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Instructors: Michael A.C. Claridge
Event type:
online: Practice class
Displayed in timetable as:
05.866.311
Hours per week:
2
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 45
Requirements / organisational issues:
Building on the writing skills you acquired in “Writing English I”, mini-group analysis and discussion of a set of prepared tasks will refresh your understanding of the key elements of an effective academic essay, explore different rhetorical strategies that can be used when responding to a literary or cultural-studies text (e.g. comparison & contrast, cause & effect, definition & classification, exemplification, summary), and further refine your skills in drawing up and using a plan when preparing to write such an essay. Writing tasks along the way will help you internalise these and other tools and skills, while peer-to-peer feedback will refine your ‘critical eye’ regarding content, structure and language appropriateness & accuracy. including eradicating interference from German (and any other languages!) when writing (in) English.
Content-wise, we will consider how to respond to a literature text and then package your ideas in essay form in a manner that can persuade the READER of your line of argumentation: YOUR view is perfectly ok, as long as you can adequately and effectively support it, especially from the primary text(s)! Such a READER focus will be the central aim of our course, in terms of content, structure and language.
All this work will be paralleled by your in-depth reading of one from a selection of medium-length novels. You will apply the skills developed in the course of the semester to draw up two plans for a topic given you on your chosen novel, one for a narrative/informative essay, one for an argumentative/persuasive essay; the latter will be the focus for the final in-class (90 minutes) writing assignment (just the plan for the Studienleistung; plan plus essay for the module exam).
You will be expected to have access to one of the better monolingual English learners’ dictionaries, either in print form or on your device or online. The best two are currently the Longman/Langenscheidt Dictionary of Contemporary English and the Oxford University Press/Cornelsen Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Other material will be made available in the first class session and in the course of the semester. I will assume you have mastered how to quote and also how to appropriately write and format a bibliography in a literature-studies/cultural-studies essay from earlier classes/modules. You will be permitted to use one monolingual dictionary (PRINT format ONLY) in the two mini-tests and the final test, so it is advisable to get to know your way around your dictionary as soon as possible.
We will be working via the LMS Moodle platform, ‘meeting’ virtually via Big Blue Button during our formal class-hour for full-class discussions of prepared material. You will prepare for this by working in mini-groups, using the platform and whatever other means of discussion you and your fellow-mini-group members find helpful to develop a mini-group solution for each week. One of you will send this to me, and I will combine the various proposals to create a worksheet for the full-class discussion. I will inform you in the first two weeks as to how the two short tests will be conducted, as well as the format of the final test.
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