Course Description
This course is for students who wish to upgrade their writing for educational or employment purposes. It is designed for students who have experience writing expository paragraphs, and have reasonable control of grammar and sentence structure. This course emphasizes writing for a variety of academic purposes. In addition to improving organizing, composing, editing, revising and proofreading skills, students will develop multi-paragraph academic essays. Students will be introduced to research skills, such as finding, using, and documenting source material.
Course Content
Reading Skills
- To follow the ideas and information in readings
- Follow written instructions
- Follow organization of a text
- Recognize purpose, main ideas, and key ideas
- Identify point of view, supporting argument and evidence
- Identify literary elements
- To determine meanings of unfamiliar words in course materials
- Recognize cultural differences and show awareness of the general features of own culture and associated world views
Writing Skills
- To write informally
- Write reflectively about course readings
- Summarize ideas and information from readings
- With literary texts, a) summarize plot b) describe setting c) analyze character identify theme and conflict
- To write formal summaries and paragraphs
- Take accurate notes from an assigned article related to essay topics
- Create paragraph frames for summaries and paragraphs
- Using notes and framework, compose well-structured, paraphrased, accurate summaries and paragraphs
- Describe plot, character, theme, conflict and setting
- To write essays
- Generate ideas from readings on economic, political, cultural and socially relevant topics
- Select and narrow topics
- Write focused thesis statements and parallel blueprint points
- Create essay frameworks with interrelated body paragraph topic sentences
- Write well-structured introductions
- Develop unified, specific support in body paragraphs
- Incorporate source material and document all sources appropriately, showing understanding of plagiarism
- Create coherence within and between paragraphs
- Write well-structured concluding paragraphs
- With peer and limited teacher feedback, re-draft and revise
- Follow format instructions
- Edit and proofread
- To write at least one case study analysis
- Use the following steps:
- state the problem
- identify causes of the problem
- identify possible solutions
- evaluate possible solutions
- recommend a course of action
- Revise with peer and limited teacher feedback
- Follow format instructions
- Edit and proofread
Accuracy
- To self-monitor for accuracy
- Use and follow editing symbols
- Use word processing editing aids (spelling, grammar check, thesaurus)
- Apply knowledge of parts of speech, sentence elements, specified sentence types, and mechanics
- Identify and correct errors for specified items
- For explicit instruction and evaluation
- Correctly form and use present perfect and past perfect tenses, present perfect continuous and past perfect continuous verb tenses
- Identify and correct sentence structure errors such as run-ons, fragments, and missing sentence elements (e.g. missing subjects)
- Identify and correct infinitive/gerund/base form errors
- Correctly use articles and other determiners
- Items to work on as need arises
- All accuracy items from 100 and 200 levels
- Passive adjective and verb forms
- Parts of speech errors (e.g. parallelism in thesis statements)
- Word choice and word form errors (nouns, adjectives, adverbs)
- Application of appropriate strategies to use computers in writing
Classroom Skills
- Take responsibility for the following:
- attendance and punctuality
- class work and assignments
- participation and teamwork
Learning Activities
The instructor will observe and evaluate students’ development and participation in writing activities.
Whole and small group instruction will be combined with individual assistance and student-directed learning. Students will participate in the setting of goals by identifying their communicative and language development needs, and will participate in the selection of learning activities.
Means of Assessment
This is a Mastery graded course.
- Complete assigned skill-development tasks
- Prepare reference lists in APA format
- Prepare a file of writing that meets instructor specified criteria for content, organization, language use and accuracy, and format.
- These assignments should include:
- informal notes that summarize ideas and information used as source materials in students’ essays
- at least one formal summary of an article used as source material in an essay
- at least one word-processed multi-paragraph essay (cause/effect or comparison/contrast) incorporating source material documented APA style
- These assignments should include:
- a word-processed multi-paragraph essay based on personal experience and/or responding to ideas and information in readings
- a case study analysis
- a piece of writing about literature documented MLA style. Some examples include:
- plot summary
- setting description
- theme and conflict identification
- In class, plan, organize and write at least one short essay that meets instructor specified criteria for content, organization, language use and accuracy, and format
- Complete quizzes, both skill based and content based
- Complete at least one self-assessment of learning strategies, progress, and classroom skills to be discussed with the instructor
- Complete tasks to a specified level of accuracy
Learning Outcomes
Overall Objectives
Extend writing competence and language accuracy for a range of educational and/or employment purposes
Specific Objectives
- Take notes for a range of academic purposes
- Use strategies to explore academic material
- Collect, analyze, and organize relevant information from a variety of sources
- Plan, write, revise and edit summaries and multi-paragraph essays, incorporating source material documented APA style
- Monitor and apply strategies to improve accuracy in grammar, sentence structure, and word choice to a specified level of accuracy
- Participate effectively in a college classroom
- Assess progress
Textbook Materials
Students may be required to purchase a textbook to be determined by the instructor