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Intermediate Writing (Higher Intermediate / Intermediate 2)

  • Pukyong National University (Daeyeon Campus)
  • Room: (allotted room, but not likely used)
  • Instructional medium: This course will be conducted by means of uploaded, pre-recorded videos in the LMS. It is unlikely that we will hold live classes in our classroom this semester.


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


2 Assignments

2.1 ¶#1

For the first paragraph / multi-paragraph writing assignment, you will write a self-introduction email of at least a couple of paragraph. You can refer to the email guide in the book (§2.5) for the basic format of an English email. The general format and structure can be more formal, but the contents of the body paragraph can be more semi-formal (including first and second person pronouns). In your email, you can choose any one or more of the following topics and explain them in your email.

  1. Why you chose your major, and your future plans.
  1. Tell me about your English learning. What things have you find to be actually helpful and useful in learning English (habits, practices, experiences, reading materials, media materials, etc.)? What things have been unhelpful or adverse? How do you feel toward English? Do you personally like it or find it useful, or do you feel negative about it? What experiences have made you feel that way? How important is English for your future?
  2. Tell me about your experiences learning another language (and various aspects like those mentioned in the previous item).
  3. To help me learn the Korean language and culture, perhaps you could recommend some basic reading materials, websites, or any written or print materials that might help. Be sure to provide background information on such sources. (My Korean is at a lower-intermediate level).
  4. Any other questions that you might have.

Be sure to indicate your name and section in the subject line. Be sure to send your email to at least two of my email accounts simultaneously, to avoid emails getting lost (and that helps my email filters to put it in the right folder).

Due date: 18 Sept. For grading, you can refer to the grading criteria in the appendix, particularly those on p. 74. However, this is a semi-formal assignment, so I will not grade too strictly, and will not expect this to be in the very formal style of a college essay. Thus, I will also consider your effort as well, and so for this, the criteria on p. 74 are a rough guideline.


2.2 ¶#2

For this assignment, you will fill out application questions for a job application. Each question should be answered with at least a complete paragraph. You can write this as if you were applying to a job such as the following. For this application, you are applying for an entry-level position, starting position, or junior position at a company, organization, or other entity.

  • An entry-level position at a major company
  • A teaching job of any kind (primary, secondary, tertiary, or private)
  • An NGO (non-governmental organization or charity organization)
  • A government agency (e.g., in Korea or another country), or a governmental organization (e.g., the UN or similar entity)

You will answer four of the following questions.

(1) Please explain your relevant training, education, skills and qualifications for working at this company, and in this specific position.
(2a) How have you developed intellectually and personally while in college? or

(2b) How did you develop or express your leadership, both in and out of school?

(3) What are your long-term goals at this company, and in your career?
(4a) What book has changed you the most? or

(4b) Explain how a past experience in your life changed you. or

(4c) If you were given the chance to change the curriculum of your school, what changes would you make? or

(4d) Explain the relevance of your major—for society, and for this job.


2.3 Midterm: Proposal

A proposal can be a letter or short essay, and can be used to apply for a number of different things. In this assignment, you can choose a more business oriented topic or a more academic topic.

2.3.1 Project types

The KentLee7 Foundation is accepting applications for various research, community service, and business development projects.[1]


Academic Research Project

This is for those who wish to undertake a special research project in their senior year of college, or in a Master’s program. The senior research project involves an original research project in a special studies course under the direction of a professor, and this will lead to a full-length bachelor’s thesis for the course. The Master’s project will be directed by the student’s academic advisor / professor, and this will of course lead to the standard Master’s thesis [석사논문] that is a typical requirement for an M.A. degree (in a humanities or social science field) or an M.S. degree (in science and engineering fields).

Amount: ₩1,000,000—₩10,000,000


Community Service Project

For this, you will propose a project that will benefit a community in some manner. This can be an area of Busan, a rural community or area of Korea, or a community or small area in another country. This can be any kind of community project. You will need to explain a specific need, a specific plan for a project to address the need, and your ability to direct a project to help with that need. (There should be a suitable professor or business leader in the community who can help as an advisor for your project, and as a contact person for the Foundation.)

Amount: ₩1,000,000—₩10,000,000


Business Project Proposal

This is for those who need funding for a particular business project. This can be starting a new business, and/or researching, developing, and marketing a new invention, product or service. For this, you will need to identify and explain a specific need or market for your company or idea, a specific plan for developing it, and your ability to direct the project and successfully complete it. (There should be a suitable professor or business leader in the community who can help as an advisor for your project, and as a contact person for the Foundation.)

Amount: ₩5,000,000—₩20,000,000


2.3.2 Proposal components

Your written proposal should include most or all of the following elements in some form.

General requirements for all papers
  1. At least 1.5 pages (if double spaced); 1.5-4 pages
  2. At least two sources should be cited and used meaningfully (such as academic or business / professional quality sources)
  3. Submitted in the LMS by the end of the midterm period


Academic Research Project
  1. Research question or problem
  2. Research plan and methods, details, and rationale for your choices
  3. Specific goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes
  4. Potential obstacles (and how you will handle them)
  5. Your ability and qualifications to direct the project, manage the funds, and successfully complete the project
  6. General timeline and budget
  7. Why your project deserves funding (including unique or distinctive aspects)
  8. Likely outcomes or potential results of the research
  9. Benefits or implications of your results


Community Service & Business Projects
  1. Situation or problem
  2. Your plan, including the proposed solution or approach, specific details, and rationale for your choices
  3. Specific goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes
  4. Potential obstacles (and how you will handle them)
  5. Your ability and qualifications to direct the project, manage the funds, and successfully complete the project
  6. General timeline and budget
  7. Why your project deserves funding (including unique or distinctive aspects)
  8. Likely benefits, outcomes, or implications of the project


2.3.3 General template

Here is a general template to help you get started. Each of these items might constitute a paragraph or a section of two or more paragraphs in your essay.

  1. Brief self-introduction; general purpose of the project
  2. Statement of the problem or question
  3. Specific description of your proposal / solution
  4. Specific goals, objectives, or outcomes
  5. Uniqueness or distinctiveness of your project or idea
  6. Your qualifications
  7. Timeline, budget, and how you will allocate the funds


2.3.4 Example

Here is an general example of a proposal; though the general purpose of this example is a bit different from the assignment requirements, it shows the key elements of a decent proposal.

In response to your company’s notice soliciting proposals for a website management team, our team at Skynet would like to discuss the opportunity to manage your company’s web services, and in the following paragraphs, we will explain how we can be of help to your company.

Our own analysis of your company’s search engine hits shows that your company ranks relatively low, and is need of SEO (search engine optimization). We also see some potential problems with the visual layout of your web pages, such as font issues that look fine on a PC, but do not render well on mobile devices. We also have found that navigation menus and input fields in the order forms are not so intuitive or easy to navigate. Also, some of your product information is less than clear, or could be more informative and appealing to customers.

Skynet’s web development team includes IT experts with training and background in cognitive science, linguistics, and user experience (UX) fields, and such expertise is necessary for designing a more professional website that would be suitable for a large company such as yours. For example, our cognitive scientists are familiar with eye tracking research that shows how users scan the visual and text information of websites in certain directions1, and the visual layout of your product pages are inconsistent with these research findings, and thus, are more difficult for customers for locate relevant information. We are also aware of recent research on font design and the types of fonts that are suitable for different types of websites2, and can help you customize the text display of your sites for different devices.

Finally, our linguists, style and communication experts can help redesign the text on your website, including company information and product descriptions. For example, some users will want more technical information about your electronics products, which is often incomplete, while others would want more functional descriptions, and our designers can help create intuitive interfaces to provide different types of information to different users. Some of these principles are described in trade publications by one of our UX experts.3

In fact, our team can help redesign the entire website from the bottom up. We are capable of hiring focus groups to test web interfaces, to assess the success of your work. We also have access to quantitative rating criteria from university research labs in order to evaluate and compare your current site with the final redesigned website that we would create. Our effectiveness can also be gauged by your future online sales data. For comparable past projects, our work has generally led to a 20% increase in sales on commercial websites like yours, and we expect to be able to deliver similar results.

For a company of your size, we can redesign your website within a month, for an estimated €500,000, followed by a recommended four months of maintenance, supervision, and quality control testing, for €40,000 per month. We can project that as a result, if you experince an increase in sales volume of around 20%, within a year your investment will have paid itself off. So we invite you to contact use for further discussion about letting us partner with you to improve your website experience.


1. McKlonkie, Georg, & Alan Svednarp, 2019. "Visual scans of commercial websites. Journal of Experimental Marketing Research, 12(2), 178-195.

2. Barx, Elan. 2021. "Font type judgments among users of various types of websites." International Research in Online Marketing, 4(1), 33-56.

3. Swatch, Amalie. 2019. "Principles of text and information in web user interface." Online Marketing Monthy, Sept. 2019, 14-17.


Here is another example, for a research proposal, which is of course rather fictitious.

I would like to apply for a research grant from your foundation, for a physics and engineering project that will lead to the development of better spacecraft propulsion.

In recent decades, government space programs have become less ambitious and more concerned with near-Earth research, such as sending probes to various bodies in the solar system, and maintaining a space station in low-Earth orbit. Private initiatives have mainly focused on launching satellites, and creating reusable vehicles for low-Earth purposes such as launching satellites or sending space tourists to low-Earth trips. Attempts to send astronauts or colonists to Mars, both private efforts and those led by agencies like NASA, have faced endless setbacks, and suffer from a lack of planning or methods to deal with various serious obstacles. The dreams that space agencies and nations once entertained of reaching beyond our terrestrial neighborhood have gone quiet. The challenges of escapting Earth's orbit and traversing vast reaches of space, even within our solar system, seem insurmountable. The main reason is that novel methods of space propulsion are needed to overcome these challenges, and while ion rocket resarch seems promising, it will not be enough to send humans to Mars and beyond within a reasonable amount of time.

The problem of fast propulsion has been dealt with in some theoretical research. In 1994, the physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a mathematical model for a warp drive that could bend space-time for faster-than-light (FTL) or supraluminal propulsion.1 The original proposal had some flaws, such as the amount and type of energy required for an FTL drive, but refinements have been published since then that reduce the prohibitive amounts of energy required to power the Alcubierre drive.2, 3 Yet the types of engery involved are exotic, as "negative energy" is an undefined theoretical construct, a placeholder for an important part of the model that we do not yet understand.

This proposed project will attempt to alleviate these problems via a different approach that involves alternative methods for generating the types of energy involved. This involves the invention of a flux capacitory to generate and regulate these types of engergies, but with antimatter rather than exotic and likely impossible forms of energy. The theoretical basis and mechanics are detailed in a paper that I have submitted to a major physics journal, and is currently under review. 4

I am an astrophysics professor and researcher at the Astrophysics Research Institute at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and have published a number of theoretical papers on antimatter and exotic engergies in leading international journals, and this research lays the foundation for this proposed project. I have also collaborated with colleagues in materials engineering in designing ion rockets for future NASA spacecraft, so I have a solid understanding of principles of actual engine design and construction. The principles of ion rocket design and construction can be combined with the theoretical models that I have been developing for FTL propulsion.

This project will require a modest funding of only €2 trillion from your foundation, which will take an estimated five years to complete. I will serve as the principle investigator who will overseen the project, as I overseen a number of grant projects in the past. The funding will involve research funding for my lab, for two fellow faculty members in the Materials Engineering department, and for hiring ten post-doctoral research assistants and ten graduate student assistants. The bulk of the money will be used for the materials and testing required for developing high-energy flux capacitors to generate and regulate warp fields, and for construction of a test craft. The budget and timeline are detailed in an attached document.

If successful, this project will lead to the development of a prototype FTL craft, and will usher in a new era of space exploration, as this will make deep-space exploration a reality. Even if not quite successful, this will nonetheless lead to new propulsion technologies for slower-than-light travel, but at much faster speeds that what is currently possible.


1. Alcubierre, Miguel (1994). "The warp drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity". Classical and Quantum Gravity. 11 (5): L73–L77. 2. Agnew, J. (16 August 2019). "An Examination of Warp Theory and Technology to Determine the State of the Art and Feasibility". AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum and Exposition. 3. Krasnikov, S. (2003). "The quantum inequalities do not forbid spacetime shortcuts". Physical Review D. 67 (10): 104013. arXiv:gr-qc/0207057 4. Cochran, Zephran. (2022). "Toward the development of flux capacitors." Physics Review D. [Under review].


3 Evaluating sources

3.1 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.

3.1.1 General news

Name / site Format & scope Location
ABC News (US) Traditional nightly TV news US
ABC News (Australia) Traditional TV news Australia
Al Jazeera TV news Qatar
The Associated Press 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 TV news; general news US
Deutsche Welle Radio & TV news / TV news Germany
Foreign Affairs Magazine; in-depth analysis of global affairs US (published by a famous thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations)
The Globe and Mail Newspaper Canada
The Guardian Newspaper UK
The Hill 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
South China Morning Post Newspaper Hong Kong
Time magazine Magazine US
The Times of India Newspaper India
The Wall Street Journal Newspaper; US & international financial & general news US
The Washington Post Newspaper US

The following are foreign language news sources from around the world.

  1. Le Monde (France]
  2. Sverige Tillskott (Sweden)
  3. El País (Spain)
  4. Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany)
  5. CNTV (China)
  6. Deutsche Welle (Germany)
  7. Der Spiegel (Germany)
  8. Yomiuri (Japan)
  9. RT (Russia)
  10. France24 (France)
  11. Niews (Netherlands)
  12. De Telegraaf (Netherlands)

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

  1. Google News
  2. Yahoo News

The following 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)


3.1.2 Business & financial news

Name / site Format & scope Location
Bloomberg TV news US
Business Insider Magazine US
Business Standard Newspaper India
CNBC TV news US
The Economist Magazine US
The Financial Times Newspaper UK
Forbes Magazine US
Fortune Magazine US
Market Watch Magazine US
New York Times (business section) Newspaper US
The Wall Street Journal Newspaper US


3.1.3 Technology & IT news

  1. CNET.com
  2. Axios.com
  3. NY Times (tech section)
  4. TechCrunch
  5. The Verge
  6. Wired
  7. Digital Trends
  8. Engadget
  9. Ars Technica
  10. Tech Radar
  11. Gizmodo
  12. The Next Web
  13. Mashable
  14. Tom's Hardware


3.1.4 Science news

  1. New Scientist
  2. Scientific American
  3. Science News
  4. Science Daily
  5. Phys.org
  6. Advanced Science News
  7. Sci-News
  8. Science
  9. SciTechDaily
  10. SciDevNet

4 Paraphrasing and summarizing

Sample revision essays from an assignment may appear here.


5 Reference materials

5.1 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.


6 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.
  1. ↑ Doznees of scholarships have been awarded by this foundation to students at Hogwarts, Gotham City University, Metropolis University, Monsters University, Mars University, Wossamotta University, and Starfleet Academy.
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