The following schedule will be adjusted to accommodate the progress of the class.

All materials, including the written text, handouts, and any information spoken in class or written on the board, are expected to be reflected in your work. Take notes, and study the textbook and handouts. Keep all of the work you do during the course until after the final grades have been announced. Your final grades will be determined by the following course components:

• Attendance & participation (discussion, peer review, free writing activity, etc.): 20%


• Writing assignments (including revisions): 50%


• Final exam (including timed writing): 30%

ATTENDANCE, PUNCTUALITY & ASSIGNMENT POLICIES

• Attendance and punctuality are required for all class sessions.


• Exams can only be made up or rescheduled for valid reasons (see the University’s policy regarding make up exams).

LEARNING TASKS & ASSIGNMENTS

Free writing

You will compose a timed writing response to a given prompt in class in most weeks. These activities will be held at the start of class, so make sure to be on time and ready. Latecomers will not be given extra time.

Writing assignments

In addition to the free writing activities and other miscellaneous writing tasks in class, you will write three major assignments, including a classification essay, a comparison or a cause-effect essay, and an argument essay. You will develop each of these essays over several weeks’ time. Topic options will be provided by the instructor, but you are welcomed to use your own topics with the instructor’s approval. Preferable topics are those addressing a social, political, cultural, or environmental issue of concern to Taiwan and those related to NCCU.

When writing the essays, you are expected to apply the writing skills and language learned in class. While your existing English proficiency carries some weight in the instructor’s grading of your essays, to what extent and how effectively you use the knowledge gained in the course matter most in the grading. A grading rubric for the writing assignments is available on the course Moodle.

Presentation

You will give a ten-minute presentation on a topic related to writing, such as your experience of using a writing resource or participating in a writing workshop, and tips on improving an aspect of writing. All presentation slides should be uploaded to Moodle.

Final exam

The final exam is an open book exam. You are allowed to bring the textbook, handouts and notes, but not dictionaries, into the exam room. The exam tests your ability to apply what you have learned throughout the course. It includes questions on aspects of the rhetorical form and grammar points by asking you to rewrite sentences, complete and edit passages, and write a composition simulating a standardized exam.

Textbook

• Great Writing: Great Essays 4 (FOURTH EDITION) ISBN: 978-1-285-19494-3


• Published by: National Geographic Learning/Cengage Learning

Resources

• Oshima, Alice (2014). Longman Academic Writing Series 4: Paragraphs to Essays, Fifth Edition


• Dictionary/Thesaurus


• OXFORD Collocation Dictionary


• The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)


• How to Email Your Professor


• Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)


• No One Writes Alone (MIT video on peer review)


• Quick Guide on Citation Style for Chinese, Japanese and Korean Sources (APA Examples)


• 'Good Grammar' Comes from Privilege, Not Virtue


• Six Vintage-Inspired Animations on Critical Thinking


• Quizlet: 15 Logical fallacies flashcards