Graduate Program (& Advanced Certificate) Status
The aim of this course is to help you further develop as a writer within the English-speaking academic community by raising awareness of, practicing, and reflecting upon the conventions of written texts. In addition to addressing issues related to academic writing, the course will also focus on the other skills you will need to complete your graduate level work in English.
During the course, you will:
- become more familiar with the genres of and enhance the skills related to critique-based and argumentative writing.
- acquire a better awareness of and ability to use effectively the discourse patterns of academic English.
- improve your critical writing skills.
- have the opportunity to develop your writing process through generating ideas, drafting, peer evaluation and individual writing consultations.
- learn to take into consideration the expectations of your readership with regard to academic English discourse conventions.
- learn to incorporate the work of other authors into your own writing within the requirements of English academic practice.
- develop your revising and editing skills.
- gain confidence in expressing yourself in both spoken and written English, through in-class writing and speaking, homework and consultations.
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- identify the typical components and features of various genres in the discipline.
- structure an academic paper at the macro and micro level.
- think and write more clearly and incisively.
- have a variety of skills and approaches to draw upon when writing academic papers.
- target the various audiences academics write for, and understand the expectations of these audiences.
- properly incorporate the work of other authors into your own writing.
- understand the CEU policy towards plagiarism.
- edit and refine your own written work.
Attendance is mandatory, and as this is a seminar you will be expected to fully contribute to each session. During the fall you will be required to have (1) one mandatory consultation on a critique that you will begin working on during the first week and (2) another one on a chosen departmental assignment. You will receive qualitative comments during consultation which are intended to help you to improve your writing. In addition to the mandatory consultations, you may consult with me on other assignments, up to and including your thesis. As academic writing is a required support course (to help you with other courses) it is graded PASS/FAIL and so will not affect your GPA.
