JOURNALS FOR E307 ADV. COLLEGE WRITING IN ENGLISH STUDIES
CSU FULLERTON, FALL 2015

EMAIL | SYLLABUS | POLICIES | PRESENTATIONS | JOURNALS | PAPER | FINAL

CONFIRMATION MESSAGES: Within two days after receipt, I’ll email you an initial confirmation letting you know that I received your journal set, and a week or so afterwards I’ll email you a more formal message with your grade for that set. If you don’t receive a timely initial confirmation, let me know soon — if I don’t confirm receipt, I may not have received your message and you will need to resend it.

FORMATTING OF JOURNAL SETS Use a common typeface like Times New Roman, Calibri, etc. and ordinary point size and margin settings. On average, “a page” means approximately 500 words. Don’t skip several spaces between individual entries, but please include an initial bolded title line for a given author or text so I know what you’re writing about.

INSTRUCTIONS: Beginning with Week 7, keep a running journal on your thoughts about criticism pertaining to our three assigned literary readings. Three separate journal sets (one for criticism on Austen, one for criticism on Shakespeare, and one for criticism on some of the assigned Romantic poems) will be due by email on the dates specified in the syllabus. At base, the journal entries (which will probably run to about 1 ½ or 2 pages single-spaced per article or study that you include, which would make each entire set run 5-6 pages) should be much like the content of the single presentation you will be giving: for each of three scholarly articles that you find, you will want to categorize the type of criticism involved, summarize the argument, explain its strengths and weaknesses and, ultimately, discuss how it fits in with your own view of the literary text being covered.

As with the presentation and term paper, for this assignment using commercial online notes is NOT acceptable: you must use scholarly sources from journals or books. Electronic format required. I will not mark journal sets down unless they are late (maximum grade = B), incomplete, or so brief and derivative as to suggest evasion of intellectual labor: they should consist of honest responses. How to do well on this assignment: read the instructions; complete entries as you go through each text; send sets on time, making sure I verify receipt; respond thoughtfully to the criticism about the readings and of course to the readings themselves: use your own words and refer to the texts’ and critics’ specific language. (30% of course grade.)

JOURNAL SET 1 (WEEKS 7-9) DUE TUESDAY 10/27. Three entries, one for each of three recent articles or other recent critical studies (meaning “within the last five years or so”) that you find on Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion. See instructions above for further information about the nature of the entries. Email your combined three entries in a single MS Word or similar file. (If you are using an unusual file format – i.e. something other than .doc or .docx, you might want to also paste your entries right into the email body in addition to sending them as an attachment.)

JOURNAL SET 2 (WEEKS 10-13) DUE TUESDAY 11/18. Three entries, one for each of three recent articles or other recent critical studies (meaning “within the last five years or so”) that you find on Shakespeare’s romance play The Tempest. See instructions above for further information about the nature of the entries. Email your combined entries in a single MS Word or similar file.

JOURNAL SET 3 (WEEKS 14-16) DUE TUESDAY 12/15. Three entries, one for each of three recent articles or other recent critical studies (meaning “within the last five years or so”), one each on three of the British Romantic poets whose works we will be sampling. In other words, cover one critical study for each of three poets, making for a total of three entries for this journal set on the British Romantics. See instructions above for further information about the nature of the entries. Email your combined entries in a single MS Word or similar file.

ADVICE ON HOW TO DO THE JOURNAL SETS WELL

Word-processed journal sets will be due by email on the dates listed above. (See the syllabus for the journal requirement’s value as a percentage of the course grade.) As soon as you begin reading the literary texts for this course, create a single computer file to hold your running entries for the entire first journal set, naming the file “yourlastname_journal_1.”

TURNING IN YOUR ENTIRE FIRST JOURNAL SET WHEN IT’S DUE

Now all you need to do is email the resulting “one big file” to me on the day the first journal set is due (the hour doesn’t matter). Label the email subject line concisely as follows: “E307 Journal 1, Your First and Last Name.” Please don’t combine a message containing your journal set with a paper draft or other important item — messages get misplaced that way. EXPECT AN EMAIL CONFIRMATION — IF YOU DON’T RECEIVE ONE WITHIN 2 or 3 DAYS OF THE DUE DATE, I MAY NOT HAVE RECEIVED YOUR JOURNAL. If no confirmation arrives, please resend your set, making sure to address and label the message correctly. CHECK WITH ME PROMPTLY IF IT APPEARS THAT I HAVEN’T RECEIVED A DOCUMENT YOU’VE SENT.

TURNING IN SUBSEQUENT JOURNAL SETS

Once you’ve completed your first journal set, it’s time to move on to the second journal set. The procedure is the same: start a new file named “yourlastname_journal 2,” and begin working through the specified entries.

A Note on Late Journal Sets. Sets turned in somewhat late are acceptable, but at my discretion will receive a maximum grade of B. Very late sets may receive a maximum grade of C, and I reserve the right not to accept them at all if in my view the student has not made a sufficient effort in other areas. The reason for the latter policy is that turning in long-since-due sets towards the end of the semester defeats the point of keeping a journal.