LENGL4142 Global Writer’s Studio Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course aims to help students develop their writing skills and become a more confident and effective communicator in English as a multilingual learner. Students will explore various writing styles and genres, such as academic essays, personal narratives, and reflective writing, and cover key aspects of writing, including grammar, punctuation, referencing, word choice, paragraphing and organisation. The course will use design thinking methods, such as prototyping, iteration, reflection and dealing with ambiguity, to approach writing as a multilingual learner in a creative and collaborative way. This hands-on, or ‘studio approach’ to writing will be accompanied by encounters with inspiring texts about writing in general and writing as multilingual writers. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to practice writing and receive regular feedback from their lecturers and peers and incorporate this feedback into second versions or take them forward to the next writing challenge. By the end of the course, students will have developed a portfolio of writing samples that demonstrate their mastery of different writing styles and skills. They will also be able to reflect on their writing process and use this reflection to become a better writer.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning strategies for this course will include:

A minimum of 36 contact hours, typically to include interactive group teaching, co-curriculars, individual meetings, and in-class presentations and exams.

Course information and supplementary materials are available on the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Students will receive individualised developmental feedback on their work for this course.

Students are required to attend and participate in all the formal and timetabled sessions for this course. Students are also expected to manage their directed learning and independent study in support of the course.

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed in class through class activities, and during office hours. Formative assessments are ones that do not count towards the final grade but will provide students with developmental feedback.

Summative Assessments

Further information on the structure of summative assessment elements can be found in the Summative Assessment Briefs.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback in a variety of ways: written (including via email correspondence); oral (within office hours or on an ad hoc basis) and indirectly through class discussion.

Feedback on examinations is provided through generic internal examiners’ reports and are made available to the student on the VLE. For all other summative assessment methods, feedback is made available to the student either via email, the VLE or another appropriate method.   

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is used as part of the approval/modification process only.

Books

• They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
• The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
• Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword
• Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms by A. Suresh Canagarajah
• Borderlands = La Frontera: the New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa

Editorials

• “On being a cripple” by Nancy Mairs
• “The Fourth State of Matter” by Jo Ann Beard
• “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell
• “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• “No Name Woman” by Maxine Hong
• “Why women smile” by Amy Cunningham
• “My Marriage Didn’t End When I Became a Widow” by Lucky Kalanithi

Indicative Topics

Students will typically study the following topics:

• Writing with a design thinking approach
• Elements of narrative writing
• Crafting long-form arguments with effective evidence and counterarguments
• Understanding plagiarism and referencing sources properly
• Reflective writing and thinking reflectively about your own writing process and progress.