VB037: Writing in English
Fall 2015, Monday 8:00 – 9:50
Mgr. Antonín Zita, M.A., 179209@phil.muni.cz
Course description:
This course is designed to teach students the necessary skills that will enable them to proceed
from sentence construction and paragraph writing to essay writing. The students will be
familiarized with the writing of topic sentences, thesis statements, and different types of
paragraphs and essays. The students will practice these steps of the writing process via in-class
writing, text analysis, peer assessment, editing, and writing of a draft of the final essay. While
some grammatical aspects of English used in the academia will be touched upon in the class, the
students are expected to study individually in case they find their levels of knowledge not
sufficient for class purposes.
Course assessment:
Students write one shorter essay during the writing week which constitutes 20 percent of the final
grade (600 – 1200 words) and an expanded version of the essay at the end of the course. The
grade for the final essay, which is to have between 900 – 1800 words, constitutes 50 percent of the
overall grade and is split between two parts – the quality of the essay and the quality of peerreview
feedback to other students’ essays. The deadline for the final essay will be set sometime
during the semester. Active participation is expected and it constitutes 30 percent of the final
grade; this includes not only work in class but also preparing short written assignments at home.
Course policy:
Students are allowed not to attend two classes.
Syllabus
Week 1, Sept 21
Introductory class: course policies and assignments, introduction to academic English, academic
register and style.
Week 2, Sept 28
NO CLASS – State Holiday
Go to http://www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL/index.htm and practice academic
vocabulary.
Week 3, Oct 5
Paragraphs – functions of paragraphs, writing and revising paragraphs, topic sentence
Week 4, Oct 12
Paragraph coherence: noun repetition, parallel structures, transitional expressions, developing
paragraphs.
Week 5, Oct 19
Developing skills – more practice in paragraph writing, contrasting paragraphs
Week 6, Oct 26
Planning and organizing + writing introductions and conclusions, forming a thesis statement
Week 7, Nov 2
No class. During this week students write the first draft of their essays.
Week 8, Nov 9
Peer feedback on the first draft.
Week 9, Nov 16
Working with sources: searching for sources and citing them in the text.
Week 10, Nov 23
The mechanics and clarity of writing – misplaced and dangling modifiers; the passive voice.
Week 11, Nov 30
The mechanics and clarity of writing – capital letters, commas, periods, semicolons, quotation
marks.
Week 12, Dec 7
Writing effectively
Week 13, Dec 14
Revision of the course