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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


3.3 Technology & IT news

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.


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. Then look at these more specific topics.