The submitted portfolios have been read and the results are in. Check your email (but not until at least 30 minutes after this message has been posted) to see your individual results. For those who "passed" and those who received a "no pass," along with those who did not submit a portfolio, you will receive a form letter via blind carbon copy, meaning you won't know who else received that email. What each of you needs to do is the same. For those who need to revise an essay, I'll be providing some individual feedback and suggestions.

I am leaving for a conference at 6:00 tomorrow morning and won't be back until Sunday afternoon, and will be busy the whole time, probably not checking email much and being dead tired when I do, so don't write a long email in hopes of a long answer. It won't happen. I will be in my office around 9:00 Monday morning and will be happy to meet and/or accept final revisions.

You can pick up your portfolio from the box outside my door at any time.

Cover sheets for your final portfolio submission are attached. Below are directions for your submission.

1. Any student who PASSed at midterm should include that essay and the rating sheet in the portfolio. (The reader of the portfolio then looks at only two documents, saving time and energy.)
2. All essays should be submitted in an 8 1/2" x 11" manila file folder (NOT a legal –sized folder) with no decorations; that folder should have the instructor's prefix and the student's complete SID # on the tab.
3. Clean copies--without instructor or peer comments--of both essays and the reflective cover letter should be submitted in that manila folder.
4. On all essays, the instructor’s prefix and the student’s complete SID should be the only identifying heading. Students should lightly pencil in their first names on the back side of the last pages. The instructor's name appears nowhere on students’ work.
5. Each essay—including the cover sheet with the assignment—should be stapled in the upper left corner.
6. Students should fill out the final rating sheet with the instructor prefix and their own student ID numbers and put it inside the folder. The rating sheet should not be stapled to any paper for the final portfolio.

No Class Thursday! I'll be out of town at a conference.

Essay Three and Four revisions, with revisions highlighted, due in my office, 5-157, Monday, March 18

Cover Letter should address three of the following Course Learning Outcomes:

• recognize that writing is a process requiring thoughtful reconsideration and revision
• discern and record details accurately as part of the composing process
• generate varied ideas as part of the composing process
• evaluate details and ideas in light of particular audiences and rhetorical purposes
• organize ideas in a coherent manner
• use specific details to support claims
• gather, use, and document information to develop an argument
• communicate with an academic audience to describe, analyze, and persuade
• observe the conventions of standard edited American English
• meet deadlines and complete requirements
• write independently
• provide feedback for other writers
• use instructor and peer feedback to improve prose

The fourth essay is due via email (bradb@spokanefalls.edu) by midnight tomorrow. We will NOT have class on Thursday as we will be holding conferences to prepare for the portfolio readings next week. If you have not done so already, stop by my office and sign up for a conference. The sign up sheet is on my door.

I need to read and respond to your fourth essay before we meet, so please get it to me by the assignment deadline of Midnight, Tuesday. When you come, bring your revision of essay three and your draft cover letter. If I have read, responded to and returned your fourth essay, bring that as well. Otherwise, I'll return the fourth essay at our conference.

If you have any questions, let me know.

This weekend the schedule calls for submitting a draft of your argument for feedback and responding to two essays of your classmates, using this criteria, to help them (and you!) come up with a better argument and essay.

Bring a printed copy of your essay to class on Monday with all the revisions you have time to make. We'll give it one last in-class looking over before you complete the final revisions before submitting it by midnight Tuesday it for my formal response.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you have over the weekend, but I won't read your essay from start to finish and provide the sort of feedback I'll provide over the next week. Ask me targeted questions (Is my thesis making a clear argument? Do I have effective evidence in my third paragraph to support the claim? Is my opposing view clear?) and I'll get back to you in as helpful a manner as possible as quickly as possible.

We'll be back in room 211 in the library on Thursday. See you there.

Also, there is a presentation at 10:30 in the Student Union building on the history of China and/or Chinese novels. I've seen two different advertisements, so I don't know which. However, if you are still looking for a way to focus your final essay, this might help. If it's focused on history, you could ask how the history of China, as seen in the romance the Three Kingdoms, might inform America today. I bet that will get some good answers. Hope to see you there.

http://libguides.spokanefalls.edu/China

http://libguides.spokanefalls.edu/content.php?pid=176381&sid=3415221

Think Tank Website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/library/research/guides/think-tanks-directory...

One of the librarians put together this guide to books we have on China. You will recall (I hope) that I said you need not use books, but instead would do well to focus on what can be found in the databases, but you may still want to give these e-texts a look.

We will meet in Building 24-Room 204 Thursday the 21st. See you there.

Although we have a three-day weekend, I think we are both going to be busy. Here's what's coming down the pike:

1. Post a draft of essay three by midnight Friday (that's tonight). If you miss that deadline, get it posted ASAP.
2. Respond to at least two drafts by the end of the weekend, using the provided response rubric, giving the writer time enough to get some revising done before the essay is due to me for a formal response. Because everyone needs responses, if someone already has two, please find an essay that doesn't.
3. Submit an essay for a formal response by midnight Tuesday and get reading and annotating the final fourth of Three Kingdoms once you are done with that.
4. As always, give me an email if you are having troubles. Be sure to explain what it is you think you are to be doing and what you have done and where you got stuck. That way I can better help.