Course Description & Objectives

Course Description

This course serves as an introduction to concepts central to graduate-level writing and is designed to benefit graduate students for whom English is not a native language. The focus is on improving students’ academic writing by increasing their awareness and use of common academic genres and part-genres (Swales & Feak, 2012), rhetorical concepts, writing strategies, library-based research skills, discipline-specific vocabulary and grammatical features common in academic writing; attention is also given to demystifying norms and practices associated with the U.S. notion of academic integrity (Abasi & Graves, 2008). The course takes a socioliterate approach (Johns, 1997) in that it positions graduate students as apprentice scholars within their respective fields and accords them with both the privileges and responsibilities of such as they become members of their respective academic discourse communities.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Identify the purposes and features of common academic genres (research article, review article, book review, etc.)

• Analyze common academic part-genres (introductions, literature reviews, methodology sections, etc.) in their respective fields

• Define rhetorical concepts, such as audience, purpose, and organization, and utilize these concepts appropriately in their own writing

• Employ strategies to develop ideas, produce drafts, and revise and edit their work

• Use grammatical features common in academic texts and discipline-specific vocabulary more effectively

• Gain better control over tasks fundamental to academic writing, such as defining, describing procedures and processes, presenting and commenting on data, and making claims

• Locate writing-related resources on campus and online

• Understand the U.S. definition of plagiarism, the reasons why U.S. academics and other professionals cite sources, and the consequences of violating academic integrity policies