COURSE DESCRIPTION

AES 220 Advanced Writing for Nonnative Speakers

Spring 2004

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Class Hours  MWF 9:10-10:10AM    Instructor - Michael D. Krauss 

Phone: (w) x7315        Office Hours - M-TH 12:30-1:30 or by appointment.

 

I. TEXTS:     

 

Required:

• Paragraphs and Essays, Brandon 8th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1998.

• English-English dictionary of your choice

Additional supplies:

           

            • 8 1/2 x 11 inch notebook paper for composition assignments

            • stapler and staples ; highlighter pens

            • Zip disks formatted for Macintosh or PC - cost around $10.If you already have one, you don't need to buy another.  Put your name and phone number on your disk!

            • one 60 minute audio cassette tapes.  Put your name and phone number on your tapes!

 

 

II. COURSE DESCRIPTION/OBJECTIVES:

           

AES 220 is designed to help students acquire the skills needed to successfully complete academic writing assignments at the undergraduate level.  There will be reading and discussion in the class, but the focus will be on writing. Most essays will be written using the "process" approach.  This will consist of three steps:  1) Exploring, Experimenting and Gathering Information; 2) Writing the Controlling Idea and Organizing/Developing Support; and 3) Writing, Revising and Editing.  You will conference with your teacher and your peers during this process.  You will have the opportunity to rewrite your essays after these conferences. (typically 2 drafts). Your teacher will provide feedback on your writing by meeting with you and writing comments/corrections on your papers.  Your teacher will also record comments onto audio tape for you to listen to.  Therefore, you must have access to a tape player either on campus or at home.  (Watzek library has tape players that you may use while in the library). 

 

Some writing assignments will not follow the process model.  For example, you will also have a chance to answer essay test questions or will be asked to respond to something you see, hear, or read within a limited amount of time.  You will not have a chance to revise or edit this writing.   This "one shot" writing within a limited time is also important because you will get similar writing assignments in Lewis & Clark undergraduate classes.

 

University professors expect their students to be able to produce well-formed writing in a variety of patterns and styles.  These include: narration; description; process and cause/effect analysis; classification; comparison/contrast; crititques, definition and argumentation.  Students should know how to "write-up" or "mark-up" their textbooks and how to organize and write a typical essay exam question.  You will have the opportunity to develop your skills in several of these writing genres.

Your textbook provides a variety of exercises to help improve your grammar.  Your teacher will provide additional grammar activities.  An important part of your grammar study will be to analyze your own and your classmates' writing to find common errors and to practice correcting those errors.  You will also work on developing more complex and varied sentence patterns in your writing.

 

III. Class Web Page

 

Writers need an audience.  The Internet provides a wonderful opportunity to publish writing for a much wider audience than just your classmates and teacher.  Each of you is invited to submit at least one piece of writing to be published on the class Web page.  This page will be on the Internet at http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/aes220/home.htmlNOTE:  Putting your work (or photo) on the Internet is voluntary.  If you choose not to participate, that is fine.  For those who do participate, I will ask you to sign a form giving permission to post your work and your photograph.

 

IV. Online Discussion Page

 

You will participate in an online discussion Page (NiceNet) at http://www.nicenet.org in order to share ideas with your classmates, learn to participate in an online discussion forum, and to obtain additional writing practice.  The code you will need to enroll for this course is G90298AZ00 (these are zeros, not the letter "o").  Your teacher will give you further instructions on using NiceNet.  Each week, one student will be responsible for posting a topic for discussion on NiceNet.  The topics may present questions related to academic study or to cultural topics.  Each student will make a post on the topic each week and will reply to at least two student postings each week.  Weekly posts must be at least 350 words.  Replies must be at least 250 words.

 

V. Research Paper

 

The final writing assignment will be a research paper (body=minimum 7 pages).  The paper will be written and documented in APA style on an academic topic of your choice.  This research paper will be persuasive in nature.  Based on your research, you will write a thesis and argue for a particular position and/or action to be taken.  Once the research paper is finished, students will share what they have learned by creating a PowerPoint presentation, which will support an in-class oral report.

 

VI. GRADING:*

 

            Essays                                                                         40%

            Research Paper + Oral Presentation                            30%

            Online Writing (NiceNet)                                           15%

            Classwork/Homework/Participation                            15%

*Attendance is required for all AES classes.  You are allowed only 5 absences in this class. (3 times late = 1 absence)   If you miss more, your grade will be lowered.  Writing assignments that are turned in late will be graded down.

 

We will learn a lot from each other this quarter.  Please ask me questions about anything you don't understand and feel free to come see me in my office.