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AJU Mission Statement
Learning and Scholarship: We believe in the principle of Torah – learning as an intellectual
and inspirational endeavor – that embraces both academic scholarship and the efforts of all Jews
to explore their shared heritage through the formal and informal study of Judaism and the other
great civilizations of the world.
Culture: We acknowledge that Judaism is a flourishing civilization with a culture that is
fundamental to modern Jewish identity. We strive to advance that culture by encouraging artistic
endeavor in all of its many forms.
Ethics: We recognize that ethics is the language of Judaism and its most important link to the
world at large.
Leadership: We understand that the future of Jewish life depends on the careful preparation of
dedicated and impassioned individuals who are called to leadership.
Peoplehood: We are a pluralistic institution that embraces diversity within Judaism and values
the contributions of all groups to the growth of Jewish Civilization.
Students with Disabilities
American Jewish University is committed to assisting our students with documented disabilities
to have a successful career at AJU. Contact the Office of Student Affairs to request
accommodations and begin the documentation process. (See Enhancing Accessibility and/or
AJU website for complete policy.)
Standards of Academic Integrity
The Honor Code of American Jewish University was written by a committee of undergraduate
and graduate students, faculty and administrators. Under the Honor Code, students have a twofold obligation: individually, they must not violate the code, and as a community, they are
responsible to see that suspected violations are reported.
Academic Dishonesty includes, but is not limited, to the following definitions:
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A. Examination Behavior: Unless expressly permitted by the instructor, the use of external
assistance during an exam shall be considered academically dishonest. Inappropriate exam
behavior includes but is not limited to: (1) communicating with anyone in any way during an
exam, (2) copying material from another student’s exam, (3) allowing a student to copy from
one’s exam, (4) using unauthorized notes, calculators, or other sources of unauthorized
assistance.
B. Fabrication: Any intentional falsification, invention of data, or citation in an academic
exercise will be considered to be academic dishonesty. Fabrication involves but is not limited to:
(1) inventing or altering data for a laboratory experiment or field project, (2) padding a
bibliography of a term paper or research paper with sources one did not utilize, (3) resubmitting
returned and corrected academic work under the pretense of grader evaluation error when, in
fact, the work has been altered from its original form.
C. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the appropriation and subsequent passing off of another’s ideas or
words as one’s own. If the words or ideas of another are used, acknowledgement of the original
source must be made through recognized referencing practices. Use of another’s ideas or words
must be properly acknowledged as follows:
(1) Direct Quotation: Any use of direct quotation must be acknowledged by footnote
citation and by either quotation marks or proper indentation and spacing.
(2) Paraphrase: If another’s ideas are borrowed in whole or in part and are merely recast
in the student’s own words, proper acknowledgement must, nonetheless, be made. A
footnote or proper internal citation must follow the paraphrased material.
D. Other Types of Academic Dishonesty: Other forms of academic dishonesty include, but are
not limited to:
(1) Submitting a paper written by or obtained from another person.
(2) Using a paper or essay in more than one class without the instructors’ expressed
permission.
(3) Obtaining a copy of an examination in advance without the knowledge and consent of
the instructor.
(4) Altering academic records outside of official institutional procedures.
(5) Using another person to complete academic assignments such as homework, takehome exams or using another person posing as oneself to take classroom examinations.
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Course Description: This course should develop your essay writing from proficiency to
mastery. After reviewing the basics of grammar and essay formatting, you will critically analyze
essays and articulate well-developed, complex arguments and theses.
Course Learning Objectives: Students should finish this class with a solid understanding of
essay writing and MLA format. Students will also learn how to give and receive constructive
criticism in a safe environment. We will focus on writing with purpose, clarity, organization and
proper language mechanics. We will also have fun.
Required Texts and Readings: Students must use specific edition of the listed text.
Behrens, Laurence and Leonard J. Rosen Ed. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum.
Pearson Longman: New York, 2008. (Tenth Edition)
Modern Language Association. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Modern
Language Association of America: New York, 2009. (Seventh Edition)
Grading: Class participation constitutes the bulk of your grade in this class. A detailed listing of
assignments and their percentage values follows at the end of this syllabus.
My Additional Policies: I am committed to fostering an open learning environment. You have
the right to express your personal opinions in my classroom without fear of retribution in terms
of your grade or my attitude towards you. I do not approve of censorship; I practice tolerance to
the utmost degree. That having been said, I know that we occasionally say things that we may
later regret. Due to this factor, I will implement the “rewind” policy that I use in my personal life
with friends and loved ones. If you say something that does not come across as you intended or
may in fact be offensive, you make “take a rewind.” This effectively “erases it from the record”
and you then have a clean slate to say what it is you intended. The classroom is an arena for
learning and no learning can be accomplished unless we acknowledge our mistakes. Mistakes
should not be regrets, but opportunities from which we learn.
Attendance: Since I emphasize class participation, your grade will suffer if you are absent or
tardy more than once without an excuse. We will discuss this policy together so that everyone is
clear about my expectations. ♥
Course Schedule: The schedule is subject to change, depending on the number of students
enrolled and their skill level. I will always do my best to give you fair notice of any changes I
plan to make in the syllabus.
LCM 207-01, R 6:30 – 9 – Steven Funk
R, 9/10 – Review Policies and discuss grading, choose authors’ birthdays to present, review
grammar basics
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WRAC, pgs 1-50
Write 1-2 pgs on the following topic: The internet has made once esoteric knowledge
so easily accessible that plagiarism abounds. Is plagiarism ever appropriate? Have
you ever plagiarized or encountered plagiarism? How did your encounter with
plagiarism help to form your view on this subject?
WRAC, pgs 50-98
Write a 5-8 sentence response to the WRAC reading, using no “to-be” verbs ♦
*9/11/1709 – Samuel Johnson’s birthday
R, 9/17 – No class
R, 9/24 – Discuss WRAC reading (summary, paraphrase, critical reading, theses), grammar and
mechanics
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Modifiers exercise ♦
Improving Sentences exercise ♦
Improving paragraphs exercise ♦
WRAC, pgs 99 – 145
*9/24/1896 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday
*9/26/1888 T.S. Eliot’s birthday
*9/30/1924 Truman Capote’s birthday AND
9/30/1924 Elie Wiesel’s birthday
*10/4/1941 Anne Rice’s birthday
R, 10/1 – Discuss exercises and WRAC reading (explanatory synthesis)
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WRAC, pgs 146 – 209
Write 1-2 pgs on the following topic: Modern college curricula increasingly drop
canonical, classical literature in favor of post-modern, best-selling fiction and nonfiction. What effect does this have on your college education? ♣
R, 10/8 – Discuss WRAC reading and writing assignment (argument synthesis)
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WRAC, pgs 217 – 235
Write 3-5 sentences about each essay, summarizing, analyzing and choosing a talking
point ♦
*10/14/1894 e.e.cummings’s birthday
*10/16/1854 Oscar Wilde’s birthday
*10/17/1915 Arthur Miller’s birthday
R, 10/15 – Discuss talking points on WRAC reading and brainstorm for final research paper
topics, review outcomes and criteria of final paper
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WRAC, pgs 501 – 583
Write 1-2 pgs on the following topic: Compare or contrast your sleep habits prior to
college with your sleep habits now. How are they similar or different. Do you need to
change or improve your sleep patterns? Why or why not? ♣
*10/22/1919 Doris Lessing’s birthday
*10/24/1923 Denise Levertov’s birthday
R, 10/22 – Discuss WRAC reading and writing, continue brainstorming for final research paper
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WRAC, pgs 654 – 751
List ten specific academic sources of research for your final research paper ♦
*10/27/1932 Sylvia Plath’s birthday
R, 10/29 – Discuss WRAC reading and your academic resources for your final research paper,
discuss annotated bibliography
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Annotate five sources for your final research paper ♦
*10/31/1795 John Keats’s birthday
R, 11/5 – Annotated Bib. due with five sources, discuss research papers
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Read a newspaper critically; highlight redundancy, passive voice, pompousness and
problematic grammar, syntax, usage and diction
Annotated five additional sources for your final research paper ♦
*11/7/1867 Marie Curie’s birthday
*11/12/1915 Roland Barthes’s birthday
R, 11/12 – Annotated Bib. due with five more sources, discuss critical analyzation of newspaper
Discuss crafting introduction to research paper and outline
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Write the introduction to your research paper (first 3-5 paragraphs) and map or
outline the remaining paragraphs of your essay ♦
R, 11/19 – Introduction to your research paper and outline due, discuss drafting process; What
works well? What needs major revision?
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Deliberately read through your research sources, highlighting key quotes and talk
points and then place them in your outline
Read Johnathan Swift’s, A Modest Proposal and write a 1-2pg proposal of ridiculous
proportion to solve any problem that vexes modern society ♦
*11/25/1913 Lewis Thomas’s birthday
R, 11/26 – No class
*11/29/1898 C.S. Lewis’s birthday
R, 12/3 – Outlines with key quotes and talk points included due, discuss drafting process
1-2 pg proposal (of Swiftian proportion) due ♦
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Finish drafting final paper
*12/7/1873 Willa Cather’s birthday AND
*12/7/1928 Noam Chomsky’s birthday
*12/9/1608 John Milton’s birthday
R, 12/10 – Final discussion on final papers, trends and assessment
12/14 – 12/18 – Final paper due according to final exam schedule – email and hard copy ♠
Grading Percentages (the full deck):
Small paper assignments♦ = 25%
Final paper ♠ = 25%
Papers♣ = 25%
Class Participation ♥= 25%
Contrary to popular belief, grading is not subjective and we will discuss, at great length, my
system of grading. The most important thing to remember is that I do not grade your character,
merely your class performance.
Flesch – Kincaid and Rubrics discussion to follow:
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The following table will assist the instructor in grading more efficiently while forcing his/her students to
learn the names of their common errors and the measures s/he must take to correct them. The twentyfive mistakes are listed in order of severity, i.e. committing error number two negatively affects the
paper grade more than committing error number eighteen. Freshmen should most concern themselves
with eliminating numbers one through ten from their writing. Sophomores should begin to address and
correct errors eleven through seventeen. As they should hone their craft during this year, juniors should
focus on eliminating errors eighteen through twenty-five from their writing. Seniors should possess the
ability to write their term papers free from all of the following errors.
1. Off-topic - The paper fails to answer/address the writing prompt.
The student misunderstood or ignored the assignment or prompt.
2. No theme statement - The paper lacks a consistent topic.
The entire paper does not indicate the paper topic; it may randomly shift from one topic to
another with no clear focus.
3. No thesis statement - No single sentence indicates the paper topic.
The student cannot define his/her topic in one sentence while appropriately narrowing his/her
scope.
4. Fragment - This sentence lacks a subject or predicate verb.
The sentence not. I the book to her. While waiting in line.
5. Run-on – This sentence contains more than one subject or predicate verb.
The student forgot to do something crucial while she was writing so she neglected to do that
and realized later that even though she was normally extremely focused, she should have paid
more attention.
6. Subject/verb disagreement - The verb is not correctly conjugated to match its subject.
The student does not conjugates his verbs for the subject.
7. Dangling modifier - A modifier, such as a participle (-ing verb acting as an adjective), gerund (-ing
verb acting as a noun) or a dependent phrase (one beginning with a preposition or adverb)
opens the sentence and the independent clause that follows does not immediately name the
subject.
While writing the paper, the chair may have made the student uncomfortable.
Skipping through the fields, her shoes became muddy.
8. Verb tense inconsistency - The sentence or paper inappropriately shifts from past to present
tense, etc.
The student wrote the paper while she is drinking coffee so she could stay awake.
9. Parallelism lacking - The verbs are not conjugated in a parallel manner.
While I run, I like to listen to music, to look at birds and keep thinking about my posture.
10. Pronoun/Antecedent disagreement - The antecedent is the subject that is later replaced by the
pronoun that takes its place; these two must agree in case, gender and number.
The student does not understand their pronouns and antecedents.
11. Colloquial, euphemistic, improper English - These include platitudes and clichés, overly used
phrases that only have a culturally based meaning and lack grammatical or literal clarity.
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20.
21.
The student looks at the bright side while making lemonade when life gives her lemons since
her father passed away.
Vague pronoun representing complex ideas or sentences – The words, “which” and “that”
cannot stand for several ideas.
The student enjoys surfing, reading and playing board games, which makes her smart.
Vague usage of it, they and you - “It,” “they,” and “you” cannot stand in for a hypothetical
subject or a real subject. If the subject is hypothetical, the student should write, “one.” In the
example sentence below, the student should name the specific governmental branch or
representatives responsible for repealing the taxes.
The taxes were too high, so they repealed some of them to improve the economy.
Improper use of adverb or preposition - Adverbs and prepositions represent locations or periods
of time, not states of being or causes.
Diabetes is when a person’s blood sugar is too high. It is up to me to decide.
Mistaking adjectives for adverbs, visa versa - Adjectives modify nouns and adverbs modify verbs,
adjectives and indicate periods of time.
The student writes good, but listens bad. The teacher grades hard.
Misused word - Attempting to broaden his/her vocabulary, the student tried to use a word
without understanding its meaning.
The student calls herself obtuse because of her high I.Q.
Unnecessary comma - Commas are not stylistic markings that are left to the student’s discretion
to use.
The student thinks, that this, gives her writing spirit.
While we were, waiting in line, someone yelled.
Needs comma - Commas follow verbal or prepositional phrases (beginning with an adverb,
participle, gerund, or preposition), set aside appositives (noun or phrase that renames a nearby
noun), create lists, set off transitional and parenthetical phrases, set off proper names and
quotes, and prevent confusion.
While writing his paper the student a polite young man forgot to use commas but other than
that the writing was fairly coherent.
Incorrect semi-colon usage - Semi-colons connect independent clauses (phrases that are
complete sentences) that are so closely connected to one another that the writer wants the
reader to read them in the same phrase or breath. By occasionally connecting independent
clauses in this manner, the student also adds sophistication to his/her prose.
In the morning; the student wrote her paper.
Confusion with homonym/homophone - Homonyms and homophones are words that sound
alike, but have different meanings and spellings.
The student wants too where a tube top two school.
Confusion with apostrophe - Apostrophes join two words and add possession. The most
common mistake is using it’s to mean, “it has.” “It’s” means “it is.”
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23.
24.
25.
The students’ writing is mediocre. Students’ gives a group of students possession over the
mediocre writing. The singular conjugation of the “to-be” verb, is, illustrates the student’s
intention of writing about one student.
I don’t shop at that bookstore because its expensive. The student wants to say it is expensive;
when one wishes to contract it with is, s/he must use the apostrophe to denote that.
Typo - Typos are very minor errors, usually arising from a lack of proof-reading aloud. Typos do
however, indicate a student’s lack of attention to detail and/or effort.
I feel like I might write wel.
Employ effective transition - Transitions make the shift from one paragraph to another smooth
and coherent. Transitions prove especially crucial in a long research paper that addresses
several topics in its thesis.
…While Ernest Hemingway employs grammatically simplistic prose, Gertrude Stein abandons
grammar altogether, championing stream of consciousness writing.
Gertrude Stein…
Increase vocabulary - When a student can say something with one word instead of a phrase or
group of words, he should.
Instead of describing something as “really large,” he might use the word “gargantuan.”
Rather than, “I enjoy running quickly,” try, “I enjoy sprinting.”
Vary syntax - Syntax is the order of words and sentence structure. Good writing varies the ways
in which dependent and independent clauses are joined, subjects and predicate verbs are
related, and sentence lengths.
Reading can become boring if the sentence structure does not vary. The reader may lose
interest if every sentence is the same length. The reader will also get bored if the subject always
precedes the predicate verb.
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Funk’s Fun Quotes
And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it
enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon
you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor
period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know
yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something to do with
going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath
rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very
strongly. And so I almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence
the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after another, the more
the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate need of their taking care of themselves
by themselves and not helping them, and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma.
So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose, in poetry it is a little different but more so …
— Gertrude Stein
from Lectures in America
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and
one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like
a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
-George Orwell
There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of
cooking dinner for someone she loves.
-Tom Wolfe
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I
want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel
all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am
horribly limited.
-Sylvia Plath
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Writing Seminar Contract
Date:
I
…………………………………………… do hereby acknowledge that I completely
understand the Writing Seminar syllabus. I understand that though Mr. Funk will do his best to
remind me of assignment deadlines, it is ultimately my responsibility to keep track of my
schedule and the due dates of assignments.
I understand that I have the option to rewrite all of the papers in Mr. Funk’s class only if I meet
with him regarding his comments on each of the papers I intend on rewriting. I also understand
that while I may improve my paper grade, I may also worsen my paper grade.
I understand that Mr. Funk has deliberately assigned approximately four hours of homework per
week and that he expects me to complete it.
I will not text message during class.
I will not inappropriately use technology during class.
I will focus on learning and not just my grade.
I will strive for excellence because I know that I cannot achieve any of my scholastic goals
without complete mastery of the written and spoken word.
Signed: …………………………………………………………
The top three reading/writing areas with which I need help (i.e. thesis statements, conclusions,
grammar, syntax, punctuation, deliberate reading, ESL, idioms, apostrophes, etc.)
1.
2.
3.
My major –
What I am doing in ten years –