Through a year-long series of in-class and out-of-class exercises, students will acquire more sophisticated literacy skills, become competent in recognising and using standard English grammar, become adept at applying particular prose writing strategies, and become acquainted with appropriate on-line modes and methods of written delivery in a professional context. In so doing, students will also develop basic document editing and formatting skills.
The aim of this module is to
• help learners gain confidence and competence in writing clearly and effectively in both conventional and on-line fora.
• take “text production” as a central term, students will seek to match form and style to register in any given or imagined writing scenario.
• present documents in a professional manner and develop critical thinking skills in opting for appropriate online modes of text delivery.
|
Grammar: Eight parts of speech. Phrases, clauses, sentences. Concise writing: junk phrases, redundancies, and excessive qualification. Forceful writing: needless self-reference, the passive voice, weak openings, vague language, jargon and clichés. Correct Writing: shifting narrative voice, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, subject / verb agreement, pronoun reference, clear modification, correct punctuation, parallelism, syntax.
Organisational Patterns: Narrative, Description, Compare and Contrast, Cause and Effect, Classification, Analysis, Persuasion.
Document production: Editing and formatting documents using MS Word including numbering and bullets, borders and shading, headers and footers, bookmark, footnotes and endnotes, proofreading tools, document layouts, creation of tables and columns.
New and Social media content: Identifying and appraising range of social media and their usability in a professional setting (e.g. blogs, wikis, Twitter and Facebook). Producing texts for a range of social media. Maintaining a blog which will integrate audio and video capturing; audio and video editing; podcasting; videocasting.
|
Roundtable discussions and critical appraisals of in-class readings; in-class and out-of class writing exercises; frequent oral delivery of written work; informal peer review; computer laboratory work; independent online learning; interactive discussions; collaborative learning in class through discussions and out of class through social media.
Lab time will be essential, both for the New Media lectures times and the ‘conventional’ content of the module. The textbooks chosen have crucial web support that can be exploited only via Internet access.
| Module Content & Assessment | |
|---|---|
| Assessment Breakdown | % |
| Formal Examination | 40 |
| Other Assessment(s) | 60 |