Course Description
This integrated reading and writing course is for students who wish to upgrade their reading and writing in order to continue their education. The course is designed for advanced level students who need to read academic materials efficiently and critically. Students enrolling in this course should have extensive experience writing paragraphs and short essays, good control of grammar and sentence structure and advanced listening and speaking skills. This course emphasizes reading for study purposes and writing from sources at a first-year university level. Students will read material from texts, academic/professional books and journals and literature. Reading exercises will emphasize understanding how information and ideas are developed and organized, summarizing important ideas and details, and identifying and evaluating arguments. In addition to improving overall expository writing and editing skills, students will develop persuasive essays and research papers. Class activities will help students to use source materials to generate topics, develop thesis statements and provide evidence. Exercises will also help students improve their skills at integrating material from several sources, documenting, summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting sources.
Course Content
Reading Skills
- To follow the ideas and information in readings
- Follow written instructions
- Use pre-reading skills to prepare for a reading task
- Identify overall purpose and/or issue, key idea, main ideas, and key details
- Follow the organization of a reading
- Identify, summarize and evaluate an author’s position, supporting argument, and evidence; compare/contrast two positions on the same topic in opinion readings
- Identify components (background, method, results, discussion, conclusions) and evaluate how well reports/studies meet specified criteria in experiment/research reports/studies
- Analyze characters, setting, theme and use of literary devices (symbolism, imagery) in literature
- To determine meanings of unfamiliar words, especially academic and/or professional topic-related language and/or jargon using English-English dictionaries, indexes, glossaries, and context clues
- To find materials in the library
- Use a variety of library resource materials to research a topic
- Use World Wide Web: create search strategies, use subject directories & search engines, evaluate web sites
- Use on-line databases to access source materials for research projects.
- To use study skills
- Apply and evaluate graphs, charts and statistical data to provide logical support for a thesis
- Prepare for objective tests and essay tests
- Prepare study notes and predict exam questions
- Learn content from text/class materials
Writing Skills
- To write informally
- Write reflectively about course readings
- Take research notes, including summary, paraphrase, and quotations from source readings
- To write formal multi-paragraph summaries, summary-analyses and comparative analyses
- Take accurate summary notes from assigned articles/cases
- Prepare paragraph frameworks for summaries
- Compose well-structured, paraphrased, accurate summaries using notes and paragraph frameworks
- Write analyses of summarized articles following guidelines
- Revise based on peer and teacher feedback
- Follow format instructions
- Edit and proofread
- To write research essays
- Generate ideas from readings
- 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
- Incorporate source material and document (APA style)
- Create coherence within and between paragraph
- Write well-structured concluding paragraphs
- Revise based on peer and teacher feedback
- Follow format instructions
- Edit and proofread
Accuracy
- To self-monitor for accuracy
- Apply knowledge of parts of speech, sentence elements, specified sentence types, and mechanics
- Apply sentence structure rules
- to correctly embed appositives and introductory phrases, including reduction of adverb and adjective clauses to participial phrases
- to correctly insert evidence (direct/indirect quotes, and author intro phrases)
- Identify and correct errors as specified for this and previous levels in
- tense rules in reported speech (especially for paraphrase)
- verb tense shifts in mixed tense environments
- passive voice
- word order in questions (for questionnaires and interview questions)
- word choice and word form
- articles and other determiners, especially for abstract nouns which have both countable and uncountable uses
- format and punctuation for documenting and inserting evidence from sources
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 reading and writing activities.
Whole and small group instruction will be combined with individual assistance and student-directed learning. Students will receive assistance with reading difficulties that arise from lack of familiarity with the structure, lexicon and cultural content of the reading passages. 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
- Complete assigned skill-development tasks
- Prepare file of self-selected articles used as source material in essays; prepare research notes on material; prepare a reference list APA style.
- Develop a file of writing, all word processed, that meets instructor specified criteria for content, organization, language use and accuracy, and format
- These assignments should include the following:
- at least one summary
- at least one summary/analysis
- at least one research essay
- at least one comparative analysis of arguments on a common issue
- These assignments could include the following:
- a summary of an experiment/research report
- a short literary analysis documented MLA style of
- theme
- relationship between setting and theme or setting and character
- comparison/contrast of characters
- In class, plan, organize, and write at least one essay/report 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
Student achievement will be assessed using the letter grade system in accordance with college policy.
Learning Outcomes
Overall Objectives
Extend communicative proficiency and language accuracy for a broad range of academic purposes
Specific Objectives
- Read and understand academic material to support writing
- Take notes for a range of academic purposes
- Use strategies to explore academic materials
- Collect, analyze, and organize relevant information from a variety of sources
- Plan, write, revise, edit and document (APA or MLA style) formal compositions such as summary, summary-analysis, research essay, comparative analysis, experiment/research report and literary analysis
- 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 will be required to purchase a textbook to be determined by the instructor.