hand, literary studies also flourish best in classrooms built around dialogue: environments where different interpretations of passages, texts and even the era under study can be stated, questioned, and contested. The classroom environment is also ideal for instructors to use in bringing out background information. Historical, political, social and cultural contexts can suggest fruitful alternative approaches to those suggested by the text alone. This is where the professional training of university teachers serves students best, and in lacking it you will be disadvantaged.

What to do? The student who succeeds at correspondence work will first of all open a dialogue with the instructor. The successful student will also supplement the readings of specific texts. Read all of the introductory materials in your anthology, not only the general overviews of the literary periods, but those introducing the specific authors and texts under consideration. These are musts. The student who excels at correspondence study will go still further. For instance, at the very back of the Norton Anthology, in the section headed "Selected Bibliographies," are suggestions for further reading. In the case of major texts under study during this course, such as Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, one might very well undertake further study in some of the recommended books in order to deepen one's own reading of the text. Public libraries have many of these secondary sources, and college libraries will have still greater resources, such as scholarly journals with essays about the literary texts. Use them freely.

Documenting Sources

Remember to use all such materials appropriately. In the written assignments submitted for this course, all usage of ideas, information, and actual wording from primary and secondary sources must be appropriately documented. When you employ a brief quote from a poem under study, or an idea from the introductory essays or footnotes, you should document its origin by providing a page number reference, in parenthesis, like this: (p. 1405). Material drawn from sources outside the anthology can also be documented in parenthesis, but in a longer format. You should provide, at a minimum, the author's name, the title and the date of publication, followed by a page number reference, like this: (S. Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self 1975, p. 97). Failure to meet these minimum requirements for scholarly work can constitute plagiarism, and lead to a failing grade for the course.

Before Reading the Text

For most of the assignments, it will probably be wise to read the study questions through before reading the actual text. This will help to focus your work. Especially with the longer reading assignments, such as Franklin's Autobiography or Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, you should familiarize yourself with the questions before starting, and develop the habit of taking careful notes as you read. Ideas, responses to specific passages, questions about details that puzzle you, your own statements of theme or judgments on issues of character and events, observations about the writer's style or patterns of imagery or metaphor that seem significant: all of these should go into your notes (with page number references!), and from there be filtered into your responses to the study questions.

Preparing your Answers

Study questions will vary in terms of the specificity or generality of response they demand, thus in terms of the length expected. In some instances, a few sentences in direct response to a specific question are all that's needed. These brief questions typically involve matters of fact important to any further interpretation. Here, a successful answer is one that just gets the facts straight--a proof of careful reading. In most cases, though, a paragraph or two will be necessary for you to successfully answer the question. These instances will typically require you to make an interpretive claim about an aspect of the text, then to both develop and support that claim by referring to specific details of the text. Here, a successful answer is one that can reasonably support or defend its stance by effective reference to textual details.

Some of the assignments will call for a longer, more highly developed exposition: that is, an essay response. You will be given specific instructions as to the required length and form of these brief essays, when they come up. But always remember that successful essays on literary topics will develop a clear "reading" of the text under discussion. That is, the essay will make a broad claim about the meaning or "theme" of the text. It will argue in support of that general claim about the meaning or theme, by organizing a set of more specific claims, each well supported by reference to the text, just as you practice doing in each of the one or two paragraph responses.

Always remember that your instructor need not be supplied with a plot summary or synopsis of the text under question. An analyzing rather than simply a summarizing activity is what's required by the longer, paragraph--or essay--length, responses.

In addition, keep in mind that any reader of literary texts must be willing to grant the writer his or her subject. This is a way of saying that the job of critical reading does not involve liking or disliking the writer's subject matter--the what of the text. Whether it be adultery, nature worship, slavery, or Protestant Christianity, the subject matter is neither to be approved nor disapproved in itself, and students should generally rule out such evaluative responses. Yet the work of critical reading does involve critiques of the writer's effectiveness in handling that subject matter--the how of the text. How the writer overlooks certain things while foregrounding others, stylistically embellishes still other things, while startlingly arranging still others: these are the aspects of writing with which a critical analysis should properly concern itself.

Finally, all written work, from sentences through whole essays, will be held up to commonly accepted standards of correctness in grammar. Responses plagued by errors of word choice, spelling, punctuation, and basic sentence grammar will be graded down. Remember this is an English course! Always send only your best work to your instructor.

REQUIRED WORK

There are 31 separate, required assignments for this course. Fifteen cover the first half of our work, from 1600 to 1800; assignment 16 is a simulated exam covering that first half, and will be useful practice for the Final Exam. The next fifteen, assignments 17 through 31, cover the second half of our work, from 1800 to 1865. The final exam will be cumulative.

The final exam will follow the same format as the simulated midterm exam. To successfully answer the short and long essay questions, you will need to be able to refer to specific instances and passages in the assigned works from memory. The final xxam grade will be calculated as follows: section 1 (identifications) = 20%, section 2 (short essays) = 30%, and section 3 (long essay) = 50%.

GRADES

Your final grade will be determined by weighing the 31 assignments as 75%, and the final exam as 25% of the course grade.

All work will be graded with regard to both the aspects of interpretive effectiveness and grammatical correctness, discussed. Moreover, work on individual assignments and questions will be graded by how effectively it addresses specific learning objectives for the course.

As always, an "A" grade signifies excellent work which, with only minor faults, exceeds basic expectations for success and achieves original insight; a "B" grade signifies good work which, though marred somewhat in argument or expression, demonstrates potential for original thought; a "C" grade signifies work which satisfactorily meets the basic requirements of an assignment; while a "D" grade is deficient with regard to those requirements and an "E" signifies a quite general failure to understand what those basic requirements for success would involve doing.

SUBMITTING ASSIGNMNETS

To submit and assignment, just fill out the information required and clik on the submit botton at the end of each assignment.

Everytime you submit an assignment on-line you will be ask to provide your name, your e-mail address, your enrollment number, and your instructor e-mail address. If you don't fill out this information in each on-line assignment, the assignment will not be sent and you will not receive any credit for it.

For every assignment you submit on-line, there will be three copies sent: one to your e-mail address, one to your instructor e-mail address, and one to the Independent Study Program.

Proofread your work before submission.

Feel free to ask questions to your instructor.

It will be a good idea that you save or print a copy of the screen that before you submit your assignment for your records in case of problems with the server.