IW

Intermediate Composition 2 (Higher Intermediate)

• Pukyong National University (Daeyeon Campus)
• Fall 2020
• Course #109820
• Syllabus (revised 2020.09.01)
• Room: C25-530 (allotted room, but not likely used)
• Instructional medium: This course will be conducted with a blend of live Zoom sessions and some uploaded, pre-recorded videos in the LMS. It is unlikely that we will hold live classes in our classroom.

Prof. Kent Lee

• Office: C25-1103
• Office hours: By appointment

1 Course description

This course is designed mainly for sophomores, juniors and seniors in social science and humanities fields. The goals of the course consist of improving your academic English writing skills, and expressing yourselves better in English. This includes specific skills like:

1. Writing different types of paragraphs (definition, classification, narrative, etc.)
2. Prewriting techniques
3. Using basic sentence types effectively; this includes common second-language issues such as essay structure, style, wording, and grammar issues.
4. Developing main ideas, topic sentences, and body paragraphs

1.1 Readings and materials

The textbook for this course is a course packet, which will be made available in a PDF file in the LMS. Other materials will be available in the LMS and at this course website.

2 Tentative schedule

This is tentative, so you can expect changes and other activities, including readings, short paragraph assignments, and other short assignments. (HW = homework; ex. = exercise; ¶ = paragraph writing exercise; GF = online Google Forms; SE = short essay; LMS = assignment to be submitted via the LMS.)

week	date	topics	assignments
01	01 Sept.	Intro; self-intros; narrative paragraphs	GF#1: Info & survey form; ¶
02	07 Sept.	Narrative & descriptive ¶s; verb tenses
03	14 Sept.	Classification & example¶s; delimiters
04	21 Sept.	Definition ¶s; delimiters	¶
05	28 Sept.*	Process ¶s; infinitives, gerunds
06	05 Oct.	Contrast & comparison ¶s; relative clauses
07	12 Oct.	Evaluation ¶s; modals	¶
08	19 Oct.	Cause & effect ¶s
09	26 Oct.	Argumentation
10	02 Nov.	Midterms	Midterm
11	09 Nov.	Inductive, deductive, & hypothesis testing ¶s
12	16 Nov.	Analysis ¶s	¶
13	23 Nov.	Problem-solution ¶s
14	30 Nov.	Problem-solution; citing sources	¶
15	07 Dec.	Citing sources (Chicago Manual)
16	14 Dec.	Argumentation
?	?	Finals week	Final paper

3 News sites

There are the top news outlets, sites and publications for general world news, political news, original reporting, investigative journalism, commentary and analysis. Many of these predate the Internet, so here, format includes its original format before going online.

3.1 General news

Name / site	Format & scope	Location
ABC News] (US)	Traditional nightly TV news	US
ABC News] (Australia)	Traditional TV news	Australia
	Wire service	US
The Atlantic	Magazine; commentary & analysis of news, culture and society	US
BBC News	Traditional TV news	UK
CBS News	Traditional TV news	US
CNN Cable News Network	TV news; general news	US
Foreign Affairs	Magazine; in-depth analysis of global affairs	US (published by a famous thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations)
The Guardian	Newspaper	UK
[1]	US political news & commentary	US
Huffingtonpost	Magazine format; commentary and analysis of US & international news, politics, society, and culture	US
NBC News	Traditional TV news	US
The New Yorker	Magazine; commentary & analysis of news, culture and society	US
National Public Radio	Radio news	US
New York Times	Newspaper	US
Reuters	Wire service	Germany
Politico	US political news & commentary	US
[http://www.time.com Time magazine	Magazine	US
[http://www.wsj.com The Wall Street Journal	Newspaper; US & international financial & general news	US
[http://www.washingtonpost.com The Washington Post	Newspaper	US

The following are news aggregators, which do not do original reporting, but merely aggregate or collect trending stories from many news outlets.

1. [2]
2. [3]

The following report on news and provide commentary and analysis from a specific political perspective. They are not intended as general news sources, but as sources of (generally) intelligent political commentary.

1. The New Republic (US; liberal)
2. The Nation (US; liberal)
3. National Review (US; conservative)
4. The Weekly Standard (US; conservative)

3.2 Business & financial news

Name / site	Format & scope	Location
Bloomberg	TV news	US
Business Insider	Magazine	US
[http:// cnbc.com CNBC	TV news	US
The Economist	Magazine	US
The Financial Times	Magazine	UK
Forbes	Magazine	US
[4]	Magazine	US
New York Times (business section)	Newspaper	US
[http://www.wsj.com The Wall Street Journal	Newspaper; US & international financial & general news	US

3.4 Science news

1. New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com
2. Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com
3. Science News http://www.sciencenews.org

4 Reference materials

4.1 Citation systems

The following are some commonly used citation systems; you can use any one of these for your papers in this course.

• See also this general introduction to citing and referencing sources.
• Brief Prezi on citing & referencing sources.

Style	Typical field
* Chicago Manual, short & long footnote styles	humanities (This is a more semi-formal citation style; end references are still required with footnotes)
* Chicago Manual (parenthetical)	humanities (This is a more formal style with Author+Year in parenthetical in-text citations) humanities
* Chicago Manual (all versions)	complete guide to all versions

If you have a lot of media sources, you might find Chicago or MLA easier to use.

4.2 Discourse & style issues

Read the relevant course packet chapters on coherence / transitionals, cohesion, reporting verbs, and word choice. We may go through some of this quickly in class, as this is rather dry. Please look at the examples and bring your questions, as you may or may not understand why some examples are given, or are flagged as problematic.

To revise and improve your midterm paper, first look at these more general guides to style and wording. Korean English errors Informal expressions L2 writing problems (global issues) Clearer wording guide Transitional expressions for speaking & writing

Then look at these more specific topics. Academic versus non-academic writing Adjectives Capitalization Commas Colloquialisms Colons and semi-colons Connectors (transitionals) L2 connector errors (East Asians) Delimiters (definite & indefinite articles) Konglish (vocabulary issues) Modal verb problems Punctuation symbols Reporting & communication verb problems Reporting verbs (comprehensive guide) Sentence types Subject-verb agreement Unprofessional tone Verb+preposition errors (and phrasal verbs)