1501.251.003             SYLLABUS                    BENNER  (benner@towson.edu)
Fall 2011              APPLIED GRAMMAR           Liberal Arts 5330H  /  Ext. 42857
LA 2302         
Office Hours:                                                                    
 T, R 7:30 a.m.-8:00 a.m.
 MWF, 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. by appt.

  

Course Objective:  English 251 seeks to familiarize students with the underlying grammatical structure of the English language to improve competence and flexibility in written and spoken communication.

 

Students will enhance their reading and critical thinking skills as they read and reflect upon essays about language and as they consider specific concepts of grammar, usage, and punctuation and the impact these concepts have upon communication.  Writing assignments will achieve a three-fold goal:  students will 1) apply their critical skills as they shape them into cogent thesis-support essays, 2) research as needed to strengthen initial assumptions, and 3) apply the knowledge they have gained from the study of grammar, usage, and punctuation to achieve sentence and paragraph structure that is both correct and rhetorically effective.

 

 

The following schedule is subject to modification:

 

WEEK 1:  September 1, 2011
Course introduction / Grammar systems

 

Week 2:  September 6 – 8, 2011 

Phonology / Morphology
Module 1:  Avoiding Fragments

 

WEEK 3:  September 13 – 15, 1022  (Essay #1 due September 13)

Parts of speech
Module 2:  Avoiding Comma Splices and Fused Sentences

 

WEEK 4:  September  20-22, 2011 

Parts of speech (continued)
Words, phrases, clauses
Module3:  Apostrophe Use

 

WEEK 5:  September 27 – 29, 2011

Compounding / Sentence types
Module 4:  Major Comma Uses

 

WEEK 6:  October 4 – 6, 2011

Test #1 / Expansion of main verb 

 

WEEK 7:  October 11 - 13, 2011

Sentence patterns / Intro. to diagramming / Sentence pattern transformations
Module 5:  Parallel Sentence Structure

 

WEEK 8: October 18 – 20, 2011

Adverbials:  verbal phrases and clauses
Module 6:  Pronoun Reference

 

WEEK 9:  October 25 – 27, 2011 (Essay #2 due October 27)

Adjectivals:  verbal phrases and clauses  
Test #2

 

WEEK 10: November 1 – 3, 2011  
Nominals:  verbal phrases and clauses
Module 7:  Subject-verb  Agreement

 

WEEK 11:  November 8 – 10, 2011

Levels of usage / Verb forms
Module 8:  Pronoun-antecedent Agreement

 

WEEK 12:  November 15 – 17, 2011

Parallelism / Faulty comparisons
Module 9:  Dangling and Misplaced modifiers

 

WEEK 13: November 22, 2011 

Modifier forms / Pronoun forms / Shifts
Module 10:  Pronoun Case

 

WEEKS 14 and 15:  November 29 – December 8, 2011 (Essay #3 due December 1)

Punctuation:  use for power and style – more comma and semicolon rules,
                    rules for colons, dashes, parentheses, italics, and quotation marks    Effective coordination and subordination

                   

WEEK 16:  December 13, 2011 

Sentence politics:  effective style through grammatical skill

 

Required texts:

 

Rickerson and Hilton, eds.  The 5-Minute Linguist:  Bite-sized Essays on Language

Benner, Grammar:  Explications and Applications   (Fall  2011 edition)

Access to Towson University Online Writing Site:  www.towson.edu/ows   

         

Attendance Policy

To gain full benefit from this course, students should attend class regularly. Missing more than one week's classes (2) without a valid written excuse accepted by the instructor will result in the lowering of a student's final grade by ½ letter grade (e.g. C+ to C,  A- to B+) per missed class, possibly to failure.  See English Department Guidelines.

 

Lateness Policy

Class begins at 8:00 a.m.  Students are expected to be in the classroom and ready to begin at that time.  Late arrivals distract both the instructor and the students; chronic tardiness indicates either an inability to get to class at the scheduled time or a lack of interest in the class.  Either scenario suggests that the student should not have signed up for / should not be in the course.

 

Arriving late for more than one week's classes (2) without a valid written excuse accepted by the instructor will result in the lowering of a student's final grade by one (1) point per late arrival in class, possibly to failure. 

Course Requirements

 

1.  Class format will combine lecture, discussion, oral exercises, and online work.  Beginning week  four, class will include work with sentence combining and diagramming.

 

2.  Most Tuesday classes will begin with a quiz on readings from The 5-Minute
      Linguist. 
     *Quizzes may be made up ONLY when an emergency has caused you to be late
       for class.

3.  Selected Thursday classes will end with a quiz on the module assigned for the
      week.

 4.  After each class, you will be assigned exercises from your texts, from the OWS
     website, and from other sources.  Please come to class prepared to discuss
      assignments.

 

5.  Class participation is expected in this course.  It indicates that you have done the
     assignment and that you have some interest in the material.  If you fail to
     participate in class discussions, your grade will suffer.

 6.  Papers are due on the dates listed on the syllabus.  Late papers without an
     excuse accepted by the instructor will be penalized by one-half letter grade per
      day of lateness.